AIBU to think missing five lessons as a detention seems counterproductive?

[AroundTheWorldAround]

DC (15) has been given a detention for messing around in class. Fair enough. I’ve told him it’s not acceptable. But, the detention is to miss five lessons. This feels counter intuitive to me. Surely it’s break time they should miss.

He said that one boy hasn’t had a single lesson all term because of his behaviour. GSCE years. If I was that parent I’d be changing schools.

I get that there have to be consequences for disruptive behaviour but won’t this just make the issues worse. For a child who messes about because they don’t understand or can’t keep up, it’s just going to confound the issue.

I don’t know. I’m not a teacher (no amount of money would persuade to me be - it’s such a difficult job) so may be I’m missing something. But this just seems counterintuitive to me and will just set difficult behaviour in stone. If there is a lad whose had no lessons since the start of term the it’s highly unlikely he’ll go back into lessons and participate fully - he won’t have a clue what’s going on, surely?

I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

AIBU or is this intervention likely to make the behaviour they are trying to reduce, worse, or they are sacrificing the education of the kids that struggle more to benefit the others?

Ye @Spiderinhere is it a situation as described by @Justanotherteacher – where it does seem reasonable for the teacher to point out that the student should know the answer and as they didn't, had they really been listening and taking part?

Or is it: Teacher: “What is the German word for hot air balloon [a word we have never discussed nor come across]?” Student: [puts hand up and waits to be asked] “Is it Schadenfreude?” Teacher: “No of course not, it's Heißluftballon, that's a negative mark for you for not knowing.” ?

If the latter then I do find it a bit hard to believe. The other things you mention sound excessive too (tracking the speaker? wtaf is that?). Is there another school your DC could go to? What school is it they are at? I promise you (based on quite a lot of experience in a range of schools) that those rules are not the norm.

Tracking the speaker just means listening to the person talking (teacher, or student answering a question).

I wouldn't actually use that term but I do expect students to listen to me/not to talk while their peers are asking or answering a question or presenting. It's only polite!

Ah I see @Phineyj yes I agree, the students should be listening. And if not (presumably evidenced by them talking over me) then yes a warning is in order.

Tracking the speaker
”Tracking the speaker means watching the speaker with your eyes, following the speaker as they move around the room. “

https://blog.kippnj.org/2014/04/02/three-easy-steps-to-teach-tracking-the-speaker/ this has info all about it, including classroom exercises to help children learn how to track the speaker.

@Justanotherteacher@clary
I thought exactly the same. I’d assumed the teacher deliberately asked a child who was messing around what the answer was to something she’d literally just told the class type of scenario. It was the first thing I asked DD, but she said she’d have understood why he’d been in trouble if that was the case. This teacher will be teaching top set….DD is half hoping she didn’t do well in the test this week.

The schools in this area have these zero tolerance behavioural systems. It seems abnormal as fuck to me, but it’s normal here.

We have a cue word which involves tracking the teacher as well as a few other expectations.

I offer looking at the whiteboard as an optional alternative to looking at me for those who find making direct visual contact harder. If they're looking that way, I know they're still listening and reponding which is the ultimate point.

I mean I think most experienced teachers can tell who is paying attention and who is not.

I do agree that some of the language and actions around behaviour in some of the academy chains have got excessive BUT when you teach in a more "relaxed" school one of two things tends to be true: either a) you spend a lot more time dealing with "low level" disruption (which is v tedious and as described, not really low level) or b) the reason the school can BE more relaxed is most of the students have been properly brought up (this is independent of income level of parents, by the way) and therefore want to learn.

A lot of it does come back to the suitability of the curriculum and level of intellectual challenge for the group in front of you, with a side order of how comfortable the building is to learn in (I was covering a lesson this summer where it was 39 deg and the students were far too hot to misbehave enthusiastically but they weren't learning anything either).

None of that is actually in the control of classroom teachers, or even senior management really as they are also lumbered with the results of many years of poor government decision making.

I agree there are things out of a school’s or individual teacher’s control. However, some practices have gone so far that they seem to cause more lost learning time than they were meant to save, more disruption in monitoring than the disruption caused by the offence, reduction in engagement rather than more engagement. So, paying attention and encouraging that is sensible. Continually following a teacher with your eyes and turning around as the teacher walks behind you and up and down the rows makes less sense as you start to concentrate more on that than what the teacher is saying! In other lessons, having your bag on your chair is marked as disruptive as you have to turn around to go to it.

In the example I cited earlier in the thread, a child that doesn’t track more than once loses the rest of that lesson, the following four periods and whatever breaks/lunch take place within those periods. In my mind, that school is being far more disruptive than the child is. They are harming education and wellbeing over nothing.

There’s a vast gap between being strict with logical rules and demanding excessive lengths of compliance.

We don't know, however, whether the OP's son's school is a user strict academy school or (as seems more likely) she actually didn't know what the behaviour policy was until her son went through some kind of threshold.

If it really was a one off then providing him with the revision guides for the subjects due to be missed would have ensured it wasn't a wasted day (the mum I mean - if she also doesn't know which exam boards are being taken, could have been a good prompt to find out).