I had a student in my class one year who could start a fire with nothing more than a metal wastepaper basket, three wet toothpicks, a paperclip and a used straw from one of those drink boxes. Don’t ask me how because I don’t know. The kid was a genius. I had another one who liked to stick green pencil crayons, point side down, into his nostrils and chase the other children around the classroom while pretending to be a walrus with a head cold.
Children act out because they need something. They act out because they need attention, because they need not to be hungry, they need not to feel embarrassed from something, they need warmer socks, they need more mental stimulation than the present curriculum is able to give or they need not to feel lost and alone in a curriculum that seems to come so easily and make sense to everyone else but them.
Shouting, singling out and hitting have never enhanced a child’s ability to learn. Children cannot learn in an atmosphere of fear or embarrassment. The only thing that hitting and shouting accomplish is dread, fear and hatred of school. Should that really become a teacher’s goal? To beat the joy of learning out of an innocent child who is only trying to tell you that he or she stands in need of something? I didn’t think so either.