Troublemakers

  In this week’s assigned reading, Troublemakers, author Carla Shalaby describes how schools need to look away from their typical mindset when it comes to “troubled” students in the school system. Typically, when students are disruptive in class, they are reprimanded through being taken out of the class or by being sent to be dealt with elsewhere. This causes gaps in achievement because “troubled” students are getting less class time because they are being reprimanded outside of the classroom, so they are more apt to fall behind. Shalaby suggests, though, that instead of viewing these “troublemakers” as targets, teachers should change their mindsets. These students are not troubled because they don’t want to learn. Nine times out of ten, there is something else going on in the student’s life that is causing them to act out. 

For this week’s blog post, I will be responding to Catherine's blog post as part of the “extended comments” option. In her post, she discusses how the “mold” that schools hold their students to isn’t the issue; instead, she describes how there are just not enough teachers to help the students who are falling behind. I agree with this point. There was always a teacher shortage, but after the COVID-19 pandemic, that shortage has gotten worse. Teachers don’t get paid enough and they deal with WAY more than they should, so people don’t want to go into the profession. As a result, class sizes are growing, and each student is not getting the appropriate amount of attention that they should be. In one of my other classes, we were talking about how the state of Connecticut has just updated their early childhood policies to allow fewer teachers to teach more students (if I remember correctly, it was six or eight toddlers to one teacher). As someone who wants to go into the early childhood education field, this is crazy to me! Six screaming toddlers having to share one teacher is not a good thing because these young children will not be getting the fullest attention that they need. They will already start to fall behind in their education, and they haven’t even entered primary schooling yet! The education field needs more teachers. If there aren’t enough teachers, our students will continue to fall behind. When students fall behind, they can start to come up with their own self-concept about not being smart, or they might get in trouble at home for not doing well in school. This spirals into them being disruptive in school, getting into trouble which results in a loss of class time, and the whole cycle starts again. There are many things that need to change to help the “troublemakers”, but as Catherine points out, we need teachers to do that. So, this poses a question: what can the field of education do to get more teachers, so that our students get the attention they need to be successful in and out of the classroom?