Friday, January 15, 2010

Enabling or Helping?


I'm afraid I have just officially become an enabler of failing students. Our principal wants us to save the world one failing student at a time, and I'm not against this, per say, but I have decided to go the extra mile this term and I think I'm enabling really and not helping some of these kids. Who is to say who deserves the help? I have helped out quite a few kids who do deserve it, but now, on teacher development day I am helping a kid past my deadline of helping, pass my class, argh!

I think everyone deserves help and mercy, it is in my nature, but some kids are truly better served by experiencing the consequences of their actions. But I set myself up for this one. In an effort to help more students I sent home personal notes with progress reports to every one of my failing stduents asking them to please come get some help from me. I guess I will just have to see if this motivates any of them to work harder next term, or whether I am a push-over this term and should be failing a million students instead!

2 comments:

JMadd said...

I think for some kids, they're just used to being written off when they're failing. Maybe telling them to come get help from you is what they need. Maybe they need to know that someone cares that they're failing.

WalkConkies said...

I understand your worry, but I say way to go for giving them another chance! They'll never be able to say that they didn't have a teacher that cared about their future! I'm sure they'll all be better people for having you as their teacher!