21st Century Upton Sinclairs

 

There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity. -Tom Peters
 

 

Scott McLeod's post, Cell phone cameras in the K-12 classroom: Punishable offenses or student-citizen journalism? on LeaderTalk is well worth spending some time reading, viewing and contemplating. On the post he has embedded seven videos taken covertly by students in classrooms when teachers are, to put it mildly, behaving badly. Scott poses the questions:

Do we want students bringing to public attention these types of classroom incidents? Should students be punished or applauded for filming and posting these?

These are great questions. While plenty of Scott's readers felt otherwise (read the comments!), my first thought was that this just may be the 21st century equivalent of muckraking. Upton Sinclair cleaned up the meat packing industry with the publication of The Jungle in the early 20th century. Is this the classroom's version of The Jungle? Might such citizen journalism result in educational reform?

(And no, I am not so naive to think these students are consciously emulating Ida Tarbell. My guess is that they are just being little buttheads. I see any positive fallout as being more in the realm of unintended consequences.)

However, as a result of enough student-produced hard evidence of teacher incompetence, might we see:

• Anger management classes for teachers who need it?
• An increased emphasis in staff development on creating engaging classrooms and using better classroom management techniques?
  
• Alternative placements for students who are chronically disruptive or non-productive? (Let's let the cameras roll on the other students too.)
  
• More empowered principals who can remove or take steps to improve incompetent teachers?
  

My thoughts on this are colored by some very personal considerations:

1. As a student, I got more than one teacher and administrator to lose his/her cool. And thought it was pretty funny watching some old person turn red and bellow.
   
2. As a young teacher, I had classroom moments similar to what I saw in these videos when the kids got to me. (It's tough to look in the mirror at times.) I needed and should have received help in keeping this from happening. I still feel I need to offer apologies to those poor students I had in my classes early in my teaching career.
3. I do NOT want my grandsons experiencing moments in the classroom like those shown in the videos.

Yes, students have been driving teachers nuts and teachers have been losing their cool since... well, probably since there have been students and teachers. But are we now ready to actually DO something about it?

________________________ 

In terms of the issues raised about teacher privacy rights: I am guessing the meat packing plants, insane asylums and other targets of the 20th century muckrakers all shouted "This is private!" as well. I think one could argue that classrooms are public, not private spaces. (We put cameras on school buses, yes?)  I would hope students take any evidence of teacher malfeasance to their parents and principals first,  and use YouTube only as a last resort for publicizing - and ending - the problem.

Comments

[Kern Kelley]

The YouTube video reminds of the movie Chalk www.chalkthefilm.com It think it's worthwhile for educators to see themselves from the other side sometimes.

[Cathy Nelson]

I too blogged in response to this, even wondering if i should video my own classes for my own protection. Another colleague asked if it was legal to digitally audio record his classes. (I did tell him no b/c he did not have parent permission.) I just said our best line of defense is to plan and implement high quality, engaging, meaningful, and relevant lessons and activities. When the learning has those characteristics, worry over a possible video becomes a moot point.

[Scott McLeod]

One thing teachers should try to remember is to never, NEVER get in a stand-down with a student in front of the rest of the class. Teachers always, ALWAYS lose...

Here are a couple of older posts of mine on classroom cameras:

http://tinyurl.com/2na659

http://tinyurl.com/3ae4cc

[Charlie A. Roy]

@Doug
Love the post. Teaching is an incredibly difficulty task. The best in the world have a tremendous sense of humor, thick skin, an ability to see the big picture, and the ability to treat everyone with respect and dignity - even those that are hard to love. Watching people explode as on the embedded videos on Leader Talk is not appropriate modeling for students. What do we do when we don't like something - Oh we scream and yell and throw a fit. How ironic is it that this is the same behavior we lament with our students.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Kern,

Chalk looks good. I'd not heard of it before but I just added it to my Netflix. Thanks for the suggestion!

Doug

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Cathy,

I enjoyed your post and comment below. (For other Blue Skunk Readers, Cathy's great blog post is here:

http://technotuesday.edublogs.org/2008/03/06/smile-your-on-a-cell-phone-video/

I simply don't understand why some teachers stay in the classroom when obviously they don't like it. I knew early on that I like working with kids, but disliked the formal classroom. Maybe if more classrooms operated like media centers everyone would be happier?

Your voice recorder discussion is interesting too. My sense is that if everyone knows that things are recorded (no "gotcha" moments) it would be a pretty good idea. It'll be years before there is established case law determines whether this is legal or not. Right now we should be making these decisions based on moral grounds.

All the best,

Doug

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for sharing these posts.

I agree with the advice about the stand down. Here is my question: Do new (and experienced) teachers know this, and if not, why not?

My experience back in the day as a new teacher is that we had NO training in classroom management or dealing with these sorts of issues. I hope things have gotten better in the past 30 years.

All the best and thanks for writing,

Doug

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Charlie,

I agree about the difficulty of teaching. It's not the content knowledge that's the difficult part, but the incredible human relation skills need to work with kids (and parents).

Thanks for the comment!

Doug