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If you have been a teacher who has been teaching various age groups of students while pursuing the teaching career then you might have observed what policies, tricks and tones did work for you with the lower age group of students would not work anymore with higher-level students. Sometimes, we teachers don`t understand the pattern of students` learning, and the discipline they are to be taught at different levels to make them disciplined creates a lot of ambiguity and dissatisfaction while pursuing a job with the different age groups of students. In this article, we will try to focus on that part and may elaborate on how to deal with the different age groups of students with different methods of discipline.
As per the pattern of thinking, ability to understand, ability to comprehend, nature, character, preferences, and necessity among students in all age groups are different to be in the class so the implementation of the same sort of discipline in all the age groups is not going to work in general. The matter of fact is, teachers would need to evolve as per the age group standard and come up with different strategies to deal with different problems that are going to arise with different levels of age group students.
From my own teaching experience, I have observed this issue very closely. While dealing with kids I found its paternalistic style that works pretty well as students in the lower age group take teachers as idols and follow the orders with minimum resistance. The case would be different in the case of higher age students (Senior school level) who are mentally much more matured than the lower age group of students. Senior school students are mostly career-centric but some are distracted from their goals and may like to pursue other means if a teacher does not tune them according to the situation. At senior school, most of the students are about to step in their young age leaving the adolescence behind. This is when they start imagining themselves as adults and equally capable of doing things like the teachers. Some may start looking down upon teachers whereas others may consider teachers as boring commodities.
Let us understand the issue and discuss it in more detail step by step. For your better understanding, I have categorized students into three parts; Early age students, Junior school students, and Senior school students.
Students in different age groups have different perceptions about classroom decorums and disciplines. Among the Early Age students, they consider going to school as a means of entertainment as they may take it as an opportunity to go out of the house and play a bit with other kids otherwise they have to be at home and be bored for nothing (Considering households these days like to have a single child and kids themselves can`t go out of the house due to security reasons).
Mostly, they are attracted by the loud noise, adorable treatment by the teachers towards them, colorful toys or entertaining equipment in the classroom, and a lot of friends to play around, fight, run and jump with them. If students at an early age don`t follow the classroom discipline then teachers in the early days used to raise their voice a little loud causing them to be scared and be disciplined. Though some teachers nowadays do use this method, whereas, others try to come up with innovative ideas to make them disciplined, such as, tell them to be nice so that the teacher can tell them a story. Students most likely like to hear stories from teachers as families by and large are now becoming nuclear day-by-day when listening to stories from granny`s (in our time) or parents have become a story itself. Anyways, through the story, the teacher might be able to make students realize that students who are disciplined and be respectful to others are always considered as good human beings which can lead them to be good human beings who are well accepted and respected in society.
Some teachers do use videos to show and impact the minds of the students to encourage them to behave morally correctly which may ultimately help them to control their behavior. Videos with impressive audio can impact their minds too. Audio with Video helps them to visualize and connect with the circumstances where they may have to behave well. This may help them to maintain their own decency in dealing with others. Though audios and videos are effective it has got some drawbacks too such as watching videos always may affect their behavior in a passive manner as they may build a habit of watching videos instead of reading books. In a way, they may start focusing on class lectures or doing their homework on time.
I have also seen many teachers use rewards as a method to make students disciplined. This method does work sometimes but not always. Let me elaborate a bit. The outcome of using rewards depends on what type of rewards are given and the necessity of the students. Generally, there are two types of rewards that are used by the teachers widely; materialistic and non-materialistic rewards. If the reward is materialistic then some students are encouraged to moderate their behavior as they are keen to receive the rewards. They would be keen as they can`t get similar rewards as usual from their parents. So with them, it could be successful but for some students, it depends on the material which is provided as a reward, if it is as usual for them, as they get it regularly from their parents then they won`t be interested to fulfil the purpose of the reward. In that case, the materialistic reward may fail to produce the outcome.
The other type of reward is the non-materialistic reward which is used by modern teachers quite often. Exam grade could be one of them. Some teachers ask students to be disciplined in their every action so that they will be provided with good grades which may ultimately make their parents feel proud of them. Sometimes students do care about the happiness of their parents as they have an emotional bonding with their parents. Whereas, others may be afraid of their parents if they get lower marks. So the fear and the emotional bonding may make the non-materialistic reward producing some positive outcomes.
Well! When we compare those rewards mentioned above, we may find, the later one could be more worthy as it does not encourage greed towards the materialistic things among students rather encourage them to understand the value of emotion in the form of their parent`s happiness when they show their good grades to them.
Nonetheless, the success of the later reward depends on the parents largely as it`s their emotion and importance given to their kid`s grades. Some parents do not give it importance, with those students, grades may not motivate them to be disciplined as no one in their family gives importance to their grades. The ultimate way to make it successful is to train the parents regarding the reward system so that they take the cognitive actions to make the method successful.
Other than the above-mentioned methods including storytelling, videos, and rewards, there may have other methods that can be used to make students disciplined such as calling parents or giving them more homework, etc. I have not discussed calling parents or the provision of more homework as they are often used by the teachers nowadays. One more thing to mention here that I did not choose any of the methods above-mentioned as the best option as different methods could be used as the best option according to the situation.
I hope, the suggestions I have made in this article could be useful in dealing with your respective students and make your job easy. Though this article was only about the early age students, I will come up with two more articles for junior and senior school teachers and explain the issues relevant to them and how to deal with those issues. Adios!
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| Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels |
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