The websites I am reviewing to share are the National Association for the Education of Young Children found at: http://www.naeyc.org and Teaching Tolerance a Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center found at: http://tolerance.org . The NAEYC is a resource for teachers which cover a variety of topics related to the early childhood field including policy, national and international trends and issues, classroom ideas, conferences, resource tools and research topics. The website provides a mass amount of resources for early childhood professionals from publications to accreditation, past issues, and leadership opportunity programs to name a few.
Teaching Tolerance website contains information related to discrimination. The website has tabs for their magazine, professional development, classroom activities, teaching kit, and a mix it up publications. The current issue of Teaching Tolerance magazine features an article that caught my attention is entitled, “Bully at the Blackboard”. The article discusses a veteran teacher of 38 years that lost her patience with a kindergartner and called him, “Piggy, piggy! Oink, Oink”. The other children in the class followed suit (Koenig, D., Daniels, R. H., fall, 2010). This article is fascinating and shows the affects that we as teachers have on the children we teach in both a positive and negative fashion.
According to Dr. Twemlow children as well as teachers bring their own background and experience to the classroom. “What teachers need to know is that our brains are hard-wired to obey those in charge,” says Twemlow. Dr. Stuart Twemlow is well-known for his research on teacher bullying, including a 2005 study in which 45 percent of sampled teachers said they had bullied a student at some point in their careers. If bullying was seen as a process, not a person anti-bullying programs would be more successful (Koenig, D., Daniels, R. H., fall, 2010).
Teachers bullying students interested me because the bullying is usually thought to occur between students when it happens in the classroom. I am reminded again of the importance of self-evaluation and daily reflection. We must always be aware of our limitations and appropriate steps to take to alleviate built-up stress. I found the article informative and thought provoking as our patience gets tested in the classroom daily and I never thought about the teacher doing the bullying as it is our job as educators to prevent this type of occurrence.
Reference
Koenig, D., Daniels, R. H., fall, 2010. Bullying at the Blackboard. Teaching Tolerance.
http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-40-fall-2011/bully-blackboard
I never knew such bullying existed between teacher and students. I think that we have to define what bullying is as teachers. I think that because people don't know what it is they don't report it.
ReplyDeleteMelanie,
ReplyDeleteI like your choices of groups to correspond with. I am very familiar with both of them, and a strong supporter of both. I was amazed to learn that teachers sometimes bully their students. I must examine my own previous teaching experiences, looking for any possible instances of bullying.
Mary Theologou
Melanie,
ReplyDeleteYour blog posting was very interesting and informative. I did not know that there was such a thing as teacher bullying. I personally have never conducted myself in such a manner, but I guess a teacher can become overwhelmed. I hope this is not a major problem and I wonder what steps were taken against the teacher you mentioned in your post.
Melanie,
ReplyDeleteWhen i was in school, some teachers did come off as trying to bully students. It was more that the teacher was intimidated by male students in the classroom so in order to redeem authority she would try to bully the smaller students. It was pretty interesting and she looked foolish. Thanks for sharing your resource, it was very helpful