The Current - Rudeness rampant in classrooms, say teachers

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Some teachers say kids are just plain ruder these days, with a sharp increase in interruptions and outbursts in the classroom. We look at what’s driving that incivility, and what it means for these kids’ education and the adults they’ll become. 

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. The kids in my class are very, very disrespectful. Just getting up and leaving is like a big thing in my classroom, especially because they just get up and leave. They honestly don't care. If you're a teacher, does that sound familiar? These high school students in Vancouver say their classmates are getting ruder, texting, gaming, talking out loud in class, and worse.

I know people who literally vape in the classes. Behind the teacher, I'll just see them. In their sleeve, they'll have their vape, and then behind the teacher, they'll just see them like in their sleeve they'll have their vape and then just like behind the teacher they'll just take a puff and then like also that like I know people who put it in their juice boxes oh my gosh yeah people put vapes in their juice boxes it's not just high schoolers these first year college students of Vancouver have also seen a big difference in their classrooms a lot of like personal conversations happening at the back of the class that are so distracting and then people won't engage with the instructor. It's not like a boisterous loud group that's

that is doing the incivility. It's almost the opposite that people are it's like a lack of engagement but definitely coming into school right at the head of COVID, I think a lot of kids learning from a Zoom platform, cameras off, that to me is what's played into a lot of this and that lack of engagement. And then being on your phone and feeling like it's comfortable to be playing games with someone behind you, you know, and it is just such a distraction. And for me, that's just very rude. There's that word again, rude. A new study backs up what these students are seeing. Kids and teachers reported a significant rise in classroom rudeness and incivility since the pandemic. We'll hear more about the study in just a moment. But first,

I'm joined by Maralinda Lamara. She's a secondary school teacher in the York Catholic District School Board in Ontario. Maralinda, good morning. Good morning. Just heard from those BC students about what's going on in their classroom. Does that sound familiar? Oh, it echoes exactly what we're seeing in our classrooms. Are kids vaping in your classrooms? Not in my classroom in particular, but I know they are vaping in the school bathrooms.

Tell me more about what's going on in your classroom. What do you see? Well, there's definitely a shift. There's an increase in disruptive students, you know, the talking over while I'm teaching. There's a lot of lack or there's a lack of self-regulation. They simply can't sit through a whole lesson. They don't seem accountable for their actions or managing their own behavior. And it's just become increasingly more noticeable post-COVID. I was going to say, how have things changed in your classroom since the pandemic? The one thing I've noticed most is the attention span. It's so short. They're so heavily reliant on their devices that they simply can't manage to sit through a 35 or 45 minute lesson any longer.

And how would that compare to before the pandemic? And we called it the before times. The before times. Well, there was almost more of a drive or more engagement with the students. And now they just seem to be off in their own little bubble and concerned about being on their phones or playing those games

or having those little conversations with their friends, really not acknowledging that they're being disruptive in the class. The decorum has shifted and there seems to be no concern that you're disrupting the teacher or you may be disrupting one of your peers. This study in particular focused on incivility. We're going to get a definition of that in just a moment in terms of what that means. But from your perspective there at the front of the class, what are you seeing in terms of not just disruptive behavior, but incivility or rudeness? There's a lot more outbursts. They feel students feel empowered to just speak out whenever they have a question on their mind or they just get up and throw something in the garbage or they ask to go to the bathroom in mid-sentence while I'm teaching.

Manners have gone out the door. Just how they talk to me as the teacher in the classroom, and even how they talk to one another, I've noticed that the decorum has made a paradigm shift. Okay, I can speak about one another in a moment, but what happens if you're in the mid, like mid-sentence, and somebody just interrupts you and asks whether they can get up and leave? Well, it's almost like you have to reteach manners. And you have to say, that's not an appropriate time to ask the question. I'll get to you when I'm done. You're disrupting the learning of your peers around you. It's almost, they need to be cued on how to behave properly in the classroom. How significant is the eye roll from the student when you say that? Pretty significant, yeah.

Pretty significant. It is seismic, yes. What about the behavior between each other? I mean, this is one thing, and I'm certainly not discounting how they interact with you, the teacher, but you said that there's a change in terms of how they interact with each other as well. Yeah, the interaction is, they're more rude to each other as well. They simply don't know how to be appropriate with one another. And the conflict resolution has decreased. If there's a situation going on in the classroom, it's more outburst yelling and kind of making

comments rather than, hey, let's figure out how we're going to do this and figure out a solution to the problem. You're trying to teach a lesson in the middle of all of this. What are you able to do? How do you get them back on track? A lot of redirection, a lot of cues, a lot of waiting and being patient for them to recognize that there's been a disruption. And if you ask them, I mean, you talked about the phone and people being on their phones, and we heard that from the students in BC as well, talking about kids just being on their phones. If you ask them, for example, or tell them to put the phone down, what happens? They put it down temporarily, but it's almost become an appendage for them that there's this need for them to have it in their hand in case they miss a message or whatever, or getting those game scores in. It's almost like they cannot put the phone down.

getting those game scores in. It's almost like they cannot put the phone down. Your province of Ontario saw schools closed to in-person learning during the pandemic for 135 days in total. That's longer than any other province in the country. How much of what you are talking about do you think is connected to those lockdowns? It is absolutely connected. You have no doubt about that? It is absolutely connected. You have no doubt about that? No doubt in my mind whatsoever.

They were at home behind a screen with no classroom instruction or decorum. They were pretty much, it was free range for them. They could do what they wanted. And they've seemed to have brought that into the classroom as well. And what worked during COVID, because that was how we were coping, doesn't necessarily work anymore in the classroom. So we kind of have to make a shift to get them back on track. And you haven't seen a course correction? I mean, that was a few years ago. You have not seen the students, you know, lean back into the behavior that would be more appropriate when it comes to in-person interaction?

Oh, I don't want to dispel it. There are students who have made the shift back. It's just been slower than anticipated. We thought once we got back after the first year, maybe the first year and a half, the expectation was we'd be back to regular classroom decorum, and that just didn't happen. It's slow. It's very slow, the process. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs.

And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hang on the line with us, Marilyn. I want to bring in

one other guest into our conversation. Natalie Spaffador is a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University.

And she led this study looking at the increase in incivility in the classrooms in the province of Ontario. Natalie, good morning to you. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. What exactly, I mean, we're talking about incivility and we'll get a definition of that, but broadly, what did your study look at? So we look at, so the theoretical basic definition of it is it's like this low level anti-social behavior. And so when we look at it, we look at it in the classroom, and we tend to focus on adolescents or like that kind of school setting. And so you surveyed, what, 300 students. Tell me about the age ranges and what particularly you were digging at.

Yeah, so we did two studies as part of this larger study. The first one was looking at our adolescent data. So we're really lucky here in Niagara. We have an ongoing partnership with Niagara Catholic School Board. So we had self-reported classroom incivility data from 2019. And then again, we went back in the classrooms in 2022. So they were high school students. And it's something we've been looking at ongoing. So we had that data, and we were able to compare self-reported rates, and we found a significant increase. And what was interesting about that is, you know, people would ask, oh, did everything go up, right? Like bullying

and emotional problems and all these other things we looked at, but statistically we didn't find significant differences with some of those other things, but we did find it with classroom incivility. I mean, one of the things it, you know, and it's not to excuse it, but there's always been bad behavior in the classroom, right? Kids talk, supply teacher comes in, you act worse. If you're in a music class, everybody changes instruments and it sounds like noise. This is different, right? This is about more than bad behavior. Yeah, totally.

So classroom incivility has been one of my main areas of research since I was a master student, PhD. My dissertation was on it. So it's not, this is a new thing that we're looking at. My supervisor, Dr. Volk looks at it. We all, it's all, but it's been a thing. But we were really interested, like exactly what you guys were already kind of discussing in light of the pandemic, and everyone was talking about decreased academics and decreased social skills and decreased self-regulation. So we were like,

well, what's happening with incivility specifically, which prompted the second part of the study of surveying primary teachers as well. So exactly what you guys are doing here, our best informants of what's going on in the classroom is we were like, let's ask teachers what's going on. And so we surveyed 101 Ontario primary school teachers as well to supplement some of our quantitative data to kind of be like, what's going on here? Can you explain it to us? So let's talk specifically, and you've hinted at it, but let's walk through some of the things that you learned through this study. When it came to incivility, what did you find? So the primary teachers were very clear, and it was interesting. This survey was interesting because we got to use

qualitative data as well, so kind of ask them, like, what's going on? Why do you think this is going on? And some of the themes, so we're kind of, you know, putting this all together here, like lack of self-regulation, increased individualism. There's a quote from a teacher, I think, in the paper, very similar to what was said already, like they were on Zoom. They could talk when they wanted. They could leave the room. They could do all these things. And that's kind of how they learned to be in school. And the quote that kind of inspired this whole study for me was a teacher said to me, it feels like they've forgotten how to be in school. And so, you know, lots of people will argue anecdotally that, you know, generationally and times have changed, but I do think we saw this like spike in the 2021,

2022 school year, especially. And I keep getting asked, do we think it's still there? And we haven't collected data on that yet. So I've been dying to talk to a teacher. So this has been really awesome because I think she kind of said, like, you know, we haven't seen it go back to normal. Hopefully it's gotten better, but which is kind of what we've kind of been saying all along too, is that it's probably not that nobody's going to say it's like 2019, but hopefully it's not as bad as 2021, 2022. What does that mean that kids, and this comes out directly in the report,

that kids miss the chance to learn how to be in school? What does that mean? So to me, I think one teacher said it best to me. They were like, they were saying, you know, you have a kid in grade three who now did like Zoom learning for presumably more or less two years, right? Like on and off, we were in and out. So the expectations and things that you would teach in grade one, they kind of missed out on. supervisor Dr. Tony Volk, we did a paper looking at students and teachers and if they perceive it differently, like just in general classroom incivility. And one of the things there was that even though they kind of think about it differently, they know what's happening and that kind of thing. So yeah. I mean, the other part of this is not learning how to act

in the classroom for younger kids, but older kids as well, you suggest in the study, aren't used to being part of a group and that that could impact how they behave when they are moving from remote learning back to in-person learning. Yeah, I think one of the things, and we found this in other studies as well, one of the things to remember about a lot of this uncivil behavior is a key component, at least how we define it, is that there's an ambiguous intent to cause harm. So that's what makes it different from like bullying or aggression or these other things we talk about. So for example, one of the items on our scale is packing up books before a lesson is over and like rushing to the back of the door, let's say, right? Presumably if a student's doing that, for the most part, I think a lot of people would argue

they're probably not doing it. They're like, I'm going to make my teacher upset and make them feel bad and pack up my books and leave. They're probably just thinking about themselves, right? They're probably just thinking, I need the best soccer ball. I'm meeting my friend at recess or I have to get to my soccer practice or whatever it is, right? So they're just thinking about themselves and not thinking about the implications on other people.

In our other data we've collected, you know, adolescents are very quick to say, they'll say, oh, it disrupts me when people talk during class, but they'll just as quickly admit to doing it themselves. So it's this interesting, like, about themselves or like their social life or whatever it might be, but kind of forgetting about the group dynamic and what that might be implicating on a broader scale. And it's not just teachers that are reporting this. As you've hinted at, students are also self-reporting more incivility. reporting more incivility? Yeah, so in this particular study, they complete our classroom incivility scale that has a variety of items from packing up books before our lessons over, texting during class, talking when the teacher's talking, and they report how often they've done these things. So for this study, we statistically compared the rates those three years apart, fall 2019 and fall 2022, and it was significantly higher in our fall 2022 data.

Are we sure that this is just the pandemic? We heard those students at the beginning of our conversation. They're from British Columbia. Schools in that part of the country weren't shut down for anywhere near as long as schools where you are in Ontario, and yet those students are seeing similar behaviors. Kids around them are just as rude as the kids in Ontario are. So how do we know that this is just the pandemic? Yeah, I wouldn't say it's just the pandemic.

You know, a lot of people anecdotally will argue, you know, generational changes, or even if it's not higher, I would say behaviors change over time, right? So even something as simple as when we measure behavior, 10 years ago when we did it, texting during class wasn't an item on our scale, but now it definitely is.

So things do change, and there's a lot of things at play here that we didn't measure we could talk about. But I think the key component of this study was that we did see like this very heightened like spike. There was a spike for sure. So even if you could argue and we don't we haven't we don't have the data on this to show like, you know, over forever that it is increasing. But we definitely saw a spike in that school year that was unprecedented in the sense that they just didn't have they weren't able to lay the foundation. And the caveat to this is that that piece of it, the spike is really nobody's fault, right? Like teachers often talk about laying the foundation and school rules and all these things. And they've told us like, we didn't get to do all that. We

kind of came back to the classroom and, you know, there's practical limitations to this. They have curriculum to cover and all these things. So that was just a function of the environment and the context. So I definitely don't think it's the only thing at play, but we definitely did see a spike related to this lack of practice. I just wonder whether the behavior is a mirror of what's going on in larger society. I mean, the schools don't exist, you know, on some sort of magic island removed from the rest of society. They're part of society.

And how we act on the street and how we act to each other outside of school presumably would bleed into what happens in the classroom. 100%. Like we measure classroom behavior. So our data and our scales are very focused on the classroom and that's what we focused on. But people keep asking me like, why do we care about incivility and civility? And exactly what you said, in our broader society, being civil at a very basic level is what we want. That's who we want to deal with at the Costco lineup. That's who we want to deal with when we're at work. So fostering civility at a young age.

So we have civil children, civil adolescents, and then civil adults that we're dealing with one day is what we want. So you're exactly right. At a really basic level, I think, I would argue that's what we all want, right? Just basic civil everyday interactions at a bigger picture level. Marilinda Lamara, who's been listening in, teacher in a classroom in Ontario. I don't know whether you still have parent-teacher interviews, whether you talk with the parents about how their kids are doing in the classroom. How aware do you think parents are

of what their children are up to in your classroom? I think they're fairly aware of what's going on. I think we just need to get back to the basics where we're teaching that civility, we're teaching proper manners, and we're teaching, you know, how to, you know, knock on someone's door and say, hey, I'm here, can I come in? Or, you know, how to even just to speak on a telephone, how to talk to someone in the Costco lineup. I think we need to get back to the basics and get there. And then I think we can see a shift, I think, in overall civility, but mainly in the classroom. But do you think the parents have a role to play in this, to tell their kids?

I mean, again, telling a teenager what to do is a bit fraught at the best of times, but telling kids, listen, I mean, how you behave matters. And we've heard from the teacher, we've heard that you're getting up and just walking into the classroom, that you're on your phone, that you, the parents have a responsibility in this as well. Well, if I could put my mom hat on for a minute, I teach my kids that. So I'm hoping that this is happening in households around so that we can all kind of be on the same playing field. I think it's very important the parents do have a role to play in teaching their kids how to cope in the classroom, how to cope in society. We need to give them those skills. Do you ever lose it in the classroom when kids are acting like this? I mean, I just wonder,

you sound very calm, great teacher, but you must be frustrated as well. The frustration happens mainly in my head, and I'm very careful with what comes out of my mouth. But yes, of course, the frustration is there, but you can't. You have to keep in mind that they are kids and they do need to learn. And we are, as a teacher in the classroom, we are their point of teaching or we are a point of how to manage. So, yes, you kind of have to maintain your composure and move forward that way. Natalie, what do we do about this for parents, kids and for educators who are listening? What do we do to make sure that classrooms, society broadly is a bigger problem, but classrooms are more civil?

Yeah, I think I would echo exactly what Marilyn just said, like the very basic level teaching civility. I think often when we hear it, you hear the term civility, it sounds like an old outdated term that, you know, you don't talk about anymore. But I think taking it back to basics is really important. And I think just remembering that a lot of some of these behaviors, you know, some of them are get more annoying, but some of them really low level, they don't seem like that big a deal individually, you know, and teachers have told us practically, if I stopped every time, you know, I would never get through a lesson. And obviously, there's practical limitations to this. But just remembering that cumulatively, we know from teachers, students and like our research that it can have negative effects. So just really

understanding it and putting an emphasis on I think is really important. So I think I'd really echo what Marilyn did just said. Marilyn, what are you most concerned about if this behavior continues and changes? You don't see changes in the classroom. If I don't see changes, I'm worried about what we're going to be as a society as a whole. If it's not happening in the classroom, in the broader outside environment, how are we going to interact with one another? That's my main concern. So not only do I teach academics, but we're teaching them life skills. And if those life skills are not being learned, how are they going to react when they move out into the real world? Briefly, Natalie, for you, what are you most concerned about if this doesn't change?

I just think we know that left unchecked, it can escalate to higher level antisocial behavior and, you know, just the way we kind of treat each other. So I think, again, yeah, really back to basics. We want a civil society. I mean, look around. We look around the world. There's, you know, the news every day. We just really want a civil society. And that's exactly it. Civil children mean civil adults. And that's what we all want. This is a really interesting snapshot of what's happening in the classroom. Maralinda, good luck today. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. And Natalie, thank you. Thank you very much, guys. This is great. Marilyn DeLaMara is a secondary school teacher in the York Catholic District School Board.

We reach her in Vaughan, Ontario. Natalie Spadafora is a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. Does this sound familiar? Are you an educator, a student, a parent? What are you seeing in your classroom, hearing from your kids, and how do we better model civility in our classroom and beyond? You can email us thecurrentatcbc.ca. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.