Child Study: David (pseudonym)
For this child study I selected a student by the name of David (pseudonym). He is a white male Sophomore at Eastern Tech and was pointed out to me by my mentor teacher as one of her most problematic students. He is also one of her students that struggles the most in Spanish class. The majority of the information regarding David’s behaviour in Spanish class came from my mentor teacher herself and from what she was told about this student prior to him entering Sophomore year and walking into her classroom. This was very important information give that, in my initial observations, David seemed to be behaving acceptably and completing his work (though to a very low degree of accuracy).
The majority of problems surrounding David occurred much earlier in the year and in his Freshman year, and what my mentor teacher was observing in her own class was more of a problem on the decline than a problem reaching its climax. David’s previous behaviour was of a rebellious nature. When he came into class he would have his headphones in, and when asked to take them off he would keep the music going but have the headphone close to his ear not in them. It would take various times for him to put the headphones away. David had, and still has remnants of, a bad attitude in particular with female teachers. He would take criticisms badly if my mentor teacher corrected his Spanish or something on work that he had turned in. He was very dismissive of anything that my mentor teacher had to say in the realm of directions. There is not English allowed in the Spanish classroom, especially in my mentors’ Spanish classroom, and this rule is normally respected by the vast majority of her students. The main manifestations of the lack of respect that David had towards my mentor teacher was with defying this very important no-English rule. Normally, if students are not as comfortable with the language they might talk quietly, out of the ear shot of my mentor teacher, in English because they still respect and understand the rule. With David, my mentor teacher would talk to him in Spanish and he would blatantly speak to her in English. This is a huge sign of lack of respect.
When my mentor teacher spoke with one of his previous teachers his Freshman year (another female teacher, keep in mind) she was informed by her that he acted in a similar way but that the situation was much more out of hand. This previous teacher was not quick to lay down rules and guidelines and let the lack of respect being made towards her simmer until there seemed to be no remedy. What this teacher did end up doing was pacing David at his own individual table, every day, that faced a corner of the classroom. In a sense she really did not know how to handle David’s behaviour towards her class so she isolated him so that, at the very least, his rebellious attitude would not interfere with the learning of other students. This teacher also talked with his other teachers and came to the conclusion that he really only acted out in classes where his teachers were female and the behaviour problems were not nearly as bad with male teachers.
Now, the situation is a bit different. From my own initial observations it truly wasn't clear that this student was struggling at all. There didn't seem to be much indication that he didn’t respect my mentor teacher. However, once the previous behaviour and situation was pointed out to me I too began to notice subtleties inside the Spanish classroom. Now David seems to be at a level of tolerating what is required of him and working with my mentor teacher instead of disregarding her. He no longer comes in with headphones in, he participates in group activities but does not respond well when called on individually. He has a preference of working alone but does work well with a few select males in Spanish class. He now finishes his work, which to my mentor teacher is a great improvement from a few months ago. There is still the problem with his handwriting. Previously, David would purposefully write in outlandish cursive in order for my mentor teacher to not fully be able to mark whether his Spanish was correct or incorrect. My mentor teacher refused to play and told him that she would make no attempts to decipher his work and that he had no choice but to write neater. I overheard a conversation between the two of them after class one day regarding this very problem (proving that it still persists) and what was notable was that David seemed much more receptive to what my mentor teacher said to him. He smiled during the conversation and then walked away, understanding that he was getting low grades because she couldn’t read his writing. This seems to me to be a great improvement in respect towards my mentor teacher.
In order to find out more about his behaviour outside of my mentor teacher’s classroom and what I was hearing about David’s previous year interacting with female teachers, I talked to his guidance counselor, Cathy Lavery. She was surprised that I was coming to her regarding David because, as she explained to me, she really has had very little mishaps with him. She told me that the biggest incident occurred last year in which David and a male friend of his left the school during the school day. The two got in trouble but it was nothing serious. Mrs. Lavery described the incident as David “being a knucklehead.” Apart from this one formal problem that was written up but ultimately not serious, David was doing badly in school during his Freshman year. His previous grades were not shown to be specifically but I was told they were C’s and D’s. I was able to see his grades this year and I was told that there was significant improvement. This past quarter he received four C’s and four B’s. Mrs. Lavery also informed me that he met his Algebra Parc exam and his HSA government exam. I was wondering if David was at any point in time at risk of being kicked out of Eastern Tech, a magnet school, and she explained that one would have to fail a career major course in order to be kicked out. David’s career major is Interactive Media Production (IMP).
I was curious to see if David had any signs of his previous behaviour that was explained to me by my mentor teacher in one of his career major classes so I observed him in his Mod 3 Interactive Media Production 1 class. To my advantage I was able to observe him interacting this time with a male teacher, Mr. Mesaros. My mentor teacher explained to me that Mr. Mesaros is highly respected in this school, by teachers, administration, and especially by students. He is a tall man that is also the coach of the football team. When I met with him he was very kind and optimistic about his students, David in particular. As I sat in that computer lab observing this class and David’s behaviour in it, I noticed that most students had finished their projects that were due by the end of class that day and were working on homework from other classes. David was the only student in that class that Mesaros talked to and worked with individually for an extended period of time. I asked Mesaros about it and he said that he is always a bit slow to finish projects but that he was never disrespectful towards him, he just needed more of a helping hand. Mesaros didn’t seem overly worried about David’s grade, instead he said “oh he’ll be okay.” David seemed very receptive while working with Mesaros and having the project explained to him again. David seemed content enough but did slouch throughout the class period. He does not seem like the type of student that is overly attentive and participatory. He wants to get his work done at a slow but now functional pace but he does not exhibit a lot of curiosity towards wanting to learn more than what is already required of him.
At this point in time it was clear that there were no behaviour problems in Mesaros class but that David had a history of behaviour problems in classes with female teachers. This prompted me to see who David’s friends were during his lunch Mod. David seemed content to be with his friends and to eat. There was laughter and conversation among him and his friends. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. From what I observed, it seemed that David has a clear preference for male friends. There were a couple of female students sitting near him and his few male friends but he did not directly interact with them. This does not mean that David disrespects females but I think that it does give a tiny glimpse into who David is probably more comfortable interacting with: males.
Now I have been explaining the previous situation (both last year and the beginning of Davids’ sophomore year) in comparison to his much more manageable behaviour in school now without explaining how such a change in behaviour occurred. I cannot speak for what measures were taken in David’s other classes and what caused the general change of lack of rebelliousness and better grades in his second year at Eastern Tech, but I do know what worked for my mentor teacher. My mentor teacher immediately upon noticing the lack of respect towards her and her class, asked Davids previous teachers from the year before and gathered what information she could about what she ought to do. She thought that the previous teachers method of placing David in an isolated corner is more giving up than enacting change to help him succeed in Spanish class. Instead, she set up a meeting with herself, David, and David's mother. That meeting proved to be very successful in changing David’s disrespectful behaviour in class. Moreso, I think it was interesting and very fruitful to have such a meeting in which the two persons that are showing responsibility and care for the success of David’s schooling are women. I think this helped greatly in perhaps changing his perception regarding how much power the women in his life have over disciplining him but also over noticing his behaviour and attempting to correct it. What my mentor teacher did was involve the parent immediately and organize a meeting, showing that she did not want to dismiss the student but instead work collaboratively and have a conversation about what needs to be done. This exhibits an attempt to have a positive relationship between student and teacher, a relationship which, according to a study on the Impact of Disciplinary Problems on Academic Achievements, will “positively affect all the characteristics of the school climate” (Abu-Ahmed, 2013, p. 487). Bad relationships between teachers and students ‘will not yield educational goals” (Abu-Ahmed, 2013, p. 487). What perhaps should have been avoided in the beginning was my mentor teacher openly receiving the stigma that surrounded David that may have enabled her to more readily point out a problem of gender instead of perhaps a personal problem that David had towards her, not to all female teachers. In the same study “it was confirmed that when teachers share impressions, and a pupil receives a negative stigma it tends to stick” indicating the risk that was and is perhaps being run by my mentor teacher and the previous female teachers (Abu-Ahmed, 2013, p. 487).
Luckily, David’s behaviour did change for the better and he seems to be exhibiting more respectful behaviour and better grades across the board. His rebellious nature seems to be subsiding. In order to maintain this positive trend, I would suggest disciplining him in a way that is clearly for his benefit and the benefit of others and that there is always at least some common ground between student and teacher. This would mean having meeting with parents, interacting with them positively and not ‘giving up’ on them, trying to create a successful relationship with the student instead of being quick to dismiss them. This is especially important in Davids case if it is true that he has a preference for his male teachers. We must keep in mind that next year, if a female teacher has a similar problem regarding Davids behaviour, it is okay to ask what happened the previous year but it would be important for my mentor teacher to not jump to gender preference too quickly and create a negative stigma around David that may not even be wholly true. It must also be kept in mind that it is okay to have preferences towards teachers that share the same gender. According to a study on college student perceptions of professors in their evaluations of them, it was clear that females students had a strong preference for female professors and a tendency to degrade higher ranked male professors, and that male students, while preferring male professors, did not degrade higher ranked female professors (Gehrt et. al, 2015, 7). This indicates that, across gender, it is quite normal to prefer your own gender to the opposing gender, but that it is in fact male students who are less likely to see women in power and attempt to challenge. This informs David’s case by showing that he reserves the right to prefer male teachers, just as female students reserve the right to prefer female teachers, but when behaviour problems of disrespecting only one gender come into play, then measures need to be taken.
This child study has offered me the opportunity to delve deeper into the nuances of discipline and gender perceptions in the classroom as well as offer me potential solutions. My mentor teachers observations lead her to take immediate action and thus she held a successful meeting between her student, her, and her students mother. In my future experience as a teacher, I will, now that I have had this experience, be more readily confident to take the initiative and plan these meetings before the behaviour gets out of hand, as it did with David’s previous female teacher.
Works Cited and Summaries
Abu-Ahmed, Ensaf. (2013). “Impact of Disciplinary Problems on Academic Achievements”. Review of International Comparative Management, volume 14, Issue 3: pp. 482-489.
This is a study describing the the various impacts that different ways of disciplining have an effect on the academic achievements of students. It highlights the importance of having good relationships between students and teachers in order to foster academic performance and attitudes towards school and specific classes. The article also takes time to discuss the educational climate as it relates to teacher stress when disciplining as well as the increasing frequency of having to manage a classroom instead of teaching it. It concludes that if a relationship between a class and it's teacher is negative, the students in that class are doomed for failure.
Gehrt, Kenneth et. al. (2015). “Student and Professor Similarity: Exploring the Effects of Gender and Relative Age”. Journal of Education for Business, volume 90: pp 1–9.
In this study authors looked at different student evaluations of their professors as it related to gender and and age. Using human resources data for professor age and rank and student age, researchers were able to compare the differing perceptions that female students and male students have regarding their professores when it came time for evaluations at the end of a semester. They concluded that both female and male students preferred and gave more positive evaluations to professors of their same gender and with a lower rank, but female students had a higher frequency of more negatively rating higher ranked male professors while males did not exhibit the same behaviour towards higher ranked female professors. This last bit of data came as a surprise to the researchers as they hypothesized that they would act in tandem with the female students and negatively perceive their higher ranked female professors.
The majority of problems surrounding David occurred much earlier in the year and in his Freshman year, and what my mentor teacher was observing in her own class was more of a problem on the decline than a problem reaching its climax. David’s previous behaviour was of a rebellious nature. When he came into class he would have his headphones in, and when asked to take them off he would keep the music going but have the headphone close to his ear not in them. It would take various times for him to put the headphones away. David had, and still has remnants of, a bad attitude in particular with female teachers. He would take criticisms badly if my mentor teacher corrected his Spanish or something on work that he had turned in. He was very dismissive of anything that my mentor teacher had to say in the realm of directions. There is not English allowed in the Spanish classroom, especially in my mentors’ Spanish classroom, and this rule is normally respected by the vast majority of her students. The main manifestations of the lack of respect that David had towards my mentor teacher was with defying this very important no-English rule. Normally, if students are not as comfortable with the language they might talk quietly, out of the ear shot of my mentor teacher, in English because they still respect and understand the rule. With David, my mentor teacher would talk to him in Spanish and he would blatantly speak to her in English. This is a huge sign of lack of respect.
When my mentor teacher spoke with one of his previous teachers his Freshman year (another female teacher, keep in mind) she was informed by her that he acted in a similar way but that the situation was much more out of hand. This previous teacher was not quick to lay down rules and guidelines and let the lack of respect being made towards her simmer until there seemed to be no remedy. What this teacher did end up doing was pacing David at his own individual table, every day, that faced a corner of the classroom. In a sense she really did not know how to handle David’s behaviour towards her class so she isolated him so that, at the very least, his rebellious attitude would not interfere with the learning of other students. This teacher also talked with his other teachers and came to the conclusion that he really only acted out in classes where his teachers were female and the behaviour problems were not nearly as bad with male teachers.
Now, the situation is a bit different. From my own initial observations it truly wasn't clear that this student was struggling at all. There didn't seem to be much indication that he didn’t respect my mentor teacher. However, once the previous behaviour and situation was pointed out to me I too began to notice subtleties inside the Spanish classroom. Now David seems to be at a level of tolerating what is required of him and working with my mentor teacher instead of disregarding her. He no longer comes in with headphones in, he participates in group activities but does not respond well when called on individually. He has a preference of working alone but does work well with a few select males in Spanish class. He now finishes his work, which to my mentor teacher is a great improvement from a few months ago. There is still the problem with his handwriting. Previously, David would purposefully write in outlandish cursive in order for my mentor teacher to not fully be able to mark whether his Spanish was correct or incorrect. My mentor teacher refused to play and told him that she would make no attempts to decipher his work and that he had no choice but to write neater. I overheard a conversation between the two of them after class one day regarding this very problem (proving that it still persists) and what was notable was that David seemed much more receptive to what my mentor teacher said to him. He smiled during the conversation and then walked away, understanding that he was getting low grades because she couldn’t read his writing. This seems to me to be a great improvement in respect towards my mentor teacher.
In order to find out more about his behaviour outside of my mentor teacher’s classroom and what I was hearing about David’s previous year interacting with female teachers, I talked to his guidance counselor, Cathy Lavery. She was surprised that I was coming to her regarding David because, as she explained to me, she really has had very little mishaps with him. She told me that the biggest incident occurred last year in which David and a male friend of his left the school during the school day. The two got in trouble but it was nothing serious. Mrs. Lavery described the incident as David “being a knucklehead.” Apart from this one formal problem that was written up but ultimately not serious, David was doing badly in school during his Freshman year. His previous grades were not shown to be specifically but I was told they were C’s and D’s. I was able to see his grades this year and I was told that there was significant improvement. This past quarter he received four C’s and four B’s. Mrs. Lavery also informed me that he met his Algebra Parc exam and his HSA government exam. I was wondering if David was at any point in time at risk of being kicked out of Eastern Tech, a magnet school, and she explained that one would have to fail a career major course in order to be kicked out. David’s career major is Interactive Media Production (IMP).
I was curious to see if David had any signs of his previous behaviour that was explained to me by my mentor teacher in one of his career major classes so I observed him in his Mod 3 Interactive Media Production 1 class. To my advantage I was able to observe him interacting this time with a male teacher, Mr. Mesaros. My mentor teacher explained to me that Mr. Mesaros is highly respected in this school, by teachers, administration, and especially by students. He is a tall man that is also the coach of the football team. When I met with him he was very kind and optimistic about his students, David in particular. As I sat in that computer lab observing this class and David’s behaviour in it, I noticed that most students had finished their projects that were due by the end of class that day and were working on homework from other classes. David was the only student in that class that Mesaros talked to and worked with individually for an extended period of time. I asked Mesaros about it and he said that he is always a bit slow to finish projects but that he was never disrespectful towards him, he just needed more of a helping hand. Mesaros didn’t seem overly worried about David’s grade, instead he said “oh he’ll be okay.” David seemed very receptive while working with Mesaros and having the project explained to him again. David seemed content enough but did slouch throughout the class period. He does not seem like the type of student that is overly attentive and participatory. He wants to get his work done at a slow but now functional pace but he does not exhibit a lot of curiosity towards wanting to learn more than what is already required of him.
At this point in time it was clear that there were no behaviour problems in Mesaros class but that David had a history of behaviour problems in classes with female teachers. This prompted me to see who David’s friends were during his lunch Mod. David seemed content to be with his friends and to eat. There was laughter and conversation among him and his friends. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. From what I observed, it seemed that David has a clear preference for male friends. There were a couple of female students sitting near him and his few male friends but he did not directly interact with them. This does not mean that David disrespects females but I think that it does give a tiny glimpse into who David is probably more comfortable interacting with: males.
Now I have been explaining the previous situation (both last year and the beginning of Davids’ sophomore year) in comparison to his much more manageable behaviour in school now without explaining how such a change in behaviour occurred. I cannot speak for what measures were taken in David’s other classes and what caused the general change of lack of rebelliousness and better grades in his second year at Eastern Tech, but I do know what worked for my mentor teacher. My mentor teacher immediately upon noticing the lack of respect towards her and her class, asked Davids previous teachers from the year before and gathered what information she could about what she ought to do. She thought that the previous teachers method of placing David in an isolated corner is more giving up than enacting change to help him succeed in Spanish class. Instead, she set up a meeting with herself, David, and David's mother. That meeting proved to be very successful in changing David’s disrespectful behaviour in class. Moreso, I think it was interesting and very fruitful to have such a meeting in which the two persons that are showing responsibility and care for the success of David’s schooling are women. I think this helped greatly in perhaps changing his perception regarding how much power the women in his life have over disciplining him but also over noticing his behaviour and attempting to correct it. What my mentor teacher did was involve the parent immediately and organize a meeting, showing that she did not want to dismiss the student but instead work collaboratively and have a conversation about what needs to be done. This exhibits an attempt to have a positive relationship between student and teacher, a relationship which, according to a study on the Impact of Disciplinary Problems on Academic Achievements, will “positively affect all the characteristics of the school climate” (Abu-Ahmed, 2013, p. 487). Bad relationships between teachers and students ‘will not yield educational goals” (Abu-Ahmed, 2013, p. 487). What perhaps should have been avoided in the beginning was my mentor teacher openly receiving the stigma that surrounded David that may have enabled her to more readily point out a problem of gender instead of perhaps a personal problem that David had towards her, not to all female teachers. In the same study “it was confirmed that when teachers share impressions, and a pupil receives a negative stigma it tends to stick” indicating the risk that was and is perhaps being run by my mentor teacher and the previous female teachers (Abu-Ahmed, 2013, p. 487).
Luckily, David’s behaviour did change for the better and he seems to be exhibiting more respectful behaviour and better grades across the board. His rebellious nature seems to be subsiding. In order to maintain this positive trend, I would suggest disciplining him in a way that is clearly for his benefit and the benefit of others and that there is always at least some common ground between student and teacher. This would mean having meeting with parents, interacting with them positively and not ‘giving up’ on them, trying to create a successful relationship with the student instead of being quick to dismiss them. This is especially important in Davids case if it is true that he has a preference for his male teachers. We must keep in mind that next year, if a female teacher has a similar problem regarding Davids behaviour, it is okay to ask what happened the previous year but it would be important for my mentor teacher to not jump to gender preference too quickly and create a negative stigma around David that may not even be wholly true. It must also be kept in mind that it is okay to have preferences towards teachers that share the same gender. According to a study on college student perceptions of professors in their evaluations of them, it was clear that females students had a strong preference for female professors and a tendency to degrade higher ranked male professors, and that male students, while preferring male professors, did not degrade higher ranked female professors (Gehrt et. al, 2015, 7). This indicates that, across gender, it is quite normal to prefer your own gender to the opposing gender, but that it is in fact male students who are less likely to see women in power and attempt to challenge. This informs David’s case by showing that he reserves the right to prefer male teachers, just as female students reserve the right to prefer female teachers, but when behaviour problems of disrespecting only one gender come into play, then measures need to be taken.
This child study has offered me the opportunity to delve deeper into the nuances of discipline and gender perceptions in the classroom as well as offer me potential solutions. My mentor teachers observations lead her to take immediate action and thus she held a successful meeting between her student, her, and her students mother. In my future experience as a teacher, I will, now that I have had this experience, be more readily confident to take the initiative and plan these meetings before the behaviour gets out of hand, as it did with David’s previous female teacher.
Works Cited and Summaries
Abu-Ahmed, Ensaf. (2013). “Impact of Disciplinary Problems on Academic Achievements”. Review of International Comparative Management, volume 14, Issue 3: pp. 482-489.
This is a study describing the the various impacts that different ways of disciplining have an effect on the academic achievements of students. It highlights the importance of having good relationships between students and teachers in order to foster academic performance and attitudes towards school and specific classes. The article also takes time to discuss the educational climate as it relates to teacher stress when disciplining as well as the increasing frequency of having to manage a classroom instead of teaching it. It concludes that if a relationship between a class and it's teacher is negative, the students in that class are doomed for failure.
Gehrt, Kenneth et. al. (2015). “Student and Professor Similarity: Exploring the Effects of Gender and Relative Age”. Journal of Education for Business, volume 90: pp 1–9.
In this study authors looked at different student evaluations of their professors as it related to gender and and age. Using human resources data for professor age and rank and student age, researchers were able to compare the differing perceptions that female students and male students have regarding their professores when it came time for evaluations at the end of a semester. They concluded that both female and male students preferred and gave more positive evaluations to professors of their same gender and with a lower rank, but female students had a higher frequency of more negatively rating higher ranked male professors while males did not exhibit the same behaviour towards higher ranked female professors. This last bit of data came as a surprise to the researchers as they hypothesized that they would act in tandem with the female students and negatively perceive their higher ranked female professors.
Artifact Reflection
This artifact is a child study done with a student in one of my mentors Spanish classes. It is a compilation of observations both inside the classroom and outside, discussions with teachers and a guidance counselor, and an general analysis of the behaviour of a male sophomore at Eastern Tech High School. This artifact is able to demonstrate my proficiency in analyzing the complexity of a students mind and getting at why academic success is not occurring as well as propose a solution to the situation at hand. It also demonstrates my ability to utilize literature and studies done in the realm of education in order to benefit the student and ultimately their success in my classroom.