"Tattle Tale, Tattle Tale!"

» Deborah_Jeter - Wow, Thomas, I love these suggestions! They are wonderful. I

Wow, Thomas, I love these suggestions! They are wonderful.

I don't mind if someone "tattles" on someone else. Teachers that squelch those type responses, in my opinion, are just trying to take the easy way out. There is generally a lot of validity to what a child is trying to alert one to. I call it a citizen's arrest. That way, with everyone watching out for each other, all of the children are more pronged to making good or at least better choices in the first place.

Thanks for the excellent food for thought. I believe that I will try some of these great ideas out VERY soon. :-)

Deborah Jeter

Music Education Editor

and Education Managing Editor

-- posted by Deborah_Jeter

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» ThomasR_5 - posting on k12.chat.teacher

The director of Marietta Johnson Museum wrote:

Sometimes I declare a "no tattling day". Believe it or not, it is very effective, even with the 4-year-olds that I teach! I find that they suddenly start using the problem-solving skills that I have repeated to them daily. I teach at an "alternative" school, and would invite anyone interested in child-centered education to visit our website:

http://mariettajohnson.org

-- posted by ThomasR_5

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» biogardener - My approach.

Early in my teaching career, I came up with an idea to stop all unnecessary tattling. It worked.

I discussed the matter with every class and they always agreed that the idea was great. This is how it worked. I would dole out punishment for every offence which was reported to me. If the class decided that the report concerned something trivial or petty, the punishment would go to the person who brought the report. If the report was valid, the offence would be dealt with in the normal manner.

In most classes, we never had to apply this rule. The odd character who decided to test the system, did it just once.

My classes were always totally free of silly tattling. I didn't have to do a thing to enforce the rules. The classes looked after it, and that included primary classes. Even little children know what is right and wrong and what is necessary and unnecessary reporting.

-- posted by biogardener

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