Smile, You’re on YouTube

Joanne Jacobs just raised one of my major teacher nightmares: YouTube videos of teachers losing control of their classrooms and resorting to shouts, threats, phone calls to the office, all while most of the students look on somewhat disdainfully.

Truly a teacher’s worst nightmare.  Several of the commentators on Jacobs’ blog raised absolutely pertinent questions, such as whether these moments represent failure on the part of the teachers — certainly the point being made by the students who submitted these videos, I would argue — or on the part of the students themselves.  The students are clearly aware that the cell phones are up and running, and are, in many senses, playing for an audience of millions.  Are they deliberately baiting the teacher into losing his or her temper?  Very possibly.  Is it failed teaching that an educator can be baited in this manner?  To some extent, yes.

 I think that a major element of these videos, one element that they possibly have in common, is that the students show absolutely no fear — and indeed, little concern — about the consequences of their behavior.  I think it’s reasonable to infer that there will be none.

 When I student-taught, the university ed. program was going to put me in Country Club High School, and they thought they were doing me a favor.  At least, they seemed pretty miffed when I went to them and asked to be placed in Inner City, a dreadful and generally disastrous place to teach, by anyone’s reckoning.  My reasoning was pretty simple, though: I figured that if I could teach at ICHS, I could basically teach anywhere. 

I was fortunate beyond fortunate to be paired with an outstanding teacher, Mrs. Barb MacAllister (not her real name).  Barb was one of those take-no-bulls*** educators who knew her American lit. like the back of her hand and who cared deeply for her kids without letting that care ever cloud her vision of what they were doing and why.  She made them think — and best of all, she told me in no uncertain terms where I was screwing up as a student teacher. 

One day, she and I were heading out for a cigarette (ah, those sweeeeeet nicotiney days of yore, how I remember you well…) when Barb spotted a student just kind’ve hanging out at the foot of the stairs between classes. 

“You on your way somewhere?” she asked him with a unique mixture of suspicion and affability.

“No,” the student said.  He was one of those people whose hair hung down like a horse’s mane in front of his eyes, so I couldn’t really see what his expression looked like. 

“Where are you supposed to be?” 

“I dunno,” he said.  “Maybe if you were where YOU were supposed to be, I would be where I was supposed to be.”

This reply did not sit well with Barb.  She informed him that where he was supposed to be right now was apparently going to be the vice-principal’s office, given his interesting and comment-worthy reply.

“F*** you,” the student replied.

Two minutes later, we were in the vice-principal’s office, me, Barb, and the student jammed in among the somewhat dusty golf trophies the guy had stuck on his desk.

“So…” the vice-principal said after he heard Barb’s story.  “So he said ‘f*** you’ to you?”

“Yeah,” said Barb.

“So what did you do to him to provoke this reaction?”

That was basically all I needed to hear to know that I would never teach there in my life, not if the job choices were limited to a) teaching there or b) scraping up dead roadkill.

What had she done to him? 

She’d done what she should’ve done: kept an eye on students not in class where they’re supposed to be, students for which teachers and school are legally as well as ethically responsible. 

That’s what she’d done to him.

Obviously, I can’t know in the case of these YouTube teachers what provoked the situations in classes.  I simply don’t have the whole story.  That said, though, how many times do students need to hear an administrator blame a teacher for the student saying “F*** you” before the students believe — no, before the students know — that they have one hundred percent of the power in that classroom?

I think we know.

~ by adsoofmelk on March 11, 2008.