It's been on the news today that children are losing up to an hour per day of learning because of disruptions in the classroom.  Ofsted have put some of the blame on heads and teachers having blurred lines with their students and not imposing clear rules.

Below the radar low level disruption is being blamed for taking away the teachers attention from teaching.

I agree that children need a set of rules to follow, I have taught children martial arts for over 20 years, we have rules that must be adhered to.

However, parents must also take some responsibility for the behaviour of their children in school or after school club.  I have a really good relationship with the parents of my students and they know the rules I set are there to hep their children become better martial artists / people in general.

I have food rules that the children must follow prior to my class and the children get punished (exercise wise not hit with a cane) if they break them.  

How do I know if they've broken them?  Their behaviour is different.  They become unruly, less focussed and easily distracted.  They are basically harder to teach and take up more of my time and thus the other children lose teaching time.

I was a disruptive student at school and in my early martial arts days.  The food I ate didn't have the same stuff in as modern processed foods; it must have had an affect but I was generally hyper and couldn't keep my mouth shut.  I still struggle with attention issues and keeping my mouth shut, which is definitely made worse when I don't pay attention to the foods that I eat.

I also did a lot of activity, I worked out earlier that I would do a 30 mile round trip on my BMX just to get to a local-ish aquatics shop on both weekend days, I would get home and try to convince my parents that I needed tropical fish.  They eventually caved in.

It was the time before home computers, so we would play out in the street and run around everywhere.  It's more likely that this activity is the reason that children were generally not obese back then, I'll write more about my theories on that soon.

Most kids don't burn off anywhere near enough energy.  Then get to school and are expected to sit still for hours in lessons, if they were even a little physically tired it might help.  If they weren't jacked up on fruit shoots it might help a little more.

Teachers have a hard job, trying to educate children who are not in the right frame or state to learn effectively; as you might guess I have strong opinions on some of the methods being used that I will get to in the future.  

We need to take some responsibility for our own health and that of the children around us.  Feeding them real food and allowing them to burn off some energy before school could make a massive difference.

And certainly don't give them an energy drink or bar for breakfast.  If a child requires an energy product to get moving, they are ill and need to have a health assessment.  Children should be grenades of energy waiting to explode, apart from a couple of years during puberty in their teens when they are moody and need to sleep more.

Rant over, I'll explain more about my points above in the near future. 

Darren "is still a little disruptive in class" Checkley