L
lenapolster
Guest
I'm in trouble; if somebody can help me please?
Students (8th grade) put a chewing gum on my chair - just for fun, but I wasn't loughing at all. In order to leave the school (fortunately it was the last lesson), I had to stay for a long time in the bathroom trying to clean my pants... There wasn't any reason for doing that; the school year just began (in Costa Rica we start the school year in February) and I didn't give them any grades yet - good or bad.
What should I do? I don't know exactly who did it, so I can't punish just one student. I was thinking on punishing the whole group by giving them double difficult test, compared with other groups... At the beginning of the school year I told them: Lets get along well. For that purpose, a teacher has to give students clear instructions, easy tests and nice exercises. And students have to work in the class and have good discipline. Everybody agreed and we made a "treat". So, now I have a "moral right" to give them a difficult test because they didn't follow the rules.
But then I remembered that a professional man in discipline problems, who ones gave us a workshop, told: "We - teachers - shouldn't REACT, we should ACT", means the revenge is a bad method of education...
So: I'm asking, if somebody can give me an advice, what should I do? Of course, I can't pretend nothing happened. I don't want to shout at them, neither make a police research, neither come with long sermon conveying God... I am really not good at these things and hate them... I like my subject, that is the English language, but probably I'm not a very good pedagogue. Although I have already been teaching for 10 years, I feel I'm still a beginner; I started to work as a teacher at an adult age, and probably I am not so fast at getting teaching skills.
Students (8th grade) put a chewing gum on my chair - just for fun, but I wasn't loughing at all. In order to leave the school (fortunately it was the last lesson), I had to stay for a long time in the bathroom trying to clean my pants... There wasn't any reason for doing that; the school year just began (in Costa Rica we start the school year in February) and I didn't give them any grades yet - good or bad.
What should I do? I don't know exactly who did it, so I can't punish just one student. I was thinking on punishing the whole group by giving them double difficult test, compared with other groups... At the beginning of the school year I told them: Lets get along well. For that purpose, a teacher has to give students clear instructions, easy tests and nice exercises. And students have to work in the class and have good discipline. Everybody agreed and we made a "treat". So, now I have a "moral right" to give them a difficult test because they didn't follow the rules.
But then I remembered that a professional man in discipline problems, who ones gave us a workshop, told: "We - teachers - shouldn't REACT, we should ACT", means the revenge is a bad method of education...
So: I'm asking, if somebody can give me an advice, what should I do? Of course, I can't pretend nothing happened. I don't want to shout at them, neither make a police research, neither come with long sermon conveying God... I am really not good at these things and hate them... I like my subject, that is the English language, but probably I'm not a very good pedagogue. Although I have already been teaching for 10 years, I feel I'm still a beginner; I started to work as a teacher at an adult age, and probably I am not so fast at getting teaching skills.
