SAIL, Second visit.

Behavior problems:

In a class with so many kids I guess is difficult to keep up with the working plan when some of them have behavior problems and attempt to bring the whole class attention over to him or her instead the planned activity. What is the right thing to do in this case? Is the kid trying to tell us something that is upsetting him or her from school or home? Is it a game of power between the kid and the teacher?

I am thinking about this because in my second visit to SAIL the teacher had a situation with one of the kids in her second class. We they arrived two kids tried to sit on the same chair in one of the tables and the teacher separated them and said: please move away from the chair and sit in another one. One of the kids moved away and sat in another chair but the other kid involved in the conflict ran outside the class. The teacher continued introducing the activity to the class when the kid came back, got two flashlights, and was reflecting the light over the class matter. It was bothering some of the kids in the class and the teacher asked the kids not to allow him to spoil their time of learning new things and put attention on the activity. Ms Dorothy called another teacher through the phone to come to pick that kid up. Five minutes after the teacher came and took him with her out of the class.

At the end of class, I asked Ms Dorothy about this situation and we discussed the methodology that in general the school applies. Personally, I think the situation was well managed by the teacher but I still think that it has to be a better solution to be applied in similar situation. Because, this one only recovered the control in the class but it did not allowed the kid to communicate the real issue behind this miss behavior. As a result, he could not get over his personal problem or profit from the class.