3221. A Student Council to Govern the Classroom?


 
Should students in some way decide about the class of students’ internal affairs?
In a former school I taught there was something nice, kind of a student council, and I think that was okay. The members, three students, have some decision-making competences. They were chosen by their classmates, at the beginning of the school year.
So they were kind of three representatives. They met with their head teacher or a class teacher every two weeks or so to deal with students’ stuff they could help out at. Since they had a vision the teacher hardly had they were useful to govern a class and help out their classmates.
For example they used to talk, at those meetings, about kids they could see they had some academic problems, or about some insane atmosphere there could be among the students, from time to time. Or they collected their classmates’ distress about any school subject way of conducting by any teacher. The rest of students knew and agreed those points would be talked about at the council meetings. The point was helping one another. Just that.
In that way some bad atmosphere, bad rumors or hearsays were cut off: the students had a channel to elevate their demands to the head teacher or teacher in charge of a class of students.
As well they commented on the way some small jobs were or were not being fulfilled by the students in charge of those small jobs. And they could help some student that could be not fulfilling his small job. Every student had his own small job in the classroom or in the school.
Not to say in what a marvelous way those kids matured with those small jobs or council membership. And this is important: if a council member said something bad about another kid, he was told to talk to that kid, personally, aside and in a nice way. The point was to prevent from mere talking bad about someone else.
Their classmates knew their things and stuff could be dealt with at the council meetings. And they agreed. They just wanted to help one another. / Photo from: Teacher-Lajevardi-in-class-hr calstate fullerton edu

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