Every teacher experiences behavioral problems in their classroom because students’ brains are in the early stages of development. There is a difference between elementary, middle, and high school-level behavioral issues since each age group is at a different level of maturity. Young elementary students can struggle with complying with basic directions, older elementary students and middle school students can struggle with harsh language and bullying, and high school students can struggle with serious fights and vaping/smoking.
One problem with the contract before the strike was its class size maximums were too large for effective teaching. Liberty Elementary School teacher Sadie Moffitt has been teaching kindergarten for four years. In these four years, she’s experienced the juxtaposition of small classes and large classes back-to-back. “The last couple of years, we had only 17-18 kindergartners [per class] when they were doing the Student Success Act, and we had three classes, and it made a world of a difference,” said Moffitt.
With the larger classes, Math teacher Marcie McArthur, who has been teaching for 25 years, has realized that she doesn’t get the opportunity to know her students in the way she was able to in past years. “I have 191 math students…in the course of one week, I’m grading 500 papers,” McArthur said. “I think this fall, it hit me, looking at my classes, that I don’t feel like I will be able to impact every kid.”
Special Education teacher Casey Horn, who has been working for 21 years, has dealt with students acting out, from swearing and hitting to throwing things. “We’ve had a few students that have taken some things and hit us with them,” Horn mentioned.
When students act out like this, Horn has a way of dealing with it respectfully;
“Just stay patient and stay focused on supporting the student and making sure the student is able to find a way to calm down,” Horn said.
Another issue teachers were facing with the contract before the strike was the lack of availability of the behavior support staff.
Sophomore counselor Jan Rasmussen, who has been in a high school setting for 22 years, hasn’t experienced any bad behavior from students toward him. Rasmussen, however, does have an idea of how students behave with other teachers. “The yelling, the screaming…there have been students that jump on chairs,” Rasmussen said.
Substitute teacher Amy Rider formerly taught at Liberty Elementary School for 17-18 years. She primarily taught fourth and fifth grade during this time. She recently had an experience where a student was being disruptive during PE class.
“It was probably about five minutes or so that I had to deal with her running around trying to hit kids with the equipment and stuff [before behavioral staff intervened],”Rider said. “It’s really about student safety too… these young kids are being exposed to these kids who aren’t being removed from the classroom,”.
Rider said this encounter scared a few students and she had to send them out into the hallway while she dealt with the situation—a situation that’s not in her job description.
McArthur has had similar experiences with bad student behavior in the bathroom across the hall.
“I have spent more time in the last couple of years leaving my class to go manage kids doing all kinds of things in the bathroom across the hall,” McArthur said, so much so that she’s been labeled as the “Bathroom Nazi” by some students.
Along with Rider and McArthur, Moffitt has had similar experiences. “The problem is, we also have kids in other classes that also need behavior support at the time. So sometimes there’s nothing I can do. I just kind of have to wait and hope for the best,” Moffitt said.
Heather Rogers has been teaching PE for 20 years. She taught for three years at the elementary school level and has spent the rest teaching middle schoolers. She also feels like there is a lack of sufficient behavioral support. “It doesn’t feel like we have as many options [as we used to] when we have a behavior disruption,” Rogers said.
When middle schoolers mistreat each other, Rogers takes the time to discourage their actions. “[W]e spend a lot of time in our day, not only trying to teach our content, [but also trying to make sure] that [students] understand that those behaviors and how they’re treating each other aren’t okay.”
These teachers have all managed various types of behavior issues within their classrooms. Regardless of their ability to do so, in order to maintain a thriving classroom environment and to maintain their physical and mental health, these teachers believe that their old contact falls short of giving them sufficient behavior support.
