This TED talk abords a question that is rarely talked about: teacher bullying. Teacher bullying can be defined as "an ungly undercurrent of mean-spirited and disdainful conduct toward students". This conduct constitutes a corruption of the role of educator and does enormous damage to students, colleagues and the public faith in schools. (Alan Mcevoy, sociologyst Northern Michigan University).
When students are targeted by teachers, they often feel shamed and powerless, for example in Linda's case she refers a really cruel teacher when she was in school. She did an art project and when she handle it for the teacher to submmit the project, the response she get was "you didn't do this yourself, your cheating". Also her mom was aside, she said that they seen her daughter doing the project herself the teacher talks back saying "your defensing your daughter, shame on you". And when she went to school one day despite feeling unwell all that teacher do is shaking her in front of a 89 people class and threatens her that if she ever get late again they're going to shake her like that every time.
As a consequence she becomes a teacher herself, and in her first job there's a zero tolerance policy, meaning that the schools is promoting being strict with the students. And this can cause schools shootings and she wondered if these kids are hearing harsh words from teachers that may have disengaged them from the school community.
In a study of the US government aknowledgement office, they mentioned some protective factors that can prevent school shooting: (Study of the US government acknowledgement office, 2020)
- Stable connections to school and school personnel
- Feelings of connectedness to prosocial, nonviolent peers: engaging withthe students instead of ignoring the kids wuth an actitude or doesn't speak.
And lasty, she proposes a solution focused skill: helps the teacher to look beyong the problem and find the expert.
That is a really interesting topic. First of all, i was shocked by the behavior of Linda's teacher, which is contrary to how teachers should act towards their students. I am glad that she has decided to become a teacher herself and make it better. The relation between bullying and violence is also important to explore, since I can imagine there to be a significant connection. Thus, the protective factors that you mentioned should be really taken into account.
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon Yuting and the rest of the class. Thank you for sharing this material with us. I find this topic extremely relevant and totally deserves our attention. I'm sure that many of us, throughout our academic journeys, have witnessed violence or abuse from teachers, feeling confused and powerless, since our academic system is often built to protect the aggressor rather than the victim. That’s why I’m really glad to see initiatives like this one, I wasn’t aware of them before, and learning about them gives me hope for the future.
ReplyDeleteI also found the proposal of solution-focused skills really interesting. I did some further research and found extensive literature by the author that you presented, Linda Metcalf. One of her books is called Narrative Therapy Focused on Solutions where she proposes a brief therapy model based on solution-focused and narrative therapies. Although this material is not specifically centered on academic violence, I still find it to be a valuable resource, as it offers new strategies that can be applied in different situations. I believe this is an important approach to keep in mind, if we want to prevent history from repeating itself, we need to adopt new perspectives and discover new authors
(Alba Vilaseca Baena)