Classroom Outbursts Captured on Camera Phone

• Dan
  March 6th, 2008 at 7:01 pm

  Don’t get me started!
  Okay, you did.
  I’m a former teacher, current counselor at an urban high school and disrespect for teachers is epidemic. The problem — sez I — lies squarely at the feet of the parents.

  Part of the blame also goes to lousy teachers who have no business in the classrooms.

  As my district goes through budget cuts (as I suspect your district might be doing) young, passionate, caring teachers are going to be laid off while the burnt out older teachers will be faced with more students.

  Then people will wonder why test scores are declining.

• MoniA
  March 6th, 2008 at 7:16 pm

  This makes me sick how kids are so disrepectful to teachers. It looks like they’re making it difficult for the teacher to teach, then try to make the teacher out as a bad guy. What is he supposed to do? So sad what our schools have come to. Poor teachers and good students

• WrapAroundSam
  March 6th, 2008 at 7:16 pm

  And to add to what Dan just said. It’s the school’s fault because they don’t change to entertain these little sob’s. Excuse me but these misfits run the schools today. I’ll give it another 5 years and there won’t be a good teacher in 5 for just the reason shown in the videos. Not just one video on Scott’s blog but 7, all along the same lines. No respect whatsoever any more for teachers. Why because their parents have no respect for teachers or education. IMO, it’s not burned out, “old” teachers, it’s students like are present in all 7 of these videos that are slowly bringing education to its knees. I gotta say that I’m retired after 36 years in education and if I had young children today, I’d home school them for just the reasons shown in the videos.

• Pudifoot
  March 6th, 2008 at 7:39 pm

  Seems to me that the last teacher went a bit far… but other than that all the videos showed was a bunch of kids that were asses.

• Eliza
  March 6th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

  That brings back memories. Mostly unpleasant ones. Kids acting like that has always been my school experience from the start, and I’ve been to twelve or thirteen public schools from first grade to high school. Nowadays I joke around that if I was going to be subjected to public school, I ought to have at least committed some crime first, but in reality that’s not too far off the mark.

• will m
  March 6th, 2008 at 8:04 pm

  there are teachers that suck, there are kids that need a serious reality check. as far as i can tell, all these videos feature a mixture of assholes (teachers and students alike). the crazy thing is that, to one degree or another, it has always been this way, and will always be this way.

• NiteWhite
  March 6th, 2008 at 8:11 pm

  I’m going to go against the popular opinion and say the teachers were grossly ineffective, and because kids can sense that, they didn’t show respect for the teach. Teachers that lose their cool are:
  1) destroying any last remnants of decorum,
  2) adding fuel to the fire,
  3) modeling poor behavior,
  4) losing perspective and problem-solving ability,
  5) losing respect of the children.

  The teach is an adult and he/she should act like it. If their class is chronically bordering on explosion and chaos, then they should re-evaluate their skills as a teacher.

• melmoo
  March 6th, 2008 at 8:22 pm

  I agree with will m, there will always be teachers who seem to enjoy watching students suffer and of course students who take sheer pleasure in the misery of their teachers.

  I teach secondary Science although sometimes it feels more like it’s crowd control, babysitter, psychologist and entertainer… and hoping that students don’t get scarred for life!

  ;p

• emily
  March 6th, 2008 at 9:04 pm

  I must agree here with Pudifoot, and say that the majority of these kids recorded themselves being disrespectful. The last teacher was the worst, I must say, and was teaching the youngest children.

  That being said, I was taught before everyone had cell phones, and if it were not for one student’s tape recorder, there would be a teacher employed who should not have been. What did we catch him saying? That all people who have AIDS deserved it. He was a substitute, along with the sub who slapped a boy with a metal ruler and cut him.

  Not substitutes were the two tenyered teachers who molested students. I endured this in middle class suburbia in K-12 schools. I can only assume that Urban schools fare far worse.

• stormie
  March 6th, 2008 at 9:13 pm

  I’d like to say that from what I’ve seen, it seems that the majority of the problems lay with disrespectful students. I’m sure that the problem of disrespect for authority has stemmed from parents lack of judgment in raising their children in an environment that respects those who are in charge.
  That’s not to say that the teachers are not to blame. It’s sad to hear someone who has a position of authority calling these children (because that’s what they are) “rubbish” and cursing in such a vile manner. It’s completely irresponsible and shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom. It’s demeaning and completely uncalled for considering many more appropriate actions could have been taken to maintain their classroom as a place of building respect, professionalism, and preparation for the ‘real world’.
  All in all, I think it should be mandatory for new teachers to take courses on anger management and conflict resolution to ensure a proper dismantling of struggles between teacher and student.

• VonSkippy
  March 6th, 2008 at 10:18 pm

  Reason #673 why I sent my two kids to private school.

• NyaR
  March 6th, 2008 at 10:49 pm

  If public school wasn’t such a joke this wouldn’t happen to such a degree. US has a horrible educational system that, to me, seems to teach you how to stand in line and love America rather than anything else. Certain books, such as “Lies my teacher told me”, as well as others, do a great job of pointing out this bias.
  I came to the US in 4th grade, from USSR/Ukraine. I did not have to learn ANYTHING in math until Grade 10. We were doing fractions in grade school, while they do them in Middle or High school. On top of that, I went to a top rated California school. I reacted by doing ZERO homework, and got yelled at and accused of cheating by my teacher. “How does the person with the lowest grade in the class get the highest grade on the Final?”

• Dan Smith
  March 6th, 2008 at 11:07 pm

  I was in highschool not but two years ago, and these teachers behavior is totally acceptable. It’s called trying desperately to maintain order amongst a generation of kids who are mentally subhuman. I’m not an authoritarian but I do believe that most children these days are raised with leniency and a lack of supervision, they are whisked through the school system without being challenged, because if they falter on tests the schools are punished for not teaching them well enough. There is no instant solution but if I was a teacher in a school of this sort I would not hesitate to expel kids who act that out of hand. Give them a chance to earn their way back into the school but make it clear that if they do not want to learn they can die homeless in the streets. (hoping that they would realize for once that their actions have consequences)

• Aramax
  March 6th, 2008 at 11:19 pm

  The Aramax teaching method:

  1) Rate your students grade on a % scale, take into account all homeworks and exams.

  2) Everytime a student is disrespectful of the 3 R’s rule, deduce 1% from his score.

  The 3 R’s

  Respect of self
  Respect of others
  Responsibility for your own actions

  3) If a student fall under 0% give him the right to go listen to the classroom from outside of the school property using a radio.

  Done.

• Aramax
  March 6th, 2008 at 11:22 pm

  Btw, it’s a one way radio. The teacher keeps the transmiter, the student wins the receiver.

  I call this method “Respect your teacher or your teacher wont respect you and you will become the laughing stock of the whole school with a silly one way radio in your hands.”

  It’s pretty effective.

• Joe
  March 6th, 2008 at 11:39 pm

  Chiming in as another former teacher.
  I agree with one poster, weak teachers will always have bad classrooms.

  Young teachers will usually be a little hot-headed, as they work to get their sea legs.

  But some of my kids openly admitted that there were one or two choice students who would intentionally bait the teacher to get the lesson plan off track. (delay a test or give the class time to prep for a test in another class, for example.)

  And some students were just wormy pricks.

• Onym
  March 6th, 2008 at 11:53 pm

  I went to the “bad” school in my district and all of my teachers were excellent, I was tracked into AP courses, and I never had any problems from the kids who made my school a bad school. Overall my school gave me more flexibility in my courses and my after school activities than I could have gotten from our local private schools. In addition, I was never pressured into the drug scene like so many kids from private schools were. (Our school got probably 15 kids every year who had been kicked out of a private school for drug use.) In my area at least, the private schools host kids with too much time on their hands and an expendable income. So…let’s not call the kettle black here. I could have done much worse than my public school

• Barbwire
  March 7th, 2008 at 12:05 am

  All my teaching was in inner-city schools. There were burned-out teachers, but they had perfect discipline. Not a word was spoken. Students did busy work (assignment written on board), while the teacher read, did puzzles, talked on the phone, etc. There were young or second-career teachers who were enthusiastic and interacted with the kids. There was generally mutual respect in those classes. Of course, there is always a small percentage of students who will act out under any circumstances.

• Thespian24601
  March 7th, 2008 at 12:37 am

  Yes, the kids were just plain dumb in the videos, but I love the kid that said, “this is the best footage ever,” and didn’t have any good footage haha.

• Scooter
  March 7th, 2008 at 1:03 am

  disruptive students need to be removed from the rest of the school population by the third grade. start tracking the ones that want to learn away from the disruptive ones and into more self-contained classrooms. the “don’t want to learn” crowd can go on their either vocational or drug-dealing path.

• shecky
  March 7th, 2008 at 1:32 am

  Respect my authoritah!

  I never had any respect for ineffective teachers. And still don’t. Life is tough. Any weak teacher will be sniffed out by students in about two seconds, and the classroom will likely be lost for the rest of the year. Pushing the envelope and tormenting teachers was, and still is great sport. End of story.

  Yeah, yeah… kids today have very little respect for their teachers. And get off my lawn!

• shecky
  March 7th, 2008 at 1:35 am

  Oh, and I went to Catholic schools all my student years. Make of that what you will.

• daviddavid
  March 7th, 2008 at 1:55 am

  post this alongside that tripe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU

• sam
  March 7th, 2008 at 2:32 am

  I feel for teachers, I really do. The saddest thing is that I used to be one of those kids - to my eternal shame.

• MoonCake
  March 7th, 2008 at 8:22 am

  @ aramax and dan smith: word.

  shecky– you can’t completely dismiss weak teachers. yea, they’re weak by their own faults, but they still had to go through the education to get there, and have to deal with these little pieces of sh*t. you have to at LEAST respect that. but yes, as harsh and true as it is, they will be sniffed out by the crappy students and the classroom will probably never restore order. sad.

  truth is, without using so many pretty and frilly words, teenagers are useless. they don’t have a true sense of self because they’re at constant battle with their peers to be cool; trying to be someone they’re not. they don’t have a sense of self worth because they have had nothing to contribute to on a large scale. once they turn 18 things will change, but until then, they will continue to be little sh*ts. they are disrespectful and will continue to as long as their parents don’t instill certain discipline. now, i’m not saying their parents have to beat them in order to obtain tangible results, they just need to sit down and TALK to them. whoda thunk, that talking to your kids would be an effective teaching/learning agent… yunno, parents always say “yea school kids are tough.. they were tough when i was a little kid and they’ll be tough when your kids go to school.. blah blah blah..” but they don’t truly understand how bad it is to be a kid these days. it has changed drastically since the boomers were born, and they can’t be so naive to current conditions. it’s been a couple years since i’ve been a teenager, and i can only imagine that it has gotten worse. but moral of the story: parents need to step up and teachers need to stop taking sh*t!

• Adam Stanhope
  March 7th, 2008 at 12:02 pm

  I love the “hot head’s” Canadian accent.

  Do they even have schools in Canada?

• ted
  March 7th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

  Nice job using this as an excuse to attack a whole other group of people, Adam Stanhope. Some Canadian girl kick your ass, once?

  Interesting perception difference - the students actually don’t see what’s wrong with their behaviour, and blame the teacher for “not teaching” them. Not this teacher’s proudest moment. Why did he even allow the student continue to film him? Cell phones should be off in class.

• Adam Stanhope
  March 7th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

  Man - wow - some people just can’t take a joke!

  Come on, ted. Relax.

• monkey_town
  March 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

  I remember a teacher I had in high school. She was the best. The classroom was always roudy and noisy, with lots of movement. If a subject suddenly became of interest to us, our teacher pushed everything else aside. One day, math was shunted aside in favor of making marshmallows. The next day, a strong interest in geometry eradicated the entire day’s agenda. We had the highest grades in the school. Other students were always saying how they wanted to badly to be in our class. This was the epitome of what a private school should be.

  Well, the principal didn’t like the unstructured courses, didn’t like that no one actually had a desk (desks were more often than not used for holding a myriad of projects, instead of used for sitting at and studying), and didn’t like the noise (which couldn’t be heard outside our room). Our wonderful teacher was fired and a new one brought in. We came to school one day and found all the projects in the dumpster. We were told to sit down and shut up (actual words of our new teacher) and study quietly. We were assigned desks, materials and told to get to work. We were utterly heartbroken. The new teacher embarrassed us in front of each other, openly insulted us and generally was a terror.

  We took it for about 2 weeks before snapping. It was pretty much a 25-person riot. We destroyed the classroom and chased the teacher out. Anyone viewing a video would have commented like a few people here. “It’s sad how they don’t respect their teacher.” “These kids are totally undisciplined.” “Someone was too lenient with them.”

  And they’re right! We didn’t respect her because she didn’t respect us! We were totally undisciplined and we were happy and we had the highest grades of anyone in the school! Our former teacher was lenient with us because she knew that if we could do whatever we wanted, we’d learn and learn well! Before this we had never damaged school property, had never rioted, had never even fought! We were the sanest, nicest, most creative, happiest kids in the world. Then this teacher sought to smash us.

  I’m not saying what we did was right, but damn it she had to WORK at it to make the situation get that bad. I know of students (especially in the school that shared our building) that were utter horrors. Those students will tear any teacher apart.

  But my point is, I have found that people are too quick to forgive the teacher. It’s very likely that the teachers in these videos are not suddenly losing it. This is how they treat the students all the time. You get mean and snarky and you strike back at them because it’s the only thing you can do. You have NO OTHER WAY to make the situation right. Everyone will side with the teacher. When people don’t, it’s a rare situation, not the norm.

• L
  March 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

  I didn’t see what this post had to do with attacking Canada, either, Adam. The Internet isn’t used just by Americans, and you never know who might be reading your words. Sometimes it’s best to think before you post.

  As far as teachers go, I’ve had some great ones and some not-so-great ones. The great ones could control the class because they understood the students and what they were doing; they saw through the crap. The not-so-great ones lost control because they didn’t realize the students were egging them on. But that was a while ago. I honestly would not want to attend public school today, with half the kids on mind-altering prescription drugs and the teachers burned out from trying to discipline all day.

• Adam Stanhope
  March 7th, 2008 at 11:55 pm

  Does “Je me souviens” really mean “I am the soup” ?

• Alex
  March 8th, 2008 at 1:36 am

  I remember my fourth grade teacher, Ms. Eva, who was a young and idealistic teacher at the time. She used to take a little time out to challenge us to a “trivia contest” - each “column” of seats was a team, and we all get to answer a question.

  The topic ranged from biology to geography to whatever - it was the most interesting time I had in a classroom. We actually paid attention to whatever it was she was teaching so we would have time leftover for the trivia game (and so we’ll know the answer to the question, of course).

  Then the school cracked down on her, and made her stop - so I can see monkey_town’s point: school system don’t like iconoclasts. They only see one way of doing things: their way, whether it’s right or wrong.

• ted
  March 8th, 2008 at 8:09 am

  Adam Stanhope, I didn’t see much humour in your attack on Canadians. I knew you meant it to be funny, but it was humour where you put down a group of people for no reason. In that vein, I suppose people who don’t laugh at racist, homophobic, or sexist jokes are simply uptight and lacking in humour.

  My “Some Canadian girl kick your ass once?” was an appropriate humorous response, rather than simply pointing out how hateful and bitter your statement sounded.

  Sorry if you didn’t get it.

• Adam Stanhope
  March 8th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

  Stephen Harper eats babies.

• ted
  March 8th, 2008 at 7:32 pm

  You’d probably find a few Canadians that would agree with you on that point, Adam.

  So far, your put-downs have been pretty lame and immature. You’re hardly even trying.

  Anyway, try to keep on topic next time…

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