Day 7

When working in Mrs. T's class I've never had to discipline students or deal with bad behavior, because Mrs. T had told me from the beginning that that was her place. Today, however, it was my turn to deal with a student behaving inappropriately in class. I had seen students misbehaving in Mrs. T's class but I had never experienced a student being disrespectful towards me until today. 

Today there were two boys in the second grade class who were fighting for the entire class period. They were sitting at separate tables, and one of the boys was turning around and staring at the other, which was driving the other boy crazy. He was screaming across the room for the other student to knock if off, and the entire time, Mrs. T never told them to use their inside voices, tell them that language isn't acceptable, or reprimand him in any way. After listening to him scream across the room for about fifteen minutes I walked over to him and asked what the problem was. At first he wouldn't answer me and then I knelt down next to him so we would be on the same level, and repeated the question. He said the other boy was turning around and staring at him and thought he was copying him. The other boy was all the way across the room, so while he may have been staring at him to make him upset, he was too far away to see what he was doing to copy him. I told the boy who was screaming that if he was in fact turning around to copy his work, he should be flattered because that means that he thinks he has good ideas.

I had walked away to help another student and heard the same boy screaming again for the other boy to knock it off. I knew that I couldn't be the only person in the class who was sick of hearing it, not to mention that behavior shouldn't be tolerated, so I approached him again. This time, I told him that we don't use that kind of language in this room and that he needed to use his inside voice. When I asked if he understood what I was asking of him he didn't answer so when I repeated the question, he muttered something under his breath. I said, "excuse me?" and he rolled his eyes and said ok.

Because I have little authority in the class, I didn't think this student would listen to me, but I knew that if I didn't say anything at all, he would think that that behavior was acceptable and continue to act as such.