A video recently re-surfaced of a math teacher who was hired this school year by one of the two Chicago “turnaround” high schools (Orr Academy on the west side) playing “air guitar” for her students. The tape was taken last year when the teacher was at Harlan Academy, but it’s recently become a viral hit among students at Orr. Although the video seems relatively harmless, the teacher is scheduled to appear before a disciplinary board in the coming weeks – whether the hearing was spurred by this specific video is unclear.
The trend of high school teachers getting captured via videophone, however, is something that has become increasingly common in recent years. Readily available on You Tube are videos that range from a teacher mocking a special needs student, to a teacher in Britain imploring his students to “shut the fuc# up”. Some clips even show teachers slapping their students. Soon after a teacher in California was suspended last year for calling a student “nigga”, a video surfaced of another teacher doing the same. One video features a teacher who was already fired (for reasons unknown) confronting students and faculty in the school cafeteria.
There are also plenty of clips displaying students having emotional meltdowns of their own, like this one, showing a student switching from polite and apologetic toward his teacher, to cursing and ripping class materials off the walls in a matter of seconds. Another shows a student responding to her teacher, “I didn’t say shi#!” after being asked to quiet down. Yet others show students getting into confrontations with each other, like this one, showing two girls who are arguing in a half-empty classroom for nearly a full minute before the teacher appears to notice.
Cell phones have been notoriously difficult to keep out of the classroom, even in schools with zero tolerance policies. But should the episodes that are caught on these phones be used as tools for monitoring teacher and student behavior? Is the omnipresence of phones becoming, in essence, a network of survaillance cameras in the classroom?
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I'm all for it!!
ReplyDeleteA teacher shouldn't be doing anything in the classroom that they're not comfortable with everyone else seeing anyway. It's the next best thing to security cameras.
What's the problem about the teacher playing air guitar? I hope the disciplinary action is not linked to that. From what I can tell the kids are loving it, which means they probably like their teacher....which means they're probably motivated to get to class. So we have a teacher who has a good rapport with her students and has them engaged. That's the ideal teaching situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with ngy17. The teachers should not have anything to hide. Let the camera roll. If videotaping leads to bad teachers getting busted...then bring it on. But don't discipline a teacher because she is acting silly in front of the class.