Personal Narrative: Sacrifice In A Class

Last Spring, I had a student who was in the final semester of his senior year and was oppositional and rude in class. He had come to us because he had failed out of his previous private school and we were his last option. Because he is very intelligent he loved to point out every mistake that I made in class. I would politely accept these corrections, but was annoyed by his negative attitude. When he refused to participated with classmates during an experiment, I asked him to stay after and speak with me. He fled the class at the end of the period and the next month was a period of extreme tension because he had to pass my class in order to graduate.
Our school has a respect agreement and a program that seeks to bring about conflict …show more content…
My first mistake was that I chose to ignore his rudeness towards me in the classroom. In fact, I often made comments praising his intelligence in the false belief that this would create a positive relationship. At the time, I felt that I was being compassionate because I knew of his past difficulties in school. However, I now recognize that what I was really doing was avoiding conflict. I believe he intuitively knew that I was trying to avoid confronting him. Because he knew I did not want to confront him he was encouraged in his actions. Therefore he also began to openly disrespect his classmates. Research by Fisher (2014) observed that a gifted student who was often praised by the teacher actually viewed the classroom as boring. In addition, shy female students who were treated rudely by boys in the class felt marginalized and frustrated.
This experience has taught me the importance of dealing with conflict immediately. When conflict with a student is ignored it does not go away. Rather, it grows and impacts other students who feel their needs are being ignored because of disrespect towards them that the teacher does nothing to