One Small Upset for a Student

One Giant *Bleep* For Our Kind.

Our Kind being Teachers.

If you haven't heard about the teenage student's rant against his world history teacher, take a look.

The video shows a high school student walking from the back of his classroom to the front, saying some 'inspiring words' caught on a cell phone:

"You gotta touch his freakin heart. Can't expect a kid to change if all you do is just tell him.  You gotta take this job serious."

You can hear the teacher say, "Get out," and "Please leave."

The student goes on: "If you would just get up and teach 'em instead of handin 'em a freakin packet,  yo."   Interestingly, the teacher is seated at this moment.

He continues:  "And now I will leave, you're welcome. And if you would like, I'll teach you a little more so you can actually learn how to teach a freakin class."

To be honest, I don't know exactly how I feel about this.  What the student is saying is technically all true.  You need to touch a students' heart.  You need to motivate and engage and not just use hand outs and work sheets.  Students should experience and feel something about what they study.

Then again,  I didn't feel anything about pre-calculus.  I don't even remember anything except for the boy I sat next to and the words sin, cosine, and tangent (sp?). Did that give me the right to scold the teacher openly in front of the whole class and storm out?

The dilemma I'm having is that sometimes a student will refuse to respond, despite our best efforts.  We do hands-on activities, we differentiate our instruction, we go to workshops and spend hours planning and research and try new things... all to no avail.  There may still be one student who checks out, puts his head on his desk, and if he's not disrupting the class, he certainly adds nothing to it.

But is that acceptable? Should we all strive to the ideal every day that every child is a work in progress? I do believe that teachers need to give their best every single day.  But I understand that it becomes difficult when the students you are trying so hard for do not return the effort.

I have mixed feelings.  What about you? Comment!