Jonah In Summer Heights High

The television series Summer Heights High follows the journey of a young boy names Jonah. Jonah is in year 8 at Summer Heights High and has previously been expelled three times because of disruptive and dangerous behaviour. He is known in the school to have anger and attention deficit problems. Jonah struggles socially as he treats his teachers and classmates with disrespect. Jonah’s also struggles academically. Jonah does not have positive relationships with his teachers and this causes tension in the classroom. He doesn’t like Mrs. Wheatly, his English teacher and they constantly argue during class. Jonah and Doug Peterson the student welfare officer also don’t have a great relationship. Jonah doesn’t respect or Doug but sometimes listens …show more content…
Palmer is Jonah’s Gumnut College teacher. Jonah attends this college once a day for extra help with reading. In this classroom environment Jonah feels a lot more relaxed and important. Gumnut College and Mrs. Palmer create a positive environment for Jonah to learn in. This environment is calm and moves at Jonah’s own pace. Jonah also receives more one-on-one attention from Mrs. Palmer and his helps Jonah. This positive environment makes Jonah feel meaningful and hopeful. It is in this classroom environment that Jonah portrays resiliency. Jonah is reading at a much younger reading level than his age, and therefore Mrs. Palmer has to help his read using younger children books. This embarrasses Jonah and he gives up trying to read during that class. Mrs. Palmers understands that this could be embarrassing for Jonah, but she also believes that this is the best way to help him read. Although, Jonah was embarrassed and gave up, the next day he comes back to class and he tries again. This is resilient of Jonah because he is swallowing his pride and fighting through the embarrassment to learn to read. It’s important to note, that Jonah is only comfortable reading children books with Mrs. Palmer because she makes him feel comfortable. Mrs. Palmer’s actions contribute to Jonah’s sense of self worth because she believes in Jonah and focuses on his strengths to build his self esteem up. A technique she uses is moving the lessons at Jonah’s own pace. Her lessons are flexible so that …show more content…
He faces challenges that the rest of them may not. The teachers also face challenges when approach Jonah and his situation. I believe that it is crucial for teachers to remember Rudolf Dreikurs’ 4 goals of misbehaviour. A teacher refereeing to these 4 goals of a misbehaving child then they would be able to understand the situation from the child’s perspective. Watching and analyzing this television show has taught me that it is crucial to be patient with my students. We don’t always know what is going on at home or out on recess and these factors could really stress our students out. As a teacher working with different learners and students who misbehave I will try to understand the situation from their perspective instead of controlling the students behaviour. I have also learned that we may need to treat every student differently and have differentiated learning goals and plans. The techniques I just listed for teaching different learners could be applied to First Nations, Inuit and Métis students. Jonah and First Nations, Inuit and Métis students may go through similar journeys. For example, if a First Nations, Inuit and Métis student’s family doesn’t have enough funding to have the student diagnosed or medicated for exceptionality then that student might have the same behaviour as Jonah. This would create a similar situation within the school for that student. The television show Summer Heights High has