another school shooting

[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.

[Tom Yum]

The libs want to take our guns and repubs too like Giuliani but they don't seem to mind when Hollyweird makes brutally violent movies and parents don't seem to want to monitor or restrict what their kids watch or what video games they play. Parents don’t want to punish their kids for getting in fights at school or staying out past their curfew, or even setting a curfew. Coupled that with the example their own parents are setting with their own lack of discipline among other factors that add up to a generation of kids with no self-restraint.

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.

[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/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=195&Itemid=112#what_framework

rather than this:

http://www.loveandlogic.com/pages/classroom.html

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.dll/article?AID=/20071012/NEWS01/710120357

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...

[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.

[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?

[treelizard]

Since the guy was willing to kill himself, I'm not sure either consequence would've stopped.

[treelizard]

It might have if action had been taken when the bullying started instead of months or years later...

I'm still not sure what makes you believe it wasn't addressed when it started.

[Tom Yum]

Memories...

I went to highschool with some pretty bad dudes. The school itself was located in a decent area, but with re-districting and all kinds of other district politics, most of our students shipped in from not so good areas with not so good homes.

I think alot of adults were naive at the time (most of the 90's) and thought that highschool was still something akin to Leave it to Beaver...seriously. I remember during my sophomore year seeing atleast 2 fights a day, getting jumped twice and one occasion where several police officers were called to break up a riot. Bullying wasn't a case by case thing; it was a random, unpredictable thing.

You come down the hallway, accidentally make eye contact with the wrong guy, gold teeth and all - the next thing you know you're in a fight (none of this meet me in the parking lot bs) and the only way people would stop messing with you was if you fought back and sometimes the fighting back part got bad.

Most of us used to joke that we attended a public prison, rather than highschool - all kinds of kids trying their hardest to be hard and be a gangsta'. At that time, only the thugs/bullies were packing - not the regular kids you see today - seeing what's happening today sadly makes sense. Its just a reaction to what's been happening daily in public school for the last 10+ years with no sense of justice?

[treelizard]

The reason I think it may have been addressed in the best way teachers/administrators knew how to address it is because I have seen people address things properly and it not change student perception or behavior. One of my students was expelled for bullying, and I have documentation of many many many many many interventions that were tried (yes the police and counselors were involved). I have several students who ARE on probation and also act up in school... yes they are mentally and emotionally screwed up, but I don't think that's necessarily due to improper interventions.

I'm not in the teacher's union so I can't address their website.

What that tells me, the average parent, is that no one there cares about my kid as much as they do pay raises or carpal tunnel, and that no one will step in with any kind of fairness or judgement if my kid gets bullied at school. No one is going to report a criminal to the police if a kid beats up on my boy, and if he's going to stand a chance, he'd better learn to fight and not get caught. If he gets caught, well, he'll be treated just like the guys who beat him up, and he'll get sent home. Not cool.

Not necessarily true.

[treelizard]

I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all. I write a lot of referrals. I'm suggesting that teachers could follow all the proper procedures and kids could still be violent anyway. I think blaming teachers for not addressing these issues is misguided; there is more at play and it starts at home.

I'm tired of schools having all of the accountability for students' behavior, as if they are computers we can program. Schools have become one-stop shopping for a wide assortment of things parents used to be expected to do. We feed them breakfast and lunch. We provide school supplies for those who can't afford them. We provide counseling and social work. We provide tutoring and help with homework. We provide probation officers. We provide mentoring and motivation through a variety of programs and training. We provide character education and health education. We provide after school programs to keep them off the street. We try to teach them everything they need to know about every imaginable content area so that they can get high scores on standardized tests, regardless of whether or not they actually do the work that is assigned or even show up to school. The day isn't getting longer and the year is still in the same archaic 1800's model it's always been. And now the schools are supposed to be held accountable when the numerous interventions they have tried aren't working?? What do the parents do??

I would also say that the prison system doesn't seem to be working as far as reform is concerned. I'm all for locking people up and keeping them off the street, but I don't think our criminal system does much in the way of reform at all.

As far as suggestions, I posted a link to an article by Love and Logic, which is an organization that helps both parents and teachers raise responsible children. Love and Logic and other programs like it help teach kids to be more responsible instead of just hammering down consequences.

The article I cited, I think it was this one: http://www.loveandlogic.com/pdfs/research_data_bllp.pdf
has a lot of references at the end for research on efficacy as parents.

[treelizard]

With all due respect, it is pretty over the top to say that teachers won't use fairness or judgement to step up when kids are bullied, won't report crimes and do not differentiate between perpetrators and victims (I do hate that word).

Did you even read your own paragraph? No one cares about your kid as much as they do pay raises or carpal tunnel? And you can make that judgement because of some union newsletter, despite the fact that most teachers work sixty to ninety hour weeks at less than minimum wage...which just might have something to do with the fact that they care about children?

IF some teachers aren't following proper procedure in regards to student violence, I'd say that there's a good chance it has more to do with bad judgement or lack of training/knowledge than the type of evil motives or selfishness that you imply...