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The Hidden Life of Students

Keeping an Open-mind

By Doors to LifePublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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The Hidden Life of Students
Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

Students are constantly getting into trouble at school even though they may be having a very hard time in life. This could include, working hard until late at night, having a mental illness or struggling with relationship. Many students from kindergarten through high school are suspended at least once every year. Some of these students who are suspended, are mentally drained due to external or internal events, that they have a hard time staying focused in class.

These students don’t mean to show a sign of disrespect to the teachers, they just have a hard time being on track when they have a lot on their minds. In his New York Times article, “Don’t Suspend Students. Empathize,” David L. Kirp persuades teachers to empathize for students and to take a second top think about them and what they might be going through. David L. Kirp effectively uses ethos, logos, and pathos, to urge teachers to not suspend but to empathize students, by gaining insight from a psychology professors’ perspective as a former student and including a case study.

Kirp includes an aspect form Jason Okonofua, a psychology professor at Berkeley, that his thoughts were “consumed by his friend’s misfortunes” and was “suspended several times” (Kirp, 2017, para. 2&3). A segment from an intervention encourages teachers to make students feel “heard, valued and respected” so that students can “grow and succeed” (Kirp, 2017, para. 12).

The intervention was created by Dr. Okonofua, Gregory Walton, Jennifer Eberhardt and Dave Paunesku because they noticed that teachers “struggle to maintain control of their classroom” (Kirp, 2017, para. 11) There was also a higher chance for those who had a different racial background to be suspended and so Dr. Okonofua states that he wants to “close the black-white suspension gap” (Kirp, 2017, para. 16)

By including statistics and reason, Kirp sufficiently argues the differences between black and white suspension rates. Hunter Gehlbach realized that having similarities can bring teachers and students together. He went out to diverse high schools to explore this idea and the results turned out that “the racial achievement gap at those schools was cut by more than 60 percent” (Kirp, 2017, para. 22).

Kirp including this data, gives teachers an eye opener that they can bond with students to create a better relationship. The racial background causes students “three times as likely than their white classmates to be suspended or expelled” (Kirp, 2017, para. 8). Kirp also reveals that “nearly 3.5 million students… was suspended at least once in the 2011-12 academic year” (Kirp, 2017, para. 6). In a case study, the concluding results from the teachers online tutorial and module experience, that mainly focused on “empathic discipline”, has “halved suspension rates” (Kirp, 2017, para. 13).

The final appeal that the author uses in his article is pathos. This is one of Kirp’s strongest appeal that he includes throughout his article. He starts off the article by delving in Dr. Okonofua from when he was a student in high school and explained how he “worked at a restaurant until midnight” and that the cause for him not focusing in class was because of “his friend’s misfortunes” (Kirp, 2017, para. 3) He also explained how “attacked and humiliated” he felt after receiving a suspension or even a detention. Other students who were constantly receiving discipline eventually “stop trusting their teachers” this creates a huge impact to the readers, specifically for teachers. Kirp touches the hearts of his audience through emotions which makes them think about empathizing for students. Not only does Kirp include the negatives but also the positive, he elucidates on how “teachers saw themselves as having formed closer ties with their students” with the help of Dr. Gehlbach and his colleagues (Kirp, 2017, para. 21)

Throughout the article, Kirp has adequately and persuasively used the three appeals, ethos, logos, and pathos in which he presents his argument that teachers should empathize for students and the positive results that happen when they do. The article will effectively let teachers think carefully before they give a detention or suspension to ta student who may be experiencing both physically and mentally fatigue. In conclusion, all of the rhetorical situations were involved in his article which makes it strong and persuasive.

References

David L. Kirp. (2017, September 2) Don’t Suspend Students. Empathize. The New York Times.

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Doors to Life

Welcome! Everyone has gone through multiple doors in their lifetime, so let's continue to discover more hidden door's about life. What will the next door lead you to? Let me tell you what I discover in life one door at a time!

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