Students have enough barriers to learning—we shouldn’t create more

Increasingly, we’re hearing from teachers that student morale and engagement are concerningly low while behavioral issues are on the rise. But are the typical approaches to classroom management actually making student engagement and behavior worse? What happens when a teacher is expected to confront a student about their behavior in front of their peers, give them a failing grade due to absences, or confiscate their phone? These sorts of interventions can reinforce toxic power struggles between students and staff, ultimately creating more barriers to learning.

But there is an alternative approach—instead of policing and punishing student behaviors, the team at Map Academy intentionally doesn’t escalate situations that can lead to disconnected, dysregulated, or disempowered students. In this episode, hear from Map teachers and leadership about how they manage student disengagement and (mis)behavior while promoting a non-hierarchical power dynamic—all with a nuanced understanding of how defiant and apathetic classroom behaviors often stem from existing personal struggles.

(Clips at the beginning of the episode are excerpts of TikToks by @adventureswitheliza, @history_4_humans, @awalmartparkinglot, and @josh_dennis.)

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Education Disruption is a podcast by ⁠⁠Map Academy⁠⁠—a free, charter public high school open to all Massachusetts students up to age 24

This podcast is a Hairpin production: ⁠⁠⁠hairpin.org