Punishment - No P.E.

Feeona

jpb1974 wrote: »

Look.. whatever was or wasn't said the fact of the matter is that the situation has now been resolved. Based on some feedback from our young lad the teacher seems a lot more pleasant and understanding with the kids now. It's a learning process for everyone really.

Good to hear it was all resolved. It can be very worrying to see your child going into school upset, especially if they usually enjoy going into school.

D4RK ONION

Feeona, daltonm has made it clear that he no longer wishes to participate in that particular discussion, and while I don't agree with his arguments, it isn't fair of you to continue to drag him back in to the discussion. I think he has made his conclusions and expressed his side of the discussion and we should leave it at that.

Thanks

Nevyn

We had my daughter's new teacher pulling this stunt, P.E. is on a Monday and if the previous week the class as a whole got X amount of black marks P.E. was cancelled for the whole class. A visit to the School's principal asking why a section of the curriculum was being with held quickly put a stop it.

D4RK ONION

Thaedydal wrote: »

We had my daughter's new teacher pulling this stunt, P.E. is on a Monday and if the previous week the class as a whole got X amount of black marks P.E. was cancelled for the whole class. A visit to the School's principal asking why a section of the curriculum was being with held quickly put a stop it.

Too right Thaedydal. P.E. is as important as English or Maths and no teacher has the authority to remove that right to a rounded education.

RibenaHead

Thaedydal wrote: »

We had my daughter's new teacher pulling this stunt, P.E. is on a Monday and if the previous week the class as a whole got X amount of black marks P.E. was cancelled for the whole class. A visit to the School's principal asking why a section of the curriculum was being with held quickly put a stop it.

I can't believe teachers like this manage to qualify! That's crazy!

dambarude

RibenaHead wrote: »

I can't believe teachers like this manage to qualify! That's crazy!

It's crazy but it's common. It happened all the time when I was in primary school, and evidently it's still happening.

What's worse is when teachers don't even try to teach specific subject areas. I was in primary school for four years of the new 1999 curriculum, and I was never taught drama once. We did SPHE about once every two months, and the PE curriculum consisted of swimming/basketball/soccer or Gaelic football. Not a mention of the other strands (dance/gymnastics/athletics). But all that is off topic for this thread!

E.T.

dambarude wrote: »

It's crazy but it's common. It happened all the time when I was in primary school, and evidently it's still happening.

What's worse is when teachers don't even try to teach specific subject areas. I was in primary school for four years of the new 1999 curriculum, and I was never taught drama once. We did SPHE about once every two months, and the PE curriculum consisted of swimming/basketball/soccer or Gaelic football. Not a mention of the other strands (dance/gymnastics/athletics). But all that is off topic for this thread!

I have to admit I don't teach all of the gymnastics strand of the p.e. curriculum. There's no way I'm prepared to teach children to "practise rocking and rolling activities leading to the forward roll". It's just not safe with a large class, including children with physical and co-ordination problems. Fine in a small class, taught by someone who is absolutely comfortable with gymnastics and is really familiar with it from a young age. Usually if there's something I'm not sure about teaching I'll go and learn more about it, but in this case I think it's a safety issue. I doubt any gymnastics teacher would even dream of taking a class of 25+ four to seven year olds.

GoldenEarring

The curriculum is totally overloaded. How is one human being expected to cover all of those subjects on her own with 30 plus children (including differentiating for different ability levels and needs)?
The level demanded by the curriculum would be fine if teachers could specialise in particular subjects as they do in secondary schools, but it is not realistic in primary school.
Do you really expect an ordinary teacher to be skilled in Music, Drama, PE, SPHE, IT/Computers, Art and Craft, History, Geography, Science, Green Issues, Irish, English, Religion, Maths etc etc? You'd want to be superman/superwoman.
Many teachers have strenghts in certain areas eg Music or It, but few excel in them all.
No wonder so few men go for primary teaching. Many teachers now are women trying to be good mothers to their own children too.

The curriculum books were written by people who forgot that primary teachers have to teach ALL subjects every day/week. They wrote them as if theirs was the only subject.
Teachers do the best they can to deliver the curriculum despite having the 2nd largest classes in Europe and most under-resourced schools.
And Irish children are not noted particularly for being well-behaved and respectful towards teachers.

dambarude

I accept all of what your saying, and there's every chance that I'll be saying the same before long, but I don't think it's right to completely leave out a particular subject, or teach it so rarely that it may as well be left anyway.

It's probably unrealistic to think that a full hour of music and a full hour of drama will be taught each week, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be taught at all.

spurious

It's one of the basics from teacher training (or it was in my day) that you do not use school work as a punishment for bad behaviour - either giving extra or denying access to. This is where monotonous 'useless' tasks such as lines come from.

Giving kids school work as a punishment just tells them it is something to hate, withdrawing it from them tells them it was never really worthwhile in the first place.

blackrabbit

I agree with most of what you said Spurious. Going back to the original question, as a teacher I have never kept a child out of any subject, I feel it is their right to be taught every subject on the curriculum no matter what their behaviour. I also think it's completely wrong to leave out any subject. On the other hand I agree with what Golden Earring says also, the curriculum is completely overloaded and it is sometimes almost impossible to fit everything into your week! I also agree that the behaviours we have to deal with are getting worse year by year. I work in a senior inner city school. Since September this year in particular I have tried every possible method to discipline my class, they are a very challenging group with a lot of serious problems at home. I have been cursed at on a few occasions, Ive had to break up fist fights and other members of staff have been physically assaulted. (even after these incidents I let them participate in P.E.) Parents have been called about all serious incidents obviously, but very often we do not get parental support or just no parental involvement whatsoever sometimes. Positive reinforcement is great with most children, especially up to about ten yrs old and I try to use it as much as I can and a lot of the children respond very well to it. With some however you would have to practically give them a playstation3 before they would appreciate any praise, it seems a lot of them have learned from home to only behave when they get a treat! I found a method however which is working for me so far with this class. I got a folder of extra homework worksheets which I haven't even had to use yet, it is on display and used as a threat regularly and amazingly even the thoughts of extra homework is enough to keep them respectful. I know it is theoretically wrong to use work as a threat but when I have exhausted every other possible method I dont feel this is wrong. I think it's disgraceful that some teacher's are just cancelling P.E. or any other subject!

RibenaHead

GoldenEarring wrote: »

Do you really expect an ordinary teacher to be skilled in Music, Drama, PE, SPHE, IT/Computers, Art and Craft, History, Geography, Science, Green Issues, Irish, English, Religion, Maths etc etc? You'd want to be superman/superwoman.
Many teachers have strenghts in certain areas eg Music or It, but few excel in them all.

Very true! I find that I'm a lot more confident with certain subjects than others. I think it's unfair that a child may not get to experience music/drama/P.E./art/science etc. fully because their teacher is not AMAZING at everything! Teachers are human beings after all. Perhaps there should be specialist teachers for certain subjects in primary school.

byhookorbycrook

RibenaHead wrote: »

Very true! I find that I'm a lot more confident with certain subjects than others. I think it's unfair that a child may not get to experience music/drama/P.E./art/science etc. fully because their teacher is not AMAZING at everything! Teachers are human beings after all. Perhaps there should be specialist teachers for certain subjects in primary school.

In our school we swop for subjects as needed. An example would be our traditional music classes, where children go to different rooms according to ability. It takes a bit of organisation but works very well for the children.

RibenaHead

@byhookorbycrook
That sounds great! It should probably be done in more schools!

whydoibother?

I don't think a teacher should exclude a child from PE where there is no connection between that and what they have done wrong e.g. "you were too loud during Irish, you're not getting PE", but I don't think that happens anyway.

I do, however think, that whenever children are disrupting a class, teachers should have much tougher sanctions available to them. When I was at school, I would say 20% or more of what the teacher said was "be quiet", "stop talking", "if you don't pay attention now I will ... (insert empty threat)". If they are expected to do their jobs properly, they need to be given the tools - in this case, authority. I even experienced this in top stream classes in secondary school. It's not always the person with little ability and no interest in their education. 7 years later, the memory of one show-offs irritating smart comments/questions still angers me because he and his friends held up class so much I often gave up on trying to learn anything. He's now a doctor I believe.