This past academic year, I had many students who were in the habit of tipping back in their chairs so that the front legs were off the floor. I was constantly reminding students to put all four chair legs back on the floor. There were several reasons for this:
- The student is in danger of falling backward onto the floor, perhaps causing injury.
- Tipping the chair produces stresses on the chair that it was not designed for. I had a least two chairs broken last year, one metal and one wooden. I suspect chair tipping had something to do with their disfiguring.
- It creates an unstable support for a student who should be focusing on purposeful marks on a page.
However, life would have been a lot easier as a teacher if I could have stopped badgering students about this one thing. Some of them thought I was treating them like children, so maybe this is too nitpicky on my part.
What do you think?