Most elementary classrooms share a common theme. Besides behavior boards, displayed classwork, televisions, etc. there are those boards that show who has what jobs for the week. I have seen job boards with only a few jobs listed and most students on deck for another week and I have seen job boards where every student in the room has a job. Once the common jobs like lunch basket, paper passer, mailman/messenger, and librarian are filled the teacher has to start getting creative with jobs like watering the plants, policing the floor, watching the clock (so the teacher doesn’t go into that valuable recess time of course), massage the teacher, window… wait, what? Back up there- massage the teacher?? Okay, I admit I have not seen this one myself but apparently a Florida third-grade teacher had this job on her board. I say had as not only does the job not exist anymore in that classroom but neither does the teacher. Needless to say, when the parents found out about this one some were quite upset. Fifty years ago everyone might have just gotten a laugh out of it but in today’s climate of teachers, erm, getting just a bit too close to their students (and going to prison for it) it is understandable that parents wouldn’t like this. The article makes it clear there was nothing like that sort of hanky-panky going on, but the district decided to let the teacher go for her inappropriateness. Well, we can all guess that’s why she was fired- the school just said it was a “personnel matter.” Anyway, read the article here:
Teacher Fired After Asking Her Students For Massages
PS. I am now waiting for this sort of job to show up in the classrooms I sub in- would be nice…
I imagine if that was available for teachers, there would be a few more people wanting to get into the field….
Never heard of that chore in any of the schools I was in. I may have stuck through the Math teacher bit I was going for in college, if I could get a daily massage. Just someone to lightly karate chop the neck and shoulders would be good.
But from what I just read it is also a good way to lose a job.
Yes, I can see where that would be a problem. Only a parent would complain about that. Unless the other teachers were jealous because they were not getting a massage was well.
jamiahsh: 😀
justj: Not sure I would trust an adolescent with the massage job anyway (you mention math teacher, which generally means middle school and up). Trying to get a teen to do any job for that matter is…not easy.
Now did she ask the students for a massage or use it to reward them? If they saw it as a reward and it wasn’t inappropriate, then I would say it was effective. However, in this day and age, you can’t trust anyone under these circumstances… not termination-worthy in my opinion, but I can see why they would ask the teacher (male or femaale by the way? Guess I should read the article) to stop the massages.
Kids like a lot of things as reward- I wonder how it would have worked out as a reward?
Friend in another class: I got some stickers as a reward today.
Student in this class: So what? I got to massage the teacher- how cool is that?