Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
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Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#2i remember i always got shitty 'citizenship' grades because i wanted to talk to my classmates all the time.
talking - what a terrible thing for a child to do.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#3Yeah , stop trying to teach kids discipline, especially when there is none at home ...
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#4As a youth, I was only able to sit still by focusing on sitting still. If I was paying attention to the teacher, I was fidgeting, and would be told to pay attention...
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#5As a youth, I was only able to sit still by focusing on sitting still. If I was paying attention to the teacher, I was fidgeting, and would be told to pay attention...
They gave me silly putty to harness my fidgeting. I soon discovered silly putty can be made into a bouncy ball, that I could use to distract everyone.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#6I really like this article. It looks at a severe problem (that traditional education is only reaching a small fraction of the students 'smart' enough to excel) and it suggests both a new way at looking at the problem (at least one I hadn't considered), and an approach to improvement that can be taken iteratively, without a sweeping change or expensive program.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#7Yeah , stop trying to teach kids discipline, especially when there is none at home ...
Some people with Asperger's have to fidget to be able to concentrate on what is being said. These people are not undisciplined, they are misunderstood.
Some people just aren't very good at sitting still for an hour, and repeating that for however many hours they are in school. We can either chose to spend time punishing them, which harms them but also everyone else in the class, or we can learn techniques to help those people cope. We can encourage non-distracting fidgeting.
These are quite seperate from discipline.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#8As a youth, I was only able to sit still by focusing on sitting still. If I was paying attention to the teacher, I was fidgeting, and would be told to pay attention...
They gave me silly putty to harness my fidgeting. I soon discovered silly putty can be made into a bouncy ball, that I could use to distract everyone.
My son's classroom has employed smaller versions of exercise balls to keep some of the kids focused (including my own).
It's interesting to observe. The kids are fidgety and restless while sitting, but when you sit them on one of these the subconscious motor control going on seems to quell the foreground restlessness.
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#9Public school is essentially an obedience camp. Is it any wonder boys are lagging?
Re: Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School
#10Yeah , stop trying to teach kids discipline, especially when there is none at home ...
Sitting still is not a virtue. It literally accomplishes nothing. It's a secondary detail - whether or not the kid is sitting still does not tell you whether they're actually paying attention to the lecture and whether they're going to remember it.