Yesterday, we posted a dreary news story on our site: Teacher Burnout Blamed on Student Behavior as Number of Qualified Teachers Dwindles. In the time that intervened between reading that story and now, my attention was drawn by one of our good Sisters to a column by Michael Linsin, Why Your Students Need To Hear The Hard Truth.
Michael Linsin is a teacher who helps other teachers by coaching them in what he calls, “Smart Classroom Management.” He is not a behavioral psychologist, but something better, or, perhaps I should say someone more qualified: a dedicated teacher with loads of common sense and prudence. We employ his methods here at IHM School, and even had him give us a workshop once.
In the above mentioned piece on the hard truth, Mr. Linsin writes,
Lately, I’ve been reading about a group of high school students who had been bullying and terrorizing their community since elementary school. Last fall at a party they picked on another group of boys who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Linsin tells the rest of what becomes a genuinely tragic tale — ending in one dead student and six others facing life in prison — and asks himself if teachers could have made a difference. Taking aim at what he considers a failed, if au courant, method of dealing with such situations — social-emotional learning — Michael Linsin makes the following trenchant observation about the bullies:
All the counseling and social-emotional learning they were undoubtedly exposed to; all the bribes, rewards, and flattery; all the grade inflation, talking-tos, group circles, and restorative justice practices . . . None of it works beyond a fake few minutes.
But it does plant a seed.
It plants a seed that over time can grow into full-blown narcissism and sociopathy. It plants seed that develops ruthlessness devoid of fault or responsibility and manipulation that feigns remorse and garners sympathy.
If you are a teacher, or even a parent, perhaps you might benefit from Mr. Linsin’s common sense. I recommend these pieces to get a taste of what he does:
- The Big Lie Of Childhood Trauma
- A Quick Way To Calm Your Class, Build Rapport, And End Bullying
- Bullying In The Classroom: The Ultimate Guide To Stopping It
- How To Help A Bullied Student
He also has a helpful, free email list to which some of our teachers subscribe. And he’s written a number of books you can find on the site. I found his booklet, The Smart Classroom Management Plan For High School Teachers, to be quite helpful (and no, we get no benefits, financial or otherwise, from making these recommendations!).
For the record, I find Michael Linsin’s use of “they” as a singular, neuter pronoun to be irksome (and grammatically incorrect). If you share that bit of anti-feminist grammatical orthodoxy with me, good for you; but, I suggest you set it aside as I do while reading the gentleman’s common-sense recommendations.
The problems in education are manifold and deep-seated. Most of the dysfunction probably begins in the home, while much of it is fostered by that merry band of progressive ideologues at the NEA. That said, if more teachers combined competency and dedication with Mr. Linsin’s down-to-earth approach, I think there would not be quite as much teacher burnout.
