darrianation

I saved that document to my computer so I can read it later.

As a parent myself of one preteen and a 9 year old I certainly make mistakes and at times have no idea how to handle certain situations.

My 9 year old has been in two fights at school this year (he is in 3rd grade), I am aghast because when we talk about these issues he certainly knows what to do and ways of handling these situations without violence but when the time comes he simply looses his temper and makes the wrong decisions.

He has to know there will be consequences for his actions. We talk about what happened and what he could have done differently that would have lead to a different more preferable outcome. We also sat down with his teacher and principle and discussed these same issues (I called for the conference because they didn’t ask to see me or my wife). At home he is grounded from going to his friends houses, the computer, and the XBOX, he also lost his Halloween party he has been anxiously planning, and given extra chores to do.

At home he is also responsible for his behavior, his dealings with his sister, he has chores he is assigned to around the house, a bedtime, a wake up time, etc, that he is very good at following. I spend a lot of time away from home and that maybe the biggest factor.

I am dedicated to staying home more and I am volunteering in his class room 2 days a week hoping this will make a difference.

Whenever there is a problem at school rather it is behavior or academics or something else my wife and I work with the teachers to get things back on track. We keep in contact with their teachers through phone calls, emails, and meetings. My wife is on some parent board at the Jr. High and we encourage our kids to play sports, my daughter is in student council and 4H, my son is on a private wrestling team (AAU) and cub scouts, and both kids are on the swimming team AAU. My daughter does volunteer work with cultural center where she has worked on bat surveys studying bats, building trails, and doing archeology. The hope is they stay busy and make friendships with kids that will hopefully be positive influences.

We also have a family day once a week, for example later today we will take the kids go-cart riding, play mini golf, and eat at there favorite restaurant Serious Texas BBQ.

Many families are single parent homes but even so not very many seem to take great interest in their kids. The teachers at both the Jr. High and the elementary school where my son goes often tell us that they wished more parents would be as involved with their children’s education and parent interest and involvement seems rather rare.

I think setting rules, setting boundaries for behavior and enforcing those rules and boundaries consistently with appropriate consequences and being genuinely interested and involved with your kids is the most important thing you can do as a parent. This may not solve every problem and no parent is perfect but we can always do a better job if we truly care to.

BTW, the teachers told us that in both fights the other kid started it and shoved him first but fighting is fighting and both paricpents are equally guilty.

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treelizard

Classroom management has definitely been an exercise in nailing jello to the wall. After ten weeks of trial and error, I feel like I am finally maybe getting somewhere.

Jubaji's the expert.

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Tom Yum

You hit the nail on the head!

I get into some heated discussions with more liberal folks about this. They want to give kids the RIGHT to watch violent, disturbing stuff on video or t.v. and don't seem to understand how this (and other factors as well) contribute to these Columbine-like shootouts.

I also agree that parents let too much stuff slide these days.

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treelizard

It depends. I think some kids could watch horror films and play video games and turn out fine whereas for others it might be a problem. I think the problem is different for each individual, and I think it's difficult for teachers and even parents sometimes to really see the whole story... I notice this when I am meeting with parents to talk about a student's behavior. After hearing how they act in three other classes, how they act at home and what is going on I usually have a much better sense of what is going on... i.e. This kid is on probation and on drugs and his brother just died, this kid got really behind when his parents were in the hospital and didn't catch up, this kid does work in one class but not others and the variable is possibly xyz, this kid is engaging in attention-seeking behavior, this kid has brothers in jail and in gangs.

There is not just one clearcut solution that will work across the board, only a variety of approaches that require looking at each child as an individual... The problem is that it takes a lot of effort to get every possible person together to do that. I spent three hours with a parent the other day along with a variety of other people including teachers. I can't do that for every one of my 125 students. We attempt to replicate it as a teaching team by meeting with every single parent in one of our classes and relaying information from other teachers that have that student, but if parents don't want to meet all the outreach in the world won't help. And some parents have no transportation. It really is a conundrum. And while there are specific people that I can call on to provide support and discipline intervention for students who I think really need it, it would have to be a small number.

Ultimately I think the responsibility of teachers is to teach. Research shows that only 50% of what goes on in the classroom is instruction. The rest of the time is filled up with various distractions, and management/discipline is a big part of that time. Right now many teachers are working very hard on writing tests that allow us to see student thought process. That means all essay tests and short response. These are harder to grade but are more useful in providing instructional intervention for students that need it or enrichment activities to help students that "get it" achieve mastery. Between writing cohesive unit plans, lesson plans and tests, using the information received to make changes for specific and timely (academic) intervention and everything else that needs to be done, it's hard to take on responsibility for monitoring the actions of 125 kids.

For example...This weekend, I have to finish entering and posting grades, grade about 60 writing tests, work on assessment questions and bridge activities for some unit design for my team, write sub plans for next week for some classes I need to miss during a training, buy materials for a lesson on Monday, create a folder to demo for Monday's folder check so people will need to see what the material they are responsible for turning in looks like (focusing on 21st century learning skills), create a rubric so students can start scoring their own effort (we are creating effort/achievement logs so they can start to see the correlation between the two, which research shows they don't get at that age), create new worksheets because the ones from the materials we have suck. I'm also working on looking at students who are at risk for failing this standardized test they have to take so I can provide specific skills they each need to work on for Wednesday (my reteach to the test day) which takes a long time because it is different for each student. I am trying to group it so that I won't go insane having to teach 31 kids 31 different things. THEN I have about fifteen parents to call, many of which will not be home or will not return the phone call (although I give them my work, home AND cell phone number), and many of which will not speak English. I can give THOSE names to our student involvement coordinator, but it's not quite the same. This is in addition to all the other crap I want to do this weekend (pay bills, do laundry, bake cookies, work out, do my dishes, spend some time with my neighbor and my boyfriend, go to an event this weekend, do some volunteer work). Knowing that I am doing the best I can, if a student falls through the cracks while I am doing all this, I'm not going to feel personally responsible. They likely had interactions with about 100 other teachers up until now, not to mention their parents and any other adults available to them. I can't speak for all teachers but I think MANY of them are doing the best they can.

I will say that I'd rather spend the majority of my time working on this: http://cs1.mcm.edu/~awyatt/csc3315/bloom.htm
and on this:
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ind...what_framework

rather than this:
http://www.loveandlogic.com/pages/classroom.html

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Mike Brewer

I think a healthy combination of fear and respect for adults and their social authority (like the assumed authority of a teacher in a classroom) should be brought back to American life poste haste.

When I was young, teachers had big wooden paddles they'd tan your ass with if you got out of line. There were boxing teams at school, so if you had a problem with a bully, you learned how to beat his ass. Neighbors could snatch you up by the ear and blister your ass if you did something stupid, and then they'd send you home for more of the same from your parents. We didn't need to rely on adults for our solutions as much, because we had outlets that worked. One kid could fight another kid without worrying about someone coming back with six friends and a gun, and whether he won or lost, he got respect for putting up a good fight. That's all changed.

We're a "time-out" generation of self-centered people who feel like we're owed an education, owed a living, and owed our personal comfort and security. Life hasn't got the same sense of consequence that it did for generations past, and it hurts us in virtually every area of life. Look at our politicians. Issues are debated based on the next four years or the next election timeline. No one's thinking about a society that needs to last hundreds of years into the future. No one's talking about what to do to earn anything - it's all about spending what we have. We as a society have come to feel - tragically, in my opinion - that we are entitled to everything we want. We don't earn, we don't work, we don't struggle, and as a consequence, we aren't forced to recognize our place in the world with any realistic hue. We don't make ourselves overcome our obstacles anymore. We throw fits until someone steps in - be it teachers or government (Fix Health Care! It should be free! I shouldn't have to pay!). And if someone doesn't step in fast enough or with the solution we want? We throw a bigger fit. Sometimes it's protests, and sometimes it's shooting a bunch of our peers before we off ourselves for the news crews, but it all comes right back down to a false sense of who we are, and a completely warped sense of what the world owes us as individuals.

In my opinion, we need to be teaching our children that it's okay to stand up for themselves. It's okay to fight back when fighting back is the right thing to do. When my son is older, if he runs into a bully at school, I hope he'll step up and pop the little bastard right in the chops. If he gets his ass kicked and then gets suspended by some overly PC principal who doesn't care who started it, I'll pick him up from school, hug him, and take him out for ice cream. And if the bullying doesn't stop, you'd better believe I'll be at that school each and every day until it does. I'll visit the parents of a bully, and I'll bring police with me if required. But it will not go ignored, and it won't be handled in a way that takes the power, responsibility, or the consequence away from my son. He will come away understanding that you have a responsibility to stand up as an individual, whether that means duking it out on the playground, or going to the cops and authorities yourself.

And if his teachers do nothing, even after he's told them what's happening, I'll make it my life's purpose to see them fired and drummed out of any industry that involves the care or supervision of children. Teachers should teach. But they should also realize that for seven or eight hours of every day, parents are trusting them with the safety and well-being of the most treasured parts of their lives. If they don't spend some of that time supervising in addition to their teaching, who's supposed to do it? They chose to be teachers - the caretakers of the minds of students. What are they teaching if they only worry about math or reading or science at the expense of safety, responsibility, and accountability? What example are they providing if they ignore bullying and tormenting because it simply isn't on the curriculum?

Tom Yum

Sounds good, Mike!!

I've thought about the exact same thing, if I have kids. I'm going to teach them muaythai and grappling; not just as a hobby & exercise but also so they can take care of business.

We had an intermural wrestling team in middle school (unfortunately my highschool got a wrestling team about 2 years after I graduated). All of the type-A personality kids joined and we used to settle scores that way, in front of the coach and with some rules.

The mat was a wonderful equalizer.

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treelizard

The problem is that there are school policies for handling bullying, fighting, etc. and they most often entail sending BOTH people out for consequences despite who started it. Then people other than teachers deal with it. Teachers can relay what happened as they saw it, and check to see if people follow through but that's about the extent of it.

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treelizard

One more thing, though... In the article I post, the situation WAS dealt with. The kid was suspended for fighting. Before a student is suspended, it is likely that their parents have already been contacted, meetings have been had, detentions etc. have been assigned, students have already been talked to and other interventions have been made. I fail to see how the school in question was ignoring bullying.

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Mike Brewer

Were the bullies given detentions? Were their parents called? Is there anything to legitimately suggest that this was a fourth or fifth offense that was addressed each time by the school? Of course, we'd like to see that happen, but it doesn't happen that way as much as it should. What ordinarily happens is that the signs go unreported until it becomes physical, and then both aprties are automatically suspended, regardless of who instigated.

"Ignoring" is the wrong word. Better perhaps to say that they're simply dealing with it the wrong way, or that their chosen policies and actions are inadequate. Suspension is not an appropriate punishment for a kid who's beating up a fellow student. Nevermind that the student on the receiving end should not be punished. The bully - or anyone who hits another student - should become a bona-fide part of the legal system they learn about in Civics class. Charge them with a crime, and make it school policy to press charges. Schools are owned by the state, city or county if they're public, right? So if a crime happens on public property, the governing authorities with jurisdiction have a right to prosecute regardless of what they parties involved have to say. They do it with domestic violence all the time. Why not school violence? You can be sued and fired from your job for making inappropriate sexual jokes. Why do we stop at a slap on the wrist when it comes to a student's beating up on a weaker student? Now I'll grant you that a responsible parent makes a suspension an awful thing. When I got suspended from school, I came home to a good, healthy beating from my parents (yes, both of them), and confinement at hard labor. I spent time on very demanding, difficult, often completely pointless tasks like moving large stacks of firewood from one part of the yard to another for ten hours a day. My father would take sick days to make sure I was in hell at home. The problem is that when kids get suspended nowadays, they go home to an iPod, a Playstation, and Pay-Per-View or Netflix. Their parents go to work, and the kids get a free, school-mandated vacation and maybe one or two "I'm really disappointed in you" speeches from Mom and Dad. Then they laugh about it with their friends via text messaging.

I would vastly prefer that parents get tougher and take more responsibility for making their kids fear and respect the consequences of getting out of line. I would vastly prefer that people on the whole take more accountability for what goes on in their families period. But I also wish that schools would acknowledge that they are the publicly designated caretakers of a majority of our nation's children for the better part of each weekday. I wish that they would do more than check an administrative box when students start harming one another. It's just not enough to say, "Well, we gave him detention, and that didn't work. Then we called his mom and dad, and that didn't work. Then we sent him home, and remarkably, that didn't work either." The reason all those previous steps don't work is because no kid respects them as consequences. Now, a nice cold concrete slab bed in the local jail and a few court appearances, coupled with hefty fines, long hours of community service (picking up bubble-gum wrappers by the side of the road is almost as good as moving large stacks of firewood across the yard, though it lacks the sweat factor), and maybe exclusion from any and all extra-curricular activities for the very first offense would be better. If the jocks are picking on the Goth kids, and that costs them their spot on the football team, the basketball team, and the wrestling team the very first time? Might go farther and send a stronger message.

I'd still rather see parents lock the bullies up in the back yard and make them dig great big holes and fill them back in again, or turn large rocks into small rocks with a very heavy hammer all day in the blazing sun. I just don't see it making a comeback.

So in the meantime, I recommend schools stop coddling bullies and ignoring victims by calling these incidents anything but what they truly are: Crimes of violence committed against weaker students by stronger ones. As such, schools should be prosecuting these things the same way they would if one teacher were to attack another. Criminal and civil courts exist preceicely for such events, and the events themselves are defined as crimes precisely so that they can be addressed in court. Dismissing it as "bullying," or anything other than a criminal act for that matter, is just not good enough.

treelizard

There is no evidence that specifically suggests this was a 3rd or 4th offense, but there isn't anything to suggest it isn't either. Students are protected by FERPA (privacy) laws so it's not like we can pull his file. THIS article makes it sound like he was more often the victim of bullying, however.
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs....WS01/710120357

I don't know how to quantify "it doesn't happen that way as much as it should." I can't think of a single teacher that ignores bullying, though. And the fact that teachers can't send kids to jail or make them do community service or whatnot doesn't mean they don't want to. We're not even allowed to make kids sit on the floor or do push-ups due to parent complaints and phone calls...

I just met with a parent the other day who I told to come to my class with her son so she could see the way he behaves. She said she thought his behavior in class was our fault because we're not strict enough with him... so where does she fit in? She also said it was not her responsibility to see that he gets to school after she sends him out... Hmmm... Whose responsibility is it then?

Students in my district can and do have charges filed against them. It would be impossible to file charges against every single student that behaves inappropriately, though, but if it goes to the administrative level they do use legal terminology in recording it... Many of our kids (as was this Cleveland kid) are on probation already.

In my school, if detentions and parent conferences and suspensions don't work, students get expelled. It takes a while to get to that point but it does happen. We try to avoid it because the kids will probably end up dealing drugs and joining gangs and such, and we follow a pretty specific discipline matrix (so that nobody is getting expelled over not having a pencil in class), but in the words of one of my favorite administrators "you can only give so many chances." So there it is.

Of course, people will whine and complain if we discipline students, if we don't discipline students, if we follow district procedure, if we don't follow procedure, etc. Teachers are supposed to decide who may be potentially dangerous or liable to commit crimes in school and can be sent to jail for not mentioning those suspicions. They are well aware of that--at least around these parts. Whether or not the administration or whoever is assigned to take care of discipline follows through or not is often out of teacher's hands, and they often have reasons for how they handle things. I wish I knew exactly how things went down in that school in Cleveland, but I know that at V-Tech teachers had definitely voiced concerns that weren't addressed...

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Mike Brewer

Oh, treelizard, believe me: I don't fault the teachers. I fault the whole system.

The way you quantify it is to look at how many times the actions taken have stopped the bullying. If they aren't working, then no one is actually "dealing with it." They may be reactig to it, but that means little in terms of effect. I don't hold teachers responsible for not being allowed to do what they'd like to do. I wish they were not only allowed, but requird, to take issues like these to the police. I wish our school system had backbone enough to place the safety of a child over the delicate sensibilities of a bully's parents. I wish they could throw the bully behind bars regardless of what mom and dad think, so long as they have proof of a crime, and I wish they didn't have to bow down to every little complaint. I wasn't taking aim at teachers with my comments, but rather at all the people and mechanisms that don't allow them to be the caretakers of our children. We are required by law to send our kids to school, and nothing in that law provides for their safety and supervision once there. That's asking an awful lot of a parent, in my opinion. And when concerns are voiced but ignored, in my opinion, that makes the administrators complicit. I think the bottom line is that situations like these should not be looked at as simple disciplinary issues. Bullying is not a disciplinary issue - it's a crime. When one student beats up another, it's called battery. If he gets away with that, or if the act itself falls somewhere in the same spectrum as being late for class too many times, there's a bigger problem. If tardiness earns you a detention, and somehow we accept that aggravated battery will also earn you a detention, what does that say about the common sense and intelligence of the people charges with educating our youth?

treelizard

We have a discipline matrix at my school with four different levels... Level 4 violations include assault on school personnel or assault/fighting resulting in serious injury or possession of weapons. Level 3 includes assault, fighting, bullying or intimidation. In either case, the police are contacted, students are suspended and there is a parent conference. Level 4 offenses require a long-term hearing. Horseplay is relegated to level 1, however...and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between horseplay and fighting. I'm still not exactly clear on it.

As far as quantifying whether actions taken stop the bullying, and if not, no one is "dealing with it"--well there are a lot of people in and out of jail for all kinds of violent crimes and I'm guessing that not many of them reform. So if the consequences don't work, does that mean that the police (etc.) are simply reacting to it but not dealing with it?

I am really pleased with the discipline system in my school, but it certainly doesn't stop bullying or violence...or there wouldn't be any need for the consequences.

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Mike Brewer

Can we both agree that there is a distinct difference between a school sending a kid home for bullying and the police locking a kid up in jail for assault or battery? One is a punishment that, to me, doesn't inspire much fear. The other one carries with it more serious consequences, especially if the bullies are college-minded jocks, and they lose their spots on teams, their scholarships, and their chances at acceptance into good schools because they have been labelled in an official criminal record as a violent offender.

What does an official school record do to you after graduation? I can list dozens of things a violent offense in criminal court does - not the least of which is accomplishing the schools current goal of removing the problem child from the school.

treelizard

Of course there's a difference between getting suspended and getting locked up for fighting in the severity of the punishment, but if you're judging it solely based on the outcome (as you indicated), there's really not that much of a difference. Sometimes people shape up, often they do not. I'm not entirely convinced that more serious consequences always stop the behavior.

Don't juvie records disappear when you turn 18?

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Mike Brewer

No, juvenile records don't always disappear. Some offenses (like violent crimes, for example) hang around for four years after your 21st birthday, and to get them to go away, you have to have gone that entire time without committing another offense, and you must file a request that the files be sealed or expunged. It varies by state, of course, but I can tell you from recent training that offenses like that can keep someone from entering the military (see Lautenberg Act), getting a security clearance, qualifying for some types of credit or student loans, purchasing a firearm, and all sorts of other things. Some college scholarships will also disqualify students with criminal records.

It carries more weight than getting sent home by the principal.