General School Administration: Fill & Download for Free

As a high school teacher, I can answer from the perspective of teachers and our students.It has to do with school buses and sports.imageIn Central Florida, which I believe is pretty typical of most American high schools, class begins at 7:20. Teachers generally arrive at least a half hour before. This means getting up at 6:00 or earlier (some kids have an hour ride).There are 212,000+ students in Orange County, Florida. The county does not have enough buses to pick them all up at once, so the first run is for high school students, then elementary kids, for whom school starts at 8:45, then middle school, which starts at 9:30.Every study shows that high school students do not get enough sleep and that 7:20 is far too early to start the school day. Why not have the little kids start first, you might ask, since parents can more easily control their bedtimes?That is where high school sports come into play.Sports, especially football, basketball, and baseball, have become increasingly more professionalized in American high schools. College football has completely become a professional game, albeit the players are unpaid indentured servants. High school coaches want to start their hours long practices while there is still plenty of daylight.Parents and school administrators support them in this.imageSo, teenagers in America, and their teachers, rise much earlier than their counterparts in many other countries.AddendumAs the comments indicate, the United States is not the only country where student begin school at an unreasonably early hour.I am curious as to the explanation for early start times in countries without school buses or high school sports.

The smartest person in my class was also the one with the highest grade point average. He took the tests, and was named a National Merit Scholar.He hardly ever studied, often ran with a bad crowd (but less than half the time) and was a bit of a trouble maker at school. He was elected vice president of the student council, but was not allowed to join the National Honor Society. So he started an organization with some friends and called it “The National Ornery Society.” This didn’t sit well with the sponsors of the NHSWhen graduation time came, the school administration wouldn’t let him give the senior address, even though he was the valedictorian. They had the salutatorian give it instead. (They did the right thing. He would have given them a speech to look at and approve, then he would have given an entirely different speech.)After graduation, he went to college, where he was allowed to proficiency (just take the final exams and never sign up for the classes) more than a year’s worth of credits. He got bored with college and quit after getting a bachelors degree.After college he went on to a series of careers, starting near the bottom in each one and working his way to the top. He was general manager of two organizations and president of another. He married, had three kids, and enjoyed life for decades. He never got rich, because that didn’t interest him.How do I know all of these details? I’m pretty sure you can guess.

Yes. All the time.You have to pick your battles, and students are kids, not soldiers. They’re going to misbehave sometimes. You have to let little stuff go on a daily basis or you’ll go insane. Kids fart and giggle. Kids forget their pencils. Kids have to go to the bathroom twice in an hour. Kids are all excited because a couple broke up. It happens.Furthermore, lots of school administrations (including mine) won’t enforce their own policies. For example, kids in my school were prohibited from wearing coats to class. But, half the rooms were freezing. So, trying to stop students from breaking the rules gets you nowhere.What’s a teacher to do?The goal is to set up a classroom such that kids don’t want to break the rules because they’re having a good time learning. That is not easy - in fact, it’s nearly impossible some of the time. But, if you really work at it, you can make the class reasonably interesting and entertaining a significant fraction of the time. And, when you do that, the kids will largely behave themselves. Now, you’ll still have misbehavior, and you’ll still have to do some discipline. But, you’ll have a powerful tool at your disposal there: an alternative classroom that is much more boring.I rarely go to that well, but occasionally I have to. Essentially, you (the teacher) try to make class entertaining, interesting, and not super boring or tedious. Kids mostly behave. Occasionally, they’re out of control. You come back with “OK guys, I guess it’s going to be worksheets every day, weekly quizzes, and no study guides.” The kids generally get it together after that.Most of the time, however, you just keep doing your best to make it interesting, and kids will mostly be interested rather than misbehave.But be prepared to overlook all kinds of minor misbehavior. They’re kids, remember!