Teachers sounding the alarm about 'room clear' method

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Donkey

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I recall the day when students were ashamed or afraid to be sent to the principal’s office…punishment for bad behavior.
 
So do I. My classrooms have looked like that a few times in the past 3 years but not before.
 
And the pendulum swings.

There was a time when teachers could often get away with abusive treatment of children just because they were the teachers. Now it’s the children who get away with abuse.

We go from one bad situation to the opposite bad situation.
 
There’s a lot going on here. Children are facing more and more mental health challenges and behavioral disorders, and as this video shows, schools are not always equipped to handle these children with special needs. The mom in the video advocates for smaller class sizes, but good luck getting those in most school districts. It’s a messy situation all around.

But a trip to the principal’s office isn’t going to cure that special-needs 10-year-old.
 
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This tells mass murders where victims will be found.

In Washington State, we will soon have an earthquake warning system wherein all can panic when it goes off - earthquake or no.

As faith diminishes in our culture, fear reigns.
 
The school where I work absolutely has the resources to deal with this. They just choose not to because they are afraid of being on the evening news for “manhandling a special needs child”. It’s easier for the administration to watch a child destroy the classroom that a teacher spent hours of her free and a huge amount of her own money creating for her students, give the kid a hug and a water bottle when he’s done with his meltdown, and then expect the teacher to clean up the mess. Fortunately, this isn’t anywhere near as common as this news story makes it seem. In twelve years, I’ve only seen it twice and in one case, the child was eventually put into full-time psychiatric care and then foster care.
 
Donkey said:
This is a bad situation for children. Not much pendulum action here.
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Bad for teacher and bad for child are not mutually exclusive terms. The current situation seems to be that a child can beat up on a teacher but the teacher must not forcibly restrain the child.
 
I think if you bring back corporal punishment and a culture of the parents backing the teachers in matters of classroom discipline then that fear, shame in going to the principals office will come back.
 
There are a lot of issues at play here.
  1. Many years ago a SN child would simply not be sent to school. They would either be institutionalized or not followed up and stay at home. Of late we have an increased expectation to educate all students (as we should) but without the expertise or resources to do so.
  2. The age a child can leave school has dramatically risen especially over the last 40 years. Again, students that are not academically able are still expected to stay in the system regardless.
  3. Curriculums move up in relation to year levels not ability. This creates huge issues for both teachers and students and disengagement occurs.
  4. SN cases have not increased in the last 50 years (as opposed to the common misconception that is has). What has changed is our expectation of teachers to adequately educate them in the mainstream classroom. Student breakdowns and violent outbursts are not new however, expecting teachers to deal with them are.
What’s the answer? Money and resources. And lots of it. I highly doubt it is going to happen anytime soon. Rather than hand over $$ people are much more willing to find a scapegoat (society, teachers, parents etc.).
 
This is a special needs child. Clearly with extreme issues considering the outcome.

Having shame going to the office will not help here. The child needs serious help.
 
My parents have a lot of stories of the entire class getting hit by the teacher because the people who were talking while the teacher stepped outside the class for a minute would not own up. If they went home and told their parents that they had been beaten when they did nothing wrong, they would be told that the probably deserved it. I, for one, do not want to return to those times.
 
ShrodingersCat said:
My parents have a lot of stories of the entire class getting hit by the teacher because the people who were talking while the teacher stepped outside the class for a minute would not own up. If they went home and told their parents that they had been beaten when they did nothing wrong, they would be told that the probably deserved it. I, for one, do not want to return to those times.
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I lived through those days. My entire 4th grade class was terrorized by a nut case teacher for the whole year. She did awful things. Not a single one of us told our parents, because we were afraid of her and she was the authority figure. If anyone did tell, their parents either didn’t believe them or they probably dismissed it as kid drama.

That teacher drew blood with her fingernails, taped a kid’s mouth with duct tape, made a kid sit in the garbage can and called him garbage. It was really abusive.
 
blackforest said:
There’s a lot going on here. Children are facing more and more mental health challenges and behavioral disorders, and as this video shows, schools are not always equipped to handle these children with special needs. The mom in the video advocates for smaller class sizes, but good luck getting those in most school districts. It’s a messy situation all around.

But a trip to the principal’s office isn’t going to cure that special-needs 10-year-old.
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I have a homeschooled autistic child. I know how to handle him and his meltdowns, but my methods would not be allowed in the school.

When he starts to have a meltdown, I approach him and give him a deep pressure, full-body hug. Sometimes forcibly. A bear hug. This is a method that we have learned over years of trial-and-error, with the help of his occupational therapist. It works well and deep pressure is a well-established method of bringing regulation to a dysregulated person. A school would not be allowed to use this method, which is considered a restraint.

Schools have no-touch policies, which defy common sense. They are an understandable over-reaction to cases of abuse of special needs kids by untrained (and occasionally abusive) teachers and para-professionals.

Do you know who can use restraint, though? The police. So the police would be called and they most certainly won’t give my son a bear hug. They use handcuffs, which frightens the child and inevitably escalates the situation. There have been a few cases recently of children as young as 7 arrested and charged with assault. Can’t we find a better way in our society?

https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisedu.org/what-is-emotional-dysregulation/
 
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Personally, I think a better method of dealing with mental-disordered students is to put them in their own school or something.
I had to deal with a mentally-disabled person in a class I was in. He would wander around the classroom and talk (sometimes yell) at random. One time he hit and called me a bad name; I nearly retaliated badly (I have some issues of my own, including a tendency to resort to violence. I have learned to deal with it). He disrupted the entire class daily, was ditracting, etc.
I understand wanting to have SN kids exposed to others, but if they are that distracting or at all violent, they should not be in a normal classroom. In the interests of the 20+ other students who would like to learn the material and go home without bruises, reconsider that idea.
 
I agree! Law enforcement definitely needs special training in how to handle autistic kiddos. So do a lot of professionals, but employing the traditional restrain-and-arrest methods on autistic children unjustly exacerbates any encounter with the police.
 
CorydonMundi said:
hings can fix that.

Get rid of the department of education

Get rid of school districting. Let the states allocate funds by student and let the parents out their k
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I’m not sure how that will help at all? So parents with means/times will all go to a particular school and students without are left in less than desirable areas. How does that get rid of the problem?
Wouldn’t that exacerbate it?
 
The parochial schools and other private schools in Des Moines and school districts like it must be bursting at the seams.

Part of this has to do with students having the right to the least-restrictive classroom environment in which they can function, as well. This is the kind of thing a student has to do in order to exhibit a pattern of behavior proving that the student needs a more restrictive environment in order for his class to have any hopes of being functional. Worse yet, if the classrooms for students with that kind of needs are at capacity, the “least worst” (for want of a better term) have to be put into a mainstream setting that is not appropriate for the student. Everybody loses and teacher burn-out goes through the roof. No one should be expected to work at the impossible task of providing an education to all his or her students in that kind of environment. There are no salaries high enough to compensate for such impossible working conditions.
 
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CorydonMundi said:
Two things can fix that.

Get rid of the department of education

Get rid of school districting. Let the states allocate funds by student and let the parents out their kids in any public school they’re willing to drive their kids to. The best schools will accessible and desirable.
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What happens to the kid in that story, the one who was having the melt downs? Is that student a throw-away who deserves the “worst” school?

The problem in education in this country is not the fate if the most privileged children who have the most proactive parents.
 
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