That is your job not mine Part II

Classroom management, such as it is, is much different today than it was in days past. Gone are the menacing management styles that were once used to terrorise and suppress the student body and in its place a far more kind and gentler management system has taken its place.

In today’s classrooms children are managed through goodwill and understanding between teacher and student. It is understood that the only thing that really keeps a class in order, is the goodwill the students collectively grant the teacher. Outside of that the teacher has nothin, zippo, zilch at their disposal to maintain order in a class. Teachers have been metaphorically castrated in the past twenty years and have nothing other than a lesson plan, a sparkling personality and if they’re lucky an allusion of authority.

The only vestige of days past that teachers still have in their quiver of management tools is the phone call home and even the effectiveness of this has changed in recent years. At one time this was the hammer that was only unleashed when all else had failed in the classroom. It would frequently result in a sound whooping when dear old Pappy got home and/or a month in solitary confinement. This phone call was the single greatest fear a child had and would usually only have to be made once in any given school year to straighten a child out.

Today, more often than not, even the call home has little to no effect in modifying a child’s behaviour. Thankfully, with some families it still carries some clout but for the most part it simply opens the teacher up to criticism about their skill and serves only as a conduit for verbal abuse on behalf of the parent toward the teacher.

A recent phone call home by a colleague garnered a comment from a parent that sums up how many people feel about being asked to assist a teacher in modifying a child’s behaviour.
After trying every anaemic means of modifying the child’s behaviour at their disposal, including report card comments, letters home and voice mail messages the teacher finally contacted the child's father by phone one eveneing. Irritated by the intrusion the father summed up the ever growing sentement of today's parents in two short sentences.

"I don’t call you when I have a problem with Johnny at home so don't be calling me when you are having a problem with him in your classroom. He is your problem not mine!"

With that, the father hung up and absolved himself of any responsibility for his child’s behaviour in the classroom.