ATTENTION ALL ELEMENTARY and SECONDARY TEACHERS

                YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOMED

A fifth grade teacher friend of mine has recently been best by a serious and near overwhelming teaching problem. She has a Masters degree in education, has been teaching in the New York school system for 8 years, is totally dedicated to excellence, is highly intelligent, sensitive, caring, imaginative, fair and reasonable. She is also highly attuned to double messages and when confronted with them is loathe to play political games such as "don't make waves", "just play along", don't confront and push buttons" and the likes.

Her problem is as follows:

Like many teachers across America she is confronted every day by 4 or 5 students out of a class of 25 who are impossibly disruptive. They appear to be immune from the typical responses to discipline or at least tame their obnoxious attitudes and behavior. They appear to fear nor respect anything thus presenting a majopr dilemma for her and others who share this same problem.

If my friend responds to their chaotic inducing behavior then  the rest of the class suffers from a lack of needed attention; whereas if she does nothing they continue to annoy and intrude upon the other kid's space. Further if she sends them out of the room or to the principle the answer she gets back is "we hired you because of your assumed expertise in successfully managing these kids."

As a psychoanalyst it is my strong impression that the disruptive students she is unsuccessfully attempting to contain let alone teach are in urgent need of psychological services which are largely non existent.

This situation would be bad enough for her, her 'good students' and her 'troubled' students if it was not for an administration of this 'elite' charter school that prides themselves on 'looking good' and being highly responsive to teacher's concerns but when push comes to shove doesn't want to face the fact that they are every bit as overwhelmed as is my friend and many of her fellow instructors.

She is now pegged by the administration as a 'trouble maker' who may be in jeopardy of securing tenure.

So my concerns are - is my friend's experience of being caught in the middle of a seriously denied reality typical of many teacher's experience or is she in need of a personality makeover?

My hunch is that this issue is not unusual and indeed is probably widespread and greatly denied. However I am not on the front lines and I may be suffering for being too biased by my respect for my friend's judgement. I might add the parents of her children she teaches love her.

I would then appreciate any and all comments - pro and con - so I can come to some sort of objective understanding about this problem.