Hey! Kids! Leave them teachers alone!

Both of the videos below feature school children committing acts of violence against their teachers. The first video was filmed in a Russian school during an English lesson on personal pronouns. The second, shot in the U.S., shows what happened to a 62-year-old teacher after he confiscated a student’s cellphone.

1. How do you react to the two videos you’ve just seen? Which of the four people do yousympathise with? How would you have reacted if you had been each of the people who appear?
2. Were there many discipline problems when you were at school? How did teachers punish bad behaviour? Were you well-behaved?
3. What advice would you give teachers on howmaintain authority and control in the classroom? What can teachers do to create arespectful classroom environment?
4. Who is to blame for school failure: teachers, parents, pupils themselves, or is it caused bywider socio-economic problems?
5. When you were at school was the relationship between teachers and students distant andformal, or open and friendly?
6. What do you think it’s like to be a teacher in amodern-day secondary school? Do you think teaching is an easy job?
7. Is there any difference between having a young,inexperienced teacher and having an older teacher with years of experience? Which do/did you prefer?
8. When you were at school were there any rules that you thought were unnecessary, unfair orsimply absurd? Did you obey these rules or did you break them?
9. Do you think school students should be allowed to use their cellphones in class?
10. Can you remember a teacher from yourschooldays who made a big impact on you,either positive or negative?