Giving Detention for Bad Grades

[YukonJack]

I am confused. It has been said by the usual spineless crowd, masquarading as teachers and coaches, that it does not matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game. Suddenly, it does not matter any more how one played the game?

Welcome to the never-never land of liberalism.

 

[Curiosity]

Karrie

My heart breaks when I read about students going through "punishment" rather than learning and winning. There is no time clock set on when a child will finally have a Eureka moment and intuit what the spelling or arrangement of letters means in our language. The more failure, the farther the distance between feeling
able to conquer and the feeling of giving up.

Sometimes equating words and symbols or pictures can ease the gates to the memory locker - pictorial recognition can assist in the more complicated "ritual" of letters meaning the same thing - Think how dull the word "ball" is in our written language - but what creativity can come out of a circular, brightly colored
sphere - we call "ball".

If your daughter enjoys drawing - perhaps she can find objects to define the difficult words so she can scan
the meaning and lettering sequence in her mind as she views her own creation of the word in pictures.

Another great relaxer is humor - always find something funny to spell and draw - kids see pictures all the time
which give them no trouble at all with the meaning of the word intended - reverse the sequence and do the the word to match the picture.

Never forget little mother - you and your husband are the final arbiters in how your daughter learns - and I sincerely wish more parents had the guts to intervene in the world of "teaching by rote and whip"....

I find many teachers - not all - wrapped up in the security of unionism, replication of thought, pure laziness and a desire to "stay within the group" while demonstrating very little curiosity and excitement about the introduction of new and stimulating methods of getting information into little heads - what
a bloody waste.

 

[ironsides]

Recently my daughter was given detention for receiving 12/20 on a quiz. Considered a 'fail' by the teacher, she was kept in from recess.

It seems to me to be counter intuitive to the educational process to punish bad grades with the removal of priviliges rather than adding support or extra home work. Not just for my kid, but for all kids.

What are your views, not on this individual case, but on the idea in general, of handing out detention to kids over bad grades? Does the fear of being in detention deter them? Or does being one of the kids constantly sitting in detention help encourage the deterioration of grades, and make it toothless as a punishment for behavioural issues?

Removal of privileges is not a bad idea, but it must be part of a program to help the child improve (support, doing homework, extra homework if needed). Detention after school only adds to burden of parents who may have to pick up their kids because they missed the bus. Then again it might get parents more involved in their children's education. (hide the XBox)

 

[Unforgiven]

You and the teacher should talk. You never mentioned lines in your first post in the thread. Lines are punishment, so if your kid is being punished then you need to know why. If it's a conflict of some sort in the class you should both advocate for your kid as you should be all over any discipline matters but also for the teacher if there are indiscretions against the teacher's wishes. Behaviour, attentiveness, application of whats been taught. Make sure the kids know the law is the law at school too.

So it's important to determine what the detention was for exactly.

Punishment for failure is also not always what it seems. If failure is due to playing around when work should be done then it should be made clear that there is a time to work to get the job done and a time to chill and have some fun. It's not unusual for kids to go through a phase or two of misbehaviour throughout their years as a student.

Now to the nitty gritty, if the teacher is just being a cow, and some are, then she needs to be put on notice through the Principal's office that she or he needs to be professional and rise above any personality conflicts with students. Some can be running out the last few years and lost the spark while others can be fresh off the college circuit with high expectation for elementary school maturity levels.

If it's just about the spelling, well we all come to it at our own pase.

 

[damngrumpy]

Negative reinforcement does not help the child it also fosters a resistance that carries over into
later life if not handled properly. I remember years ago when I went to school that I had to take
the fundamentals of dancing in order to pass part of a PE course that also included learning the
social ways of society. Oh they had a provision for situations where it was contrary to religious
beliefs etc. but that didn't apply to me. I was about 15 and I didn't feel it was necessary to go
and take dancing for any reason. I might have even gone along with it at some point except some
wise teacher said if I didn't do it, I would fail and I would have to miss out on one of the sports
teams. I took it as a threat, and told them go ahead fail me for this part of the course, and take
your sports team and stuff it. To this day my wife wants to kill me, because I have always refused
to learn to dance, I also didn't participate in track and field even though they changed their mind on
that. I was a hell of a runner. It does no good to punish a kid for something as silly as that, yes it is
a bit childish but old habits die hard. Once I say something I mean it.
This goes to the heart of a kids problem, they are having trouble with spelling, instead of punishment
it is up to the teacher or the teacher and the parent to find some way to motivate the kid to make a
positive effort, at gaining higher marks. What I think failure is as a student and that of the teacher
might be two different things. Every child, and even adult is good at some things and not so good at
others. The difference is, knowing what you are good at and maximizing your talent. One way I got
my kids to make an extra effort was to take an interest in what they were good at. You take that
information and point out how much better they could be if they could make their weakness just a little
stronger. For example, they might be good at poetry, or short stories, or some other creative talent.
If they could get to the next level of spelling, they wouldn't have to look up so many words to check
spelling. Its the same for any subject make the weak link tie in with something that interests them and
they will do the rest on their own. Being heavy handed often backfires. Don't let the child slide, find
out what interests them and work from there. After all your child is a child, the teacher is supposed to
be an adult.