I was taking a break from work to watch a little TED and I thought I'll go with something light hearted "Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity". A witty funny 20 minutes.
A reflection of my teaching days when I had a peer sharing session with the other teachers of the school and we shared our problems with each other and see if we could get a bright spark out of each other. The problem I got was from a senior teacher which says "How can I get problem student "X" to be more respectful?". I've met "X" on several occasions, especially that he had to sit outside the staff office for some offence, and my answer was simple "maybe you should re-think what respect means." I don't think that sat very well with that senior teacher, nor did I expect it to sit well with 90% of the teachers around. But apparently, this boy had a somewhat rough upbringing, the somewhat rough disposition was not disrespect but norm. No one bothered to reach out to him and all he got was punishment after punishment which he never understood. And so... there you have it. Just like someone who would feed a "problem" child like Gillian Lynne medication, we brushed the problem aside with the most convenient(aka effective) solutions.
