I ain’t writin’ nuttin’
How many times have I been told by a student: “I don’t want to” or “I can’t, it’s too hard”? More than I can count. Like someone else posted, we all have had our Shannons, some years several of them at a time. Lots of kids come to school with the attitudes that could kill, and they refuse to cooperate with anything you want them to do. It seems that no matter what you offer, they balk and refuse to give it a try. I have mixed feelings about these children. On one hand, I agree that we as the responsible adult have an obligation to find a way to help them learn, and that we can’t just shrug our shoulders and turn our heads when they shake their heads no at us. On the other hand, being raised by strict parents in a house where disobedience or disrespect of any form whatsoever immediately gained you a swat on the backside, I am a bit angered at a child who blatantly stamps their foot at me and tells me no. I tried to think about what I would have done if I had been the teacher and Shannon had refused. I am certain walking away would not have been my reaction. My first thought would probably be “Oh yes you will write today!”, but I have learned from experience that you really can’t win by forcing a child in a situation like that. I thought that Carter had a clever approach with the music. Like it or not, we are competing with so many things to gain the interests of our students. The older they get, the more their attention spans turn to other things rather than school. In reality, everything about school can’t be fun and games, there are some parts of it that require more effort to stay interested in. We all say we care about our kids, why else would we be here?? It most certainly is not for fame and fortune, and nowadays not even for respect. Teachers seem to be getting bashed constantly and blamed 100 percent for the low performance of our students. And in some cases, it very well may be the teachers’ fault. There are good and bad in everything, but I dare say that most of us in this profession really do care and really do want our students to learn, and most of us do try our best to be the very best educator we possibly can. We go to great lengths to ensure our students learn, but even then some of them will inevitably fail. It is impossible to say that we will have every child on grade level and that nobody will ever fall behind. However, I think the teacher in the beginning of the article just wrote the child off and didn’t want to fight the battle with her. She just gave up and walked off. I hope and pray my own kids never have a teacher like that, one who just doesn’t want to bother with them and doesn’t push them even when they don’t want to do something.
Lorie Hedrick