Yelling in the workplace: What are the rules for teachers?

[Photo credit: New York Times]

A secretly recorded video of a teacher yelling at her first grade student for failing to explain how she answered a math problem has ignited both awe and backlash.

The New York Times recently ran the video, which shows Charlotte Dial, a teacher at the Success Academy charter school in Brooklyn ripping a student’s paper in half, telling the child to “go to the calm-down chair and sit” sharply and: “There’s nothing that infuriates me more than when you don’t do what’s on your paper.”

Dial, who was later promoted as a “model” teacher in the Success Academy network and enlisted to train other teachers, follows up the outburst by telling the little girl “You’re confusing everybody – I’m very upset and very disappointed.”

The video, recorded by an assistant teacher concerned with Dial’s teaching techniques, has spurred debate causing #StopBashingTeachers to trend on Twitter and critics of the teaching practices in the video to respond with #StopHarmingStudents.

At the centre is the question of teaching practices and how the classroom differs from a workplace, where raising your voice towards another can be a firing offense.

A spokesperson for the Peel District School Board told Yahoo Canada Finance that teacher’s behaviour is above all governed by criminal law and consistent with the Human Rights Code.

Brian Jamieson, senior communications officer at the Ontario College of Teachers – the regulatory body for the teaching profession in Ontario and the largest self-regulatory body in Canada – says the organization receives up to 1,500 “expressions of concern” about members annually.

“However, we only deal with matters of professional misconduct, incompetence or incapacity,” says Jamieson. “The vast majority are local concerns and best managed at the school or board level.”

The College investigated 385 matters in 2014 and 102 of those went on to a public hearing.

While the Ontario College of Teachers has established and publicly declared ethical and practice standards for Ontario’s teachers, Jamieson calls the ethics aspirational, intended to “guide and inspire teachers in their daily work.”

“Care, trust, respect and integrity are the pillars of those standards,” he says. “These documents influence attitudes and guide behaviours – they’re not fixed “rules” per se. Teachers, as professionals, should be able to gauge their actions against these foundations expectations and act accordingly.”

Dr. Barrie Bennett, co-author of both Classroom Management: A Thinking and Caring Approach and Beyond Monet: The artful science of instructional integration says the question isn’t so much whether or not yelling is wrong, it’s what does that yelling mean

“Let’s say I look over and say ‘David, I’ve told you to put that away, thank you’ is that yelling? No. Is it being assertive? Yes. But if I’ve asked David three times and he’s still mucking around, I’m going to raise my voice and be a bit more assertive,” says Bennett, a former associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. “There’s a whole art here – the science is yelling and the art is when should I yell?”

Ultimately, as a teacher, you’re trying to win over the students, explains Bennett. Kids will understand if you have a troublesome student who is constantly disrupting the class who you’ve repeatedly and calmly tried to settle down.

“If I’m yelling once a month then who cares, but if I’m yelling every period that’s a huge problem professionally,” says Bennett adding that it pushes the kids to bond together against you.

Unfortunately, there’s no systemic approach to teaching teachers classroom management techniques.

“Very few Bachelor of Education (programs) have a really effective and sustained classroom management program for their students,” he says. “When I talk to teachers and ask how many have had a course on classroom management, I would say maybe one per cent say yes.”

Bennett says the challenge, a cause he’s devoted a good portion of his career to, is finding a way to train teachers in the “art of classroom management” when a lot of what effective teachers do to manage a classroom is second nature to them.

“Watch a great teacher (react) to a kid who is fooling around – they’ll use proximity, say the student’s name, look at the person, say ‘thank you’ and continue teaching – four skills integrated in about a second and a half, it’s very sophisticated,” says Bennett. “But they don’t necessarily know they’re doing it… every teacher has a different set of boundaries and kids learn very quickly if the teacher is consistent and fair.”

He says students don’t mind stern provided the lesson is enjoyable, meaningful and interesting.

“Stern in the absence of being an effective teacher doesn’t get you very far,” he says. “Kids want structure, they want to know where the walls are; they will feel safer.”