Reflect on the videos related to “Standards and School Law” by doing the following: 1.Discuss a teacher’s legal and ethical responsibilities in defusing classroom conflicts. An example of a classroom conflict that could occur within the classroom could be when a student becomes agitated and aggressive. This can happen when a student is asked to complete a task and the student refuses. After given a prompt to complete the work, the student begins to shout out and throws his work materials. The student then is given a prompt to begin using his coping strategies and he refuses, resulting in escalated behaviors. At this point the student becomes aggressive with staff, by spitting on them. He also begins to throw things at staff and destroying objects within his proximity. The legal responsibility of the teacher and other staff members, are to ensure that the other students are safe from the upset student. This can be done by having a staff member remove the students from the room and using a radio to notify the principal or the crisis intervention leader. In the event that another staff member is not present the students need to be instructed to remove themselves away from the escalated student. Another legal responsibility is to ensure that the escalated student is safe during his crisis moment. If the student becomes physically aggressive the proper interventions of crisis intervention prevention must begin. After following the intervention plan and the student is calm,
The conflict can present an opportunity for two-way communication to be established and maintain. It may also ignite deeper conversations and enhance relationships. For the conflict to be constructive, the principal has to ask open-ended questions, questions that help him or her to understand the background of the conflict better. Furthermore, the principal should look for the needs and interests that lie behind concrete positions. It is also important to listen for values, not interests because there are always values motivating our interests. Principals should use the conflict to bring the organization together around the greater purpose which is promoting student
Schools have policies and procedures in place to support staff in situations that may involve violence, threatening behaviour and/or abuse among other policies which are all legal requirements within the setting of a school. Policies intend to provide a structure that makes sure consistent principles are applied to practice within a school. They aren’t planned to point out every imaginable event that might be applied within the policy scheme.
A school needs to work as a cohesive unit, not only in curriculum and classwork, but also in discipline involving violence and other unacceptable behaviors in the classroom, halls, and any other places under the school’s scope of authority. Solidarity when incorporating PBIS is a cornerstone of its own effectiveness. Not acting is just as damaging as ignorance or enabling. Violence or abuse that is unreported will not effectively support school-wide management. Examples of this are telling yourself, “He’s not my student, I’ll keep a low profile, or It’s none of my business.” Student safety and success will always be foremost, even when it comes to student
In this case the teacher should inform the head teacher about this incident and if may involve the police if necessary.
It is important for a teacher to challenge disruptive behaviour immediately and consistently. I feel by trying to make lessons enjoyable and providing work that helps students to achieve minimizes disruptive behaviour. The use of good communication by the teacher can also be a useful tool. This includes the use of the voice, phrasing, eye contact and body language. For example, using an assertive tone when making a request or physically positioning yourself near disruptive students.
3) The Teaching Staff, teaching staff should intervene at the first sign of any bullying, they must keep records of all incidents that happen involving children in their class, if they see another child from another class being bullied or bullying they should immediately inform that childs class teacher so they can intervene and monitor the situation. Teachers routinely liase with each other through staff meetings and discuss existing or new anti-bullying strategies.
There is also a role for support staff to assist in teaching pupils to protect themselves, to a certain degree, against abuse or bullying.
Causes of conflict in the work place can be due to various reasons, good examples of these would be
One teacher states how the teachers union tells them to “Stay away from conflict!” (Devine 83). Teachers instead of trying to resolve conflict are told by administrators to contact security personnel when trouble occurs. They are not only threatened by the violent environment, but also threatened by potential lawsuits, such as sexual harassment lawsuits, when male teachers try to break up female students fighting. They are encouraged to avoid physical interaction between students.
The aspects of withitness, momentum and smoothness, group alerting, overlapping, and challenge arousal are all important when trying to reduce classroom misbehavior. The teacher’s ability to know what’s going on in all parts of the classroom at all times is essential and makes the students pay attention because they never know if the teacher is watching them. The factor of momentum and smoothness is also important because the teacher needs to get lessons started promptly, smoothly, and provide transitions. Other factors such as keeping students alert, actively involve in their learning, and holding students responsible for their learning helps classroom management.
Classroom Example of integration: A tenured administrator at a high school has a new hire instructor. He is a twenty-three year old recent graduate and this is his first career position. Because the new instructor has no true experience with classroom management, his students often times become disruptive. The principal has taken notice and has no other option than to pull the teacher into a brief meeting. The administrator explains to the teacher that he must become more demanding of his students in regards to their behavior. If the instructor can not commit to this he will have to be placed on an improvement plan which will not be a good reflection on his next school year. After the counseling; the new instructor becomes more of a disciplinarian
Disruptive behaviors are conditions that can have a great influence in the teaching environment. Disruptive behaviors unswervingly hinder the ability of the teacher or the capability of a learner to benefit from their classroom experiences. Students attend schools with hopes of being productive citizens of society. I like to think of students as future leaders of tomorrow! For the most part, students attend school because it is the law. A learning environment should have actively engaged students, who are eager to participate and show knowledge is being acquired on a daily basis. However, some students are bored and disengaged with academic struggles, due to non-active lessons. Certain life factors such as family problems, financial difficulties are all factors that distract and contribute to students disruptive behaviors. One of the most detrimental settings for a teacher in a class is classroom management. Classroom management is defined as being "the methods and strategies an educator uses to maintain a classroom environment that is conducive to student success and learning" (McCreary, 2011). Disorderly student conduct is unfavorable to the entire academic process because they impede with the learning process of other classmates and cause teachers not to be able to instruct teachers most effectively.
A teacher must deal with disruptive classroom behavior throughout their career. To do so, they must not only develop their skills in handling these situations but also develop ethical standards for their classroom. These standards set forth by the teacher will help them deal with their students, those students’ parents, the school administrators and their community. There are numerous articles written that could help a teacher when researching any legal or ethical issues that may arise during their teaching career. This paper summarizes four
4. What conflicts did you observe in this classroom? What conflict resolution methods could you use to resolve the conflicts in this classroom? Are there any peer mediation methods that you could use in this scenario?
Loss of trust and animosity among a team based on one teacher’s lack of professionalism. The team took turns making lesson plans, locating resources, and creating rotating substitute plans. One of the teachers rarely had her portions of the work done causing the other members of the team to scramble around getting a lesson together at the last minute. This teacher also called in sick several times and waited until a few minutes before school started to call one of the other’s and ask them to provide a lesson for the substitute. This conflict escalated to the Dean of Instruction.