Anna

Caylan’s tutoring response struck a chord with me because I always find power dynamics between children and authority figures to be fascinating. I have been struggling lately with these issues, not so much in my own tutoring experience at the middle school, but with my job as a gymnastics coach. I coach kids anywhere from 3 years old to 11 years old and I find I’m having problems getting all age groups to listen and follow directions. As someone who pays close attention to when children do and do not respect/listen to their authority figures I thought I would have more ability to maintain the respect of my students, but I cannot pick out what exactly it is that makes a teacher respected and in control. 

I had a teacher in high school who was a very quiet man. He didn’t ever say any more then he had to. He hardly spent any time disciplining students, or reinforcing the rules verbally in any way. Instead, if the class got noisy or unruly in some way, he would simply stand at the front of the class, completely silent, staring at all of us, and waiting for everyone to shut up. Strangely, it took a lot less time to get us under control using that technique than it would have taken (based on experiences I’ve had in other classes) to say “go back to your seats”, “stop talking”, “don’t hit Greg in the face,” etc.) However, I have tried that technique with my students and they still run around climbing on everything in site and generally not paying attention. Perhaps my students don’t have that basic level of respect for me that my high school class had for our teacher. I am just interested to know concrete ways that this respect can be attained/maintained?