Special Ed Coach Says Teachers ‘Lose Their Power’ Every Time They Send Misbehaving Kids Out Of The Classroom
She claimed that it doesn't solve anything by removing disruptive students from a classroom.
Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock A special education coach and advocate has drawn mixed reactions after claiming that teachers should think twice about telling rowdy and disagreeable students to leave the classroom if they disrupt the learning environment.
In a TikTok video, a special education coach named Mosh had a conversation with another content creator on the podcast "Difficult Student," where she shared why she never sends kids out if they are acting up.
Mosh claimed that teachers 'lose their power' every time they send misbehaving kids out of the classroom.
"I never send kids out," Mosh declared to John Vergara, host of the podcast. He agreed, saying that he never did as well. Mosh explained that she encouraged other teachers to follow her example because each time they send a kid out of the classroom for misbehaving, they lose their power.
"It's different when you have to evacuate because a kid is unsafe," she continued. However, circumstances are different the moment a teacher sends out a child for yelling, fussing, and causing a disturbance because then you've opened the door, and it's essentially quite hard to close.
She said that when she does new teacher training, regardless of where she does it, from an instructional coach's perspective, she urges educators to think five times before they send that child out.
Mosh explained that kicking a kid out of class teaches the student which buttons to push to get a reaction.
Now, the misbehaving child will try their hardest to get sent out of the classroom because they know they can.
However, not everyone agreed with Mosh's opinion, and one public school educator named Brandon Triola responded to the clip and advised first-year teachers not to listen to her at all when disciplining misbehaving children in the classroom.
Triola insisted that teachers aren't losing their power at all because it's not about power to begin with. "It's about your sanity," he remarked. "In every aspect of our collective society, if you don't make an effort, you get cut loose — jobs, friends, family, military — but we're gonna model something different in the classroom."
He pointed out that good teachers only kick out about 1% of their students each year.
"It's because most of the students want to learn, so I'm not gonna punish them. Respect yourself, and your students will see that," Triola continued. His opinion is the same as many other public school educators, especially those leaving the profession altogether, because their school administrators pushed this idea of "inclusion" and kept all the students together, even the ones who were ruining learning for others.
A former teacher named Daniella Tangie explained that she worked with a student who made her fear going into the building every day. She recalled the student suffered from "emotional behavior disorders" and would constantly make threats against the safety of her and the other kids in the class.
"It seems this student was just getting pushed along in the system until she graduated high school and would be nobody's problem anymore. Having this student in a class of 21 was not fair to me and was not fair to my other co-teacher. I wish I would have advocated for myself more and refused this kind of behavior in my classroom," she said.
Teachers can only do so much and should be given the right to refuse to have "unsafe" and disruptive students in their classrooms if they see fit.
No one wins if teachers aren't given the tools to provide a positive and constructive learning environment. Like Triola said, if you don't respect yourself as a teacher, then there's no way that your students will.
If they see that it doesn't take much for them to walk all over you, kids will use it to their advantage. That's why it's important to set boundaries and rules that every student should be expected to follow. And if they don't, there's nothing bad about sending them out and catering to the needs of the other children who actually want to learn and be there.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.