To think this is outdated and needs to be removed?

[ballybean]

My son's school has an all glass isolation room in the hall with three desks, children are put there as punishment? Teachers and students walking passed

Teachers that you judged to be respectful.

And of course, only your opinion mattered to the extent that you would disrupt everyone else's education if you weren't happy.

No, teachers that demonstrated being respectful. It shone through in their behaviour and language towards both children and adults and in their attitude towards different communities, races, religions.

But you reserved the right to ruin everyone else's education if you felt that the teacher hadn't demonstrated being respectful according to your personal worldview.

Look, I'm telling you how I felt as a young teen. I'm trying to explain why I was disruptive and what prevented me from feeling this way.
I doubt I'm the only young person that felt like this.
I was once told I was hated by my PE teacher as I was wearing a SWAPO t-shirt.
I'm not saying that the way I behaved was right. However, there are some teachers out there that rile the children and this carries through to other areas of the school. It's no coincidence that there's often 1 or 2 teachers in every school that ALL the children hate. It's usually because they are ridiculously strict and indiscriminate, rude and judegmental about the children.
I've seen it so many times.
I work in many schools.

I got sent out of class a couple of times for giggling and talking.
You had to take your desk and put it outside the classroom door and sit there in the corridor. When break time came all the kids would file past and see you looking a bit of a chump sitting outside classroom knowing that you'd been naughty.

I was a good kid though. Positively angelic compared to some kids and what they get up to now. I certainly wasn't scarred by the experience. It was character building. It taught me not to trust authority which was a bloody good lesson.

Back then parents would support the teacher. Now a lot of them would probably complain and starting quoting Human Rights legislation. Ive got a friend whose been a teacher for over 30 years. He says its a bit of a nightmare these days - they're under seige from everyone from the kids to Ofstead.

@warmheartcoldfeet I think you’re conflating a couple of different things. The sort of teacher you objected to as a child sounds almost like Severus Snape: no-one likes a teacher who is sarcastic, snarky, rude, judgemental or unfair. But the post you were quoting referred only to strictness: the poster suggested that pupils behaved better for teachers who didn’t hand out punishments for every little thing. It’s entirely possible to be extremely strict and hand out plenty of punishments while still being totally fair.

I’d argue that actually pupils do behave better for teachers who are punishment-happy - but whether they get the most out of their pupils is another matter. I remember forgetting my history textbook one day at school and learning absolutely nothing that lesson because I spent the entire time paralysed with fear that the teacher would notice and give me a detention. (This is one of the reasons why I’m not terribly strict as a teacher: I need pupils to feel comfortable enough with me that they’ll ask for help if they don’t understand something.) No-one learns in an atmosphere of fear, but no-one learns when there’s disruption from others in the class either: clearly a balance has to be struck, but I don’t believe that punishing every tiny transgression is helpful for anyone.

So what do you want OP? Give them a medal instead for misbehaving?

Are the only two options a glass isolation box of shame or a medal?

I haven't said my kids shouldn't be sanctioned. You sound like a great teacher who doesn't write them all off as little shits if they mess up

Thank you. It's easy to do that at my school, because behaviour is generally great. But it's worth remembering that there are plenty of students who aren't 'messing up'. They are persistently and deliberately disruptive. Low-level disruption because they don't care, aren't interested in engaging, and would rather chat to their friends and ignore the teacher. Or high-level disruption where they actively seek to cause trouble, sometimes because they have serious issues, sometimes because they simply want to (same effect on the lesson either way).

Whatever some people may say, it is simply not true that all disruption and poor behaviour is down to either trauma or a good kid messing up but not really meaning to. Every teacher knows this. Hell, every kid in every school knows this. Unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning adults somehow choose to forget that kids can indeed be little shits, even if it's only a temporary phase.

Well in my school, 'isolation', usually for fighting, racist comments, constant disruptions to the learning of other kids and other similar delights, means sitting at the back of another teacher's classroom and disrupting those lessons for he entirety of the day. Or, even better, going to The Haven where our poor pastoral staff have to firefight for the day to avoid physical and verbal abuse. One of the children opened the fire door from there last week, ran into the car park and dragged their key down a couple of cars.

It's awesome.

Still, it's great when people who have never worked in schools come up with a magic solution. (I lay the blame for our school situation firmly at the feet of our SLT, who hide away in their ivory towers and are appalling).

Whatever some people may say, it is simply not true that all disruption and poor behaviour is down to either trauma or a good kid messing up but not really meaning to. Every teacher knows this. Hell, every kid in every school knows this. Unfortunately, a lot of well-meaning adults somehow choose to forget that kids can indeed be little shits, even if it's only a temporary phase.

I 100% agree with this, but some people will just not accept it. 90 of our kids are fantastic and want to do well. Sadly, 90% of our time is spent on the 10% who refuse to let them learn. So many people will mention SEN children, but I include a vast majority of them in our great kids so it's really not that.

@TitaniasAss (I lay the blame for our school situation firmly at the feet of our SLT, who hide away in their ivory towers and are appalling).

I think this is often the case. They decide on the policies but because they never actually teach any lessons or see the behaviour themselves they neither know nor care whether those policies have any effect or not.

Got it in one. My Head is just great at telling everyone what they're doing wrong in the classroom, but hasn't taught a lesson in 10 years.

You make a fair point, I'm not sure what the answer is. I suppose the question is whether isolation is used as a method of keeping the child away from the environment they are causing trouble in, or whether it's used as a punishment for things like uniform violations or homework not done.

This is the crux of the whole argument for me.

There’s a lot of talk on this thread about children “facing the consequences” of their behaviour. We look at this with small children like this: the consequence of throwing sand is that you get taken out of the sandpit. The consequence of not being kind to your friend on a playdate is that you get taken home.

So… The consequence of disrupting others’ learning is that you get removed from the classroom: makes total sense. The consequence of wearing the wrong coloured socks is that you get put in a classroom by yourself for a day (and we know this happens, there are stories about it every September!): what?!

Yes, I agree, and if it's a consequence it needs to come with learning about why it wasn't OK and what needs to improve. But budgets are squeezed and I kind of agree with @Teajenny7 that the priority needs to be the kids who are behaving themselves.

@MrsSunshine2b I think some schools need to rethink their priorities regardless of budgets. My DD got a strict telling off for wearing a pink hair tie in Year 2 while the worst-behaved child in the class got to spend the afternoon on an iPad if he’d managed not to overturn any tables that morning.

The Headteacher at my DS previous primary school won't, yes I said won't, disciplin bad behaviour of selected DC "incase their parents go mad, they'll come in to see me and won't be happy"

Joke of a Headteacher, not fit for such a position where their decisions affect those that just want to get on with their day.
All they did is reiterate that bad behaviour is to be rewarded.

Yes, give them a medal. Thats the alternative I've suggested throughout the whole thread

Personally, I've got nothing against the stocks for certain elements of society - people who mindlessly tag freshly painted walls, fly tippers, able bodied people who park in disabled spaces ... it'd be a just punishment.

What’s with flipping tables all of a sudden? I never witnessed this once at school, throughout the whole 14 years. Now it seems to be a daily occurrence.

People that prey upon the elderly and disabled.

The problem would be building enough stocks to keep up with the demand!

There are not enough over-ripe tomatoes or rotten eggs.

My teacher training PGCE is 20 years old, and I decided then I was never going to work in the state system. Education is a leg up and a route out of poverty in most of the world. But here, it's free and mostly quite decent. In the words of the immortal Dorothy Parker: you can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

Teachers have very little tools at their disposal these days to discipline students, maybe a bit of humiliation and degrading might work, kids don’t even respect teachers these days and all the parents do is complain that their previous little Mason can do no wrong 🤷🏼‍♀️