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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| High school discipline? |
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| Anonymous |
| 04/20/05 at 18:56:09 |
| Salam, I'm teaching a group of high school muslim boys who have serious discipline problems. Unfortunately, the group I have been assigned to are notorious for bad behavior and disrespect. They are an extremely intelligent group of young men, going through a very bad phase of rebellion. Anyway, I'm female and I look very young, so I know I will have to work very hard to be succesful at this inshallah. I need advice on how to handle this, because it's a very sensitive age, and I need to retain some sort of authority over them. How do I keep them engaged or challenged? Should I be friendly or strict, and what is the fine balance in this? The teacher who I will be replacing confided in me about her nervous breakdown, and I've seen how they treat her so I don't blame her, really. Personally, I'm looking forward to it, because they happen to be the wittiest set of teenagers I have run into, and like I said, they are very intelligent. I start teaching pretty soon, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. :) |
| relate to them |
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| safa |
| 04/21/05 at 01:25:14 |
| [slm] I think u should b able 2 command their respect and not demand it. I think being strict doesn't really achieve much in the long run. They're gonna behave the same way behind ur back. Trying to understand their problems from their perspective should help. U could talk about problems you had growing up, like the ones they have, may b about being a muslim in a non-muslim society, handling peer pressure and the like. Stuff they might not talk about with their parents. But the important thing is to maintain a certain distance - u r still their teacher, u can't b one of them. We had this lecturer who was pretty young - just a coupla years our senior. He was pretty cool, considered problems from our angle. We were a lot more comfortable with him than with the rest of the faculty, since he was more approachable. Then he started flirting with some of the girls and now noone takes him seriously anymore. I guess he really thought he was one of us. |
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