Tag Archives: Dialogue

Student Question: How To Deal With Incompetent Teachers?

6 Replies

Question from a student in the final years of school…

“Hi Leah - How did you deal with incompetent, lazy or unbothered teachers?

I got together with a few classmates and met with the Head of Department who was really defensive about it. Should I just leave it and do the work on my own? Or would you say it’s worth the battle?”

Here are my thoughts via audio because, as this could be an explosive topic, I’d like you to hear my tone as I share my reply:

Click play to find out…

  • How Our School System Leads to Student Powerlessness
  • Why Advice to This Student is Different to What I’d Say to My Younger Self
  • The Most Positive Influence Students Could Make While They’re Still Inside School

Looking for help with revision? Here’s a link to Lucy Parson’s work at Life More Extraordinary

What would your advice be to this student and all the students who face this question?

Twitter chats…

jw

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And here’s the student’s response to the audio… Continue reading →

Teacher’s Hating on Students: What Would You Say?

So I’m finding Teacher blogs totally fascinating because, for the first time, I’m hearing teachers voice the kinds of things they’d never say to students and not even utter inside their own school for fear of being labelled by management and spat out.

Let’s take, for example, this reply to a UK teacher’s post about curiosity…

“As a teacher, I increasingly encounter INcurious children: even in the pre-school years - kids who do NOT respond, emotionally or otherwise, to “Have you ever wondered… ?” or any such stimulus. The answer [if any] will be one of two things:

/1/ “No”: the sort of “No” whose dull delivery makes clear that the speaker does not even imagine, or even wish to be able to imagine, wanting to know anything that s/he doesn’t know or believe already or

/2/ worse, a reply that’s a sheer guess EXPRESSED IN TERMS OF BORED CERTAINTY (example: “Oh, kittens purr because there’s a battery inside.”) - once the boredly certain guesser delivers his/her pronouncement, s/he REFUSES to be tempted to seek further. (“I SAID they purr because there’s a battery inside, so that’s why they do it!”)

kittens

Suggestions, please?“

What shall we do with this guys? We can always push the hate, anger and frustration right back! It’ll escalate things but, seen as the whole situation is pretty daft anyway, what’s harm’s more nonsense gonna do?

Or we can pick up advice from improv and say; OK, I acknowledge your truth and I’ll add this…
Here’s my attempt at some student to teacher improv via audio. How did I do?

 

For a limited time (until I improve this page) here’s the audio transcript…

Continue reading →