Dont Fall for
Student Backtalk

The Cardinal Error in dealing with backtalk is backtalk -- your backtalk, says classroom management expert Fred Jones. The student is backtalking to you in order to get you to talk to them. If you go for the bait, youre dead!

When you were four years old, you already had the social skills required to have the last word in an argument if you wanted it badly enough. To watch two children arguing is fairly common. To watch a child and a teacher arguing is disappointing, to say the least -- which brings us to our first rule of backtalk:

It takes one fool to backtalk.
It takes two fools to make a conversation out of it.

The first fool is the child, of course, says Jones. What worries me is the second fool. The second fool is always the teacher. It is the teachers backtalk that will get this student sent to the office.

Jones says teachers must think of backtalk as a melodrama that is written, produced, and directed by the student. In this melodrama, there is a speaking part for you. If you accept your speaking part in the melodrama, it is show time. But if you do not, the show bombs.

Regardless of what happens after a student initiates a bout of backtalk, most important is the fact that you are calm. If you can think clearly, you can put your intelligence and good judgment to use

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Fred Jones: Calm Is Strength -- Responding to Backtalk

09/14/2010

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