A student is lazy. A class is lazy. A whole school is lazy. A whole generation is lazy. Teachers are lazy.
What lies behind this diagnosis of laziness? Who are those applying the label and who are those getting the label? Is laziness something new? Can it strike like a disease that spreads or is it more like an infection that has to be acquired by each individual from a specific cause?
Do we all have the same image when we say “lazy”?
Going on comments I’ve heard and read, I would say that ’lazy’ can often be interpreted as “not doing what I want them to do.” I wrote the foregoing a long time ago but called it up on reading a post from a fl teacher calling her students lazy.
Where are the supervisors who are supposed to help teachers understand the dynamics of their classrooms? Where is the time to read books that deal with this idea of laziness, unpack it, help us understand what it means? From what I’ve seen and read over the years, teachers are thrown into the classroom, given an impossible job, and asked to maintain their sanity. Unfortunately, more than one of our colleagues has had to be carried out by the little men in white coats (remember the song, “They’re coming to take me away, they’re coming to take me away.”?
Today I dealt with a series of classes that contrasted greatly – 3 large classes of freshmen and two small classes of kids who had failed AIMS – our state’s high-stakes test. Guess which set was easier to deal with? Why do you think that was?