I had an interesting conversation with a retired school teacher yesterday. He taught in the Detroit, Michigan school system. He had a very interesting approach to teaching students. His first priority was to teach the students how to respect him, others, and themselves.
He taught them from the beginning of each school year to do the following:
When he entered the room every morning, the students were instructed to automatically and immediately arise from their seats without saying a word and stand by their desks. They could not greet him before he greeted them.
He would greet them with something similar every day, "Good morning beautiful people." Then they were taught to greet him back with, "Good morning Mr. Patterson." Then they could sit down in their desks. They were not allowed to randomly talk to each other.
As the day progressed, and if an adult entered his room with or without knocking, the students were instructed, without prompting from him, to automatically stand up by their seats and quietly stand at attention. This act was very impressive to an administrator or a parent who might enter the room, especially if it was unannounced.
If he had a student that he had difficulty controlling, he would call one of the student's parents usually a Mom. He would start the conversation off in a pleasant tone, avoiding criticizing the student, and then say, "I need your help. Johnny is a very bright and likable student, but I cannot get him to focus on his studies. We need to work together. You know him better than I do, so can we agree to work as a team to get him to achieve his maximum potential?" He chose his words carefully, making sure he said nothing to put the parent on the defense, because he knew that would accomplish nothing but angry feelings.
Eliminating some of the confusion in his classroom, emphasizing the importance of following his rules, showing respect for the students as well as demanding respect from them, allowed him to concentrate on teaching them social studies rather than spending most of his time disciplining them. Therefore, they learned a lot in his class.
Many teachers reading this will probably wonder how he managed to accomplish this so successfully, because the students in today's culture are very hard to manage. However, when I brought this up, he reminded me that he worked in the inner city schools of Detroit. "I know about teaching difficult students."
He was meant to be a teacher, and he seemed to have a magical instinct on how to handle the students. It is a shame that this magic cannot be bottled/packaged and sold to teachers who struggle to control their classes in order to effectively teach them the subject of the class.
