1.

RESOURCES

PAST: FEW RESOURCES 

Examples: board, pictures, markers, pens, folders…

PRESENT: MODERN COMPUTERS, INTERNET, MOBILES DEVICES, TABLETS, TELECONFERENCING.

2. DSCIPLINE

PAST: teachers were very strict

Examples: corporal punishments, rules were respected

3. METHODOLOGY

PAST: passive and individual  student just listened, take notes, take exams, repetition and knowledge as
remembering with some understanding.

PRESENT: More interactive: creativity plays a big role, more participation from the students, they work together.
Students are in the position of questioning and challenging, not in the negative sense, but in the sense of being more
active in their learnings. Knowledge is constructed by student. There are more interaction between student and
teacher.

DISCIPLINE

There was a day 40 years ago when teachers hung a paddle on the classroom wall and used it on unruly students who
didn’t heed their warnings.
Back then, nearly every parent supported teachers and often gave their unruly child a few more licks when they got
home. Parents respected teachers, and students listened.
It was a time when corporal punishment was the mainstay of discipline.
That was then, and this is now.
Three weeks ago, the Marion County School Board banned paddling from its menu of disciplinary measures in a move
applauded by many educators, parents and disciplinary experts who say corporal punishment is less effective than
methods that don’t rely on force and intimidation.
They note that since the 1960s, educators enjoy a wider array of disciplinary tools tailored to address different kinds of
student misconduct, including in-school suspension, alternative schools and deans of discipline.
But critics of the School Board’s decision to abolish paddling say public school educators face more serious behavioral
problems than ever before, and their ability to deal assertively with those problems has eroded over time.
Supporters and opponents of corporal punishment agree on one thing, however: Many parents are no longer involved
as much in their children’s education.
They say parents are preoccupied with jobs, stressed by life events, overwhelmed by the complexity of the modern
education system or are simply apathetic.
As a result, these parents feel less connected to their schools and are less inclined than in past generations to be
involved in their children’s learning.

Surprisingly, School District administrators say the percentage of children getting in trouble today is the same as it was
decades ago. What has changed are the approaches to dealing with student misconduct.
Many educators point to parents, who they say are less involved in their children’s education and less apt to help
teachers rein in their unruly kids.
Without the help of these parents, teachers are forced to rely on their own disciplinary tools. And some say the tools
aren’t adequate to the task.
Carol Ely, 63, the Shady Hill Elementary School principal who will retire in June, said when she first started teaching in
1968 in Gainesville, she paddled her own students in front of a witness.
Back then, there were no deans of discipline. Classes were at least 30 students. And although classes were big, they
had control. They had control because most parents respected and supported them. When they called home about a
discipline problem, parents addressed it.
“Parents supported us much more back then,” Ely said. Nearly all parents attended open houses and conference
nights, and dressed appropriately for the occasion.
Ely said times were different in the 1960s. Most children had both parents at home. She said by the 1970s, it all began
to change. More divorces led to many single-parent households.
Marcy Weidner, 64, a 34-year veteran who is retiring from Shady Hill, started out teaching in 1969 at a private school
in an affluent Chicago neighborhood.
There was no paddling, but parents were very involved.

When she came to Marion County in the 1990s she found a different culture. Parents and their children were not
respectful of teachers and some parents were largely absent from their children’s academic lives, she said.
There is also an opposite extreme, she said. They are called “helicopter” parents because they hover over their
children constantly. They are always in class volunteering, enlist their kids in too many activities and make every
decision for them.
She believes students need outdoor time to mingle with friends, to get away from excessive stimulation offered by
technology and those helicopter parents.
If children get time with peers, they tend to be better behaved.
Donna Titterington - a mother of four children in elementary, middle and high schools, as well as college - agrees that
lack of parent involvement is responsible for many of the problems.
“Parents don’t expect enough of their children,” she said. Parents complain, for example, that their children’s
homework is too hard for them.
Titterington, who doesn’t believe in corporal punishment, nonetheless says it is important for parents to make their
expectations clear to their children.
Another parent, Lauren DeIorio - incoming Parent/Teacher Association president and a member of the Student
Advisory Council at Shady Hill Elementary - has also seen a shift. “I feel bad for the teachers,” DeIorio said. “It does
seem like [some parents believe] that teachers are there just to baby-sit.“
Unlike Titterington, DeIorio was raised in a strict all-girls Catholic school in Louisville, Ky., and believes corporal
punishment, at least the threat of it, is needed. It’s a way to instill the importance of respecting their peers, she said.
She said at her Catholic school, nuns often used corporal punishment.
“We had to respect them,” she said.

John Scanzoni, a University of Florida professor and expert in sociology, says that parents should not shoulder all the
blame for discipline issues.
He also blames schools for failing to keep up with an ever-changing society, particularly in the area of technology.
For the most part, classes today resemble the ones of the 1960s: a teacher lectures in front of the class and students
sit and listen. It is an outmoded method of teaching a generation of kids who are accustomed to getting information
electronically, he said.
Schools that are becoming more engaged electronically, using whiteboards and laptops, have less problems with
discipline than schools that are not engaged, according to Scanzoni.
At Blessed Trinity School, a Catholic school on Southeast 17th Street, an anonymous donor gave $60,000 for
interactive whiteboards that the principal claims have caused a drop in student misconduct.
In the 2008-09 school year, Principal Jason Halstead dealt with 100 student referrals for fighting, being disrespectful
toward teachers and using inappropriate language.
Only 10 children have been sent to his office with referrals since the whiteboards were installed last summer, a 90
percent decrease in discipline issues.
Halstead says children are now engaged in the classroom and are less likely to get into trouble because they are not
bored.

And when it comes to parental involvement, Scanzoni said the move away from neighborhood schools, combined with
the increasing complexity of testing, has isolated many parents from the education process. Many, he said, simply
don’t know how to help at home.
Scanzoni said with integration of both social classes and race, shipping children from one neighborhood to another,
the neighborhood-school structure collapsed and disconnected parents.
Standardized tests have pushed parents away from helping students as well. They may know their child needs help in
raising test scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, but they don’t know what they can do at home to
help.
“It’s harder for them to figure out what their school [administration] wants,” he said of the state pushing standardized
testing.
He said standardized testing is one of the key problems when it comes to parent involvement. He believes the state
needs to pull back from that stance and focus on technology.
“The discipline issue is just one important part of a much larger problem here,” he said.
Ely, the Shady Hill principal, agrees that today’s intense focus on standardized tests is a problem, but for a different
reason. With so much riding on these tests - school grades, state funding - teachers are tense and that filters down to
students. Tense students often equal behavioral problems.

While changing times, changing parent attitudes and changing educational standards all contribute to student
misconduct, educators are looking for inventive ways to keep order in their classrooms so they can teach successfully.
Kathy Richardson, the executive director of student services for Marion County, who retired last Friday, said a primary
focus is keeping troublesome students in school.
In the 2005-06 school year, 37 percent of all of the School District’s students were suspended for at least one day
during the year. That number dropped to 34 percent in 2006-07 year.
Richardson said because of the high number of suspensions, the School District decided to take a new approach by
adding behavioral intervention programs.
These programs teach students the social skills, respect and consequences of their actions. Student Assist Teams
evaluate students and help them get on track.
As a result, the number of suspensions dropped by nearly two-thirds. In 2007-08, 15 percent of the student population
was suspended. Just 13 percent were suspended in 2008-09. In the first half of 2009-10, only 5.5 percent have been
suspended.
These teams, which include social workers, psychologists, deans and an array of other professionals, examine the
child’s issues, from academics to discipline, then try to get the child on track before it leads to a suspension.
If a child can’t read, they get reading help, Richardson noted. If a child struggles in math, they get math help. If they
have a problem behaving, they get behavioral help.
“There are a lot of students without those social skills needed to be successful in school,” Richardson said.
One such program, dubbed Behavior Eudcation Program or Chiefs Choices, at Osceola Middle School, is geared toward
students who do not have the proper social skills.
Joy Baxley, Osceola’s assistant principal of discipline, said when the idea was first introduced, deans of discipline and
assistant principals were against it because they felt middle school students should know how to behave.
But they soon changed their minds. The program helps mentor students, teaching them how to work well with others,
including teachers.

It teaches manners, respect and how to talk to teachers when they believe there is a problem with a grade, for
instance.
“It’s a different world,” Baxley said. “We want to give the child the skills they are lacking because of the deterioration
of the family over the last 40 years.“
Contact Joe Callahan at 352-867-4113 or joe.callahan@starbanner.com.