another school shooting

[treelizard]

I'm saying that even though my school does it differently, I don't think that the measures in place fix the problem. I already mentioned what I'd do to fix it--get parents to parent. I think that would make much more of a difference than prosecution will, as evidenced by repeat offenders.

I already answered the question you reposted. I could repost my response, but I'll just let you scroll back instead.

[treelizard]

There is not just one teacher's union. If you go to the NEA site (the nation's largest teacher union, incidentally), you will see on their homepage a school crisis guide "created by educators for educators to help keep schools safe and to help students and staff return to learning after a crisis." http://www.nea.org/index.html
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but it's not about carpal tunnel. The American Federation of Teachers website, right here, http://www.aft.org/ has a school safety link, "Keeping Schools Safe" so that members can "learn more about establishing a safe and orderly learning environment."

I would be interested in seeing your research which indicates that handling school bullying as criminal activity reduces school bullying. Like I said, it is handled as criminal activity at my school and I'm not convinced that there is a reduction because of this. As far as your teacher who really touched his students, that is really great and all but many students do not wish to learn.

It is great when teachers are good at motivating, engaging and supporting their students but we have them for about 45 minutes a day (about 6.5 hours total) and the parents have them the entire rest of the time. Our primary function as teachers is to teach. I know, that sounds nuts, right? But they aren't testing these kids on the AIMS on their character. As a teacher I need to provide an atmosphere conducive to learning, so I need to be supportive of my students and let them know I care about them, support them and want them to do well and to succeed. Despite that, some kids are like Humpty Dumpty after the great fall. Teachers can't reassemble them. Society needs to recognize that kids have parents for a reason!

As far as teachers working for less than minimum wage, I'd have to pull up the file but that figure is coming from the amount of hours teachers I know work divided by the amount of hours they get paid, subtracting the amount of money spent on school supplies and supplementary material etc. that is not paid for by the district. We looked at average beginner salaries, minus average amount spent on supplies that are not reimbursed, minus the the amount spent on tuition, fees, books, etc. for continuing ed credits required for their licenses or which they feel are necessary for their performance. We also factored in what overtime pay would be (i.e. time and a half for hours over 40), time spent obtaining professional development hours (180 clock hours every five years if I remember correctly, averaging around 36 annual hours of unpaid labor), time spent in the summer on curriculum planning, etc.

[treelizard]

Charter schools? I asked one of my teachers about working at one and this is what she said: "Aside from the fact that they aren't governed by the same rules as regular public schools, and aside from the fact that they aren't well funded, and aside from the fact that many teachers who work there aren't certified, and aside from the fact that many teachers who work there aren't highly qualified, and aside from the fact that the administrators for the most part come from business or elsewhere and know nothing about education, and aside from the fact that most kids attending charters are there because they have been kicked out of other schools, or have failed so many times they are just desperate to get credits to graduate? I guess they would be a good place to work." If you look at test score statistics for charters... Well, actually I took the liberty of looking up charters in Colorado Springs, and this is what I found: http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/...tings&tab=over

The four "excellent" and "high performing" schools were public. Of the four "low performing" schools, three were charters.

The only shooting I know of in Tucson (including schools that do or do not deal with violence as criminal activity) was at the University of Arizona, where a student opened fire in class at the nursing school, killing two professors, a bystander and himself. I know for a fact that the U of A does indeed deal with campus violence as a criminal issue.

I'm not aware of any shootings in my school, but there certainly is a lot of action.

More info on our local high schools here:

http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/157740

[treelizard]

double post

[Garland]

"He's crazy. He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody," Doneisha LeVert said. "We didn't think nothing of it."

"I never felt personally threatened or personally at risk," Kachadourian said after leaving the hospital. "I had concerns about him, yes. He seemed like an angry young man. I did not fear for my own safety."

"That's the most basic, profound and saddest part of the whole thing, knowing he was in so much pain and torment," Kachadourian said. "Anytime someone takes his own life, it shows he was desperate."

Witnesses said the shooter moved through the converted five-story downtown office building, working his way up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms. Officials said he was wearing a Marilyn Manson concert shirt, black jeans and black-painted finger nails.

Student Frances Henderson, 14, said she often got into arguments with Coon, who once told her, "I got something for you all." He would often wear a trench coat, black boots and a dog collar, she said.

What a bunch of fucking idiots. RED FLAG??? Hello??? Those ignorant, shortsighted, dimwitter asshats handed the kids in that school up on a silver platter. What a bunglefuck.

C'mon...in reading this article, didn't anything ring a bell? Doesn't this shit start to sound repetitive?

[treelizard]

I have a lot of students like that. In fact I just met with a dad who was quite upset that his kid's probation officer didn't get him to school... he SENDS him so then it's the STATE'S responsibility to make sure he gets there.

Unfortunately, in a class of 31, or even 21, I cannot give a heck of a lot more than a few minutes of individual attention to every child that is damaged (which in my school is most of them) while teaching. I do my best but the one-on-one time I have is extremely limited. Of course, like most teachers I do try to set a very good example but I cannot force every student to listen to me or to talk to me or to open up instead of shutting down when dealing with whatever it is they're dealing with. I can only do what I can do, and hope that the students I don't have rapport with can find another teacher to talk to. I can recommend counseling, I can try talking to students one-on-one during my (unpaid, afterschool) detentions, I have an open door policy when I am at school or in my room during lunch, I write long-winded comments in their journals and I utilize specific strategies to try to teach adult behavior, good study skill strategies, civic responsibility, the correlation between achievement and effort, blah de blah. However, some of my kids have gotten expelled anyway and you know what? I don't feel too much responsibility for it. I figure a lot has happened to get them to the point where they were at when I got them, and I have known them for less than three months. Parents, unlike teachers, are there all along and can provide the consistency and support that even the best teacher can't offer. And if one of my expelled kids comes to school with a gun or jacks our cars in the parking lot (the latter is probably more likely due to our kick-ass security team) I'm not going to feel responsible either.

"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."

I reckon that the types of kids that start school shootings are probably the ones that would pull away from the type of support that teachers and counselors try to offer.

[treelizard]

And I will add that the kids I bend over backwards for and spend tons of time doing extra research and work for so that they can better achieve their goals are the ones who HAVE goals and ambition and who I see working hard through all odds. The kid who asked me to sit in the back of the room so he can concentrate better because his friends keep talking to him, who always writes down everything on the board before being asked, who raises his hand to get extra help because his language skills are still developing, who writes five-page essays when the assignment calls for two... Of course it's important to reach out to everyone but to be honest, I would rather put a lot of time and effort into somebody who deserves it. I am also more likely to put a ton of energy into something where I think I will see results.

[treelizard]

I'm not saying I only want to help the best and brightest. I am saying that I put more energy towards people that ask for my help or that make some kind of indication that they want help.

If you only had a limited amount of seeds, would you plant them somewhere they might grow, or just throw them around at random?

[Ghost]

I'm not saying I only want to help the best and brightest. I am saying that I put more energy towards people that ask for my help or that make some kind of indication that they want help.

If you only had a limited amount of seeds, would you plant them somewhere they might grow, or just throw them around at random?

i think mike is saying you are paid to help everyone
Not those that you decide deserve your attention.
Your choices of who deserves help based on your opinion might be different to someone elses.

perhaps in the interest of fairness you should scatter the seeds randomly.
If you scatter the seeds randomly each seed has an equal chance. your method is selective based on your own logic which may not always be correct.

I wonder how may seeds go through life without the attention they require and i wonder how they end up?

The seeds that grow easily dont need as much watering and attention as the ones that dont, wouldnt you agree?

[Ghost]

I'm not saying I only want to help the best and brightest. I am saying that I put more energy towards people that ask for my help or that make some kind of indication that they want help.

If you only had a limited amount of seeds, would you plant them somewhere they might grow, or just throw them around at random?

tbh i think thats probably where the problem lies on the side of the schools, there is obviously the parents side which is the other contributing factor.

I dont want to be rude but that attitude is just awful.

You are essentially saying that the kids that really need your help dont get it because they dont fit your personal idea of what a student should be.

[Garland]

Liz, stop me if I'm wrong in this, but what I hear you saying is that the kids who make an effort to come to you are the ones you are going to help first. This is understandable, as these are the kids that are going to excel and the ones that want to work with you in the betterment of their own futures.

However, the kids who are obvious problems need attention too. Somebody needs to sit them down as soon as they show delinquincy problems or antisocial personality traits and get them into some sort of program or show them some sort of compassion and security.

Both groups deserve your attention, but for different reasons. One deserves it out of acheivement and effort on their part, and the other group deserves it out of civic responsibility, profilactic safety measures, and basic human empathy.

[Garland]

I hope this teacher wasn't an English teacher, LOL

Probably taught rhetoric or argumentation.

Seems like the style.

[Garland]

Sorry tree, but have you ever heard of Pygmalion? The idea that people live up or down to your expectations. If you expect the dumb kids to be dumb they will be, because they will live up to your expectation.

In a psychology experiment they took a class of average students, but they told the teacher some of the kids were early bloomers and would basically be better students. These kids were no different than the others, but guess which ones ended up doing better? the ones that were supposed to, because the teacher treated them like they would be better.

Yuppers...self fulfilling prophecy and social faccilitation.

Social psychology is boooooorrrrriiiiinnnngggg yet applicable.

unlike a lazy erection.



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[treelizard]

I think most teachers do help everyone. What I am saying is that the students who get a lot of extra attention are the ones who ask for help or who are receptive when it is offered. I probably spend most of my in-class time working with kids who don't understand.

The assumption that students who ask for help are the ones who are excelling is inaccurate. I offer after-school tutoring and the kids that show up for help aren't the ones that are passing. However, not all the kids that are failing show up. I can call home, etc. but really it is their choice whether they want to pass or not. Am I supposed to show up at their house? Some teachers do. I won't.

I've heard of the psych behind it, yeah. When I grade benchmarks and papers I don't look at the names--many teachers don't, you can use a number system or have a seperate header paper so you cannot see the names of students you are grading. I also do a lot of informal assessments on index cards or whatnot where people write their names on one side and the answer ont he other. I collect the cards and read them out loud so we can figure out who is wrong and who is right and why and what corrections need to be made (etc.) I do have high expectations, teach high on the Bloom's level, etc. What I teach is way more advanced than the standardized test crap they have to take. No multiple choice or word banks here, and I give zeroes if classwork is turned in incomplete. And I never said anybody was dumb. They are all perfectly capable. Working hard is a choice.

As far as indications like talking about blowing shit up, those kids get different types of "help"--I recommend them for school counseling, call home, speak to prevention specialists, fill out paperwork, have very very long meetings with their parents and advisors and probation officers (three hours just the other day), meet with them individually, call CPS or 911 if necessary, have long talks with them, solicit other people who have more rapport to talk to them, meet with other teachers to discuss strategies during collaboration, you name it. I bought shoes for some kid who was wearing his sister's shoes that were two sizes too small, and I give school supplies to kids who I can tell can't get any at home and want extra, etc. and that's all fine and dandy and takes very little time and effort on my part. But I've spent countless hours having in-depth conversations with kids that are now expelled and I don't feel personally responsible for their bad choices. In fact when I look at the files for students who have been expelled, the amount of interventions is pretty much ridiculous. One kid had 38 administrative interventions over the course of just over two years, and 15 interventions with teachers. These are the ones that are documented. Often interventions aren't documented. I'm saying that the 53 interventions, numerous "talks" and warnings and lectures and behavior contracts, tons of work with school counseling, etc. did not help him. He received an inordinate amount of resources and attention, probably at the expense of others that may have needed it more but did not receive it because they weren't behavioral problems. I personally bent over backwards for the kid to try to get him engaged, structuring entire lessons and activities around his interests and it was basically a waste of my time and energy. I probably won't do that for just one individual again. But I suppose his behavior is the school's fault. I find it ironic that nobody is held accountable anymore except for teachers.

Oh, and since it's not the parents, maybe it's the probation officers. They should just show more compassion that kids aren't getting from their families and teachers. That'll do it.

[jubaji]

In fairness, folks who don't/haven't taught may not be in a position to fully grasp what Tree is getting at here.