The last few weeks have been interesting for me. To counteract the smaller children’s egregious behaviour I have enforced an iron-fist regime, with a nol-tolerance attitude befit of my teachers in Nazi training camp my secondary school.

Any time one of the children does anything against the classroom rules s/he gets a mark; three marks means I stop the lesson, send the others back to their classroom, and ring the offending child’s parents. Breaking the rules involves anything from speaking without putting up a hand, speaking to a neighbour when a written task has been assigned, slouching or sitting in a position I deem unacceptable, getting up out of a seat without asking and other minor misdemeanours.

Whilst this seems to be rather extreme when considering my liberal views, it has been both necessary and extremely effective. I had been against the idea of imposing such a regime upon the better behaved pupils, thinking it unfair, but, since I need to be consistent with all the children, the less well behaved take advantage of it to the fullest, and a minor deviance by one child can cause a cascade of other unacceptable behaviour.

Luckily, the more respectful among the pupils rarely get more than one mark, meaning I never need to ring these pupils’ parents; the more boisterous pupils have, more or less, become manageable. There is still a lot of work, and probably a fair number of telephone conversations ahead of me, but I fell I have made headway into the problem.

The lessons with the younger pupils are more harmonious, meaning I can relax and have a lot more fun with them, which can only be good for their education. I seldom need to raise my voice, or become angry at their conduct, meaning I’m liking them more and more as individuals. This makes my job far more enjoyable, and I look forward to having lessons with them, a far cry from the Jon of a few months ago.