I have spent the last 2 days Model Un-ing myself with 20+ 9-12th graders. Individually, I find most of them to be nice, young people. emphasis on “most” of them. However as a group, I find them to be crude and immature. We sat in an auditorium. They had their feet hanging over other chairs. They made comments in the silence as other students were going to get awards. They can’t sit on the bus and talk normally to each other, they felt the need to shout or poke or prod each other. I had to speak to them 3 times on the bus. I don’t know that I have had to speak to them about their behavior three times in all the times I have been doing this. We stopped for food at a fast food restaurant. It was like it was a brand new experience for them. They are shouting back and forth to each other. To me it was immaturity and I felt some of it was just class-less. To me, the only way to teach class is to demonstrate it. So I told them to get their feet off the seats and stop making rude comments, etc. But I don’t feel like that’s the best way to do that. How do you teach “class”?
