As a former teacher I can certainly see where you’re coming from, but these policies exist because some asshole down the line abused the trust and good faith of school officials and teachers, and you have to be treated like a suspect because of it.
There’s nothing at all helicopter-y about walking a kid to his/her class in a new school for the first time. But I can assure you some asshole somewhere came into a school badged perfectly, and then abducted a kid - which is why they don’t want you walking down the halls if possible.
Regarding kids fighting, many schools punish both kids for fighting (though your kid might get a lesser punishment if it’s found that she was provoked or picked on). I have no problem with this; as an adult, if you get into a fight and the police show up, it’s likely you’re both going to jail.
What I can’t figure out is, what’s the point of having to go through the security check in the office, and get a pass, if all the teachers are going to stop you on your way?
So you’re okay with injustice because the same injustice happens in the real world? That’s seriously your argument?
Also, I don’t understand the idea of protecting the other kid, anyways. Why are they afraid of being sued by one parent, and not the other? And why is it better for you to get your information from your kid, instead of from them? You’re going to believe your kid, think the school did a bad job, and then do what you can to fight back.
One thing I learned in the one education class I took is that parents have a lot of things they can do that will make a teacher’s life miserable. It’s the reason I decided not to become a teacher.
Here’s another. Whose job is it to figure out who started it? How much instructional time are you willing to devote to taking down each student’s side of the story, corroborating statements from other kids, and so on? Some cases are cut and dried, but most aren’t. You find out that kid A hit kid B first, but kid B was picking on kid A a week earlier… and so on.
I fail to see how a rule like “No fighting is allowed in school, and there are consequences for all students involved in a fight” represents injustice. When I was a middle school student in the 1980s we had such a rule… and yep, some kid shoved me in line once, and I retaliated. Got us both detention. Sure, the other kid started it, but I figured out from that experience that I had to be smarter about those kind of things. Alert a teacher, wait until after school… The rule seemed unfair in my 12 year old eyes, but my school was one in which there wasn’t a lot of fighting because everyone involved was going to get some not-so-great consequence.
It probably helped that it was a school on a military installation. But this kind of rule helps kids learn self-discipline and better ways to resolve problems.
Either the teacher or whoever’s in charge of punishing the students (eg administator, counselor, etc). I’m not saying a formal hearing is necessary for every infraction (unless of course expulsion or similiar is on the table), but yes a reasonable effort should be made to determine who “started it” and whether the student was acting in self-defence. Otherwise all the child learns is to never bother standing up for themselves and authority figures are useless.
First of all, you have to realize the amount of security we need to have on campus - even if they are parents.
Second, teachers have enough interruptions during lessons without parents barging in with their bullshit. The school did their job in vetting you to make sure that your issue was important enough to interrupt the lesson AND OTHER CHILDREN’S LEARNING. Was it worth disturbing the class to have YOU disrupt the learning process of other parent’s children even though the school could have dealt with it? Your attitude about how you had to disrupt the class to deal with this is selfish and I as administrator would have said we can deal with it and fuck off.
Third, have you ever been in a really well-run retail store? Customer’s are always being asked if they need help for two reasons: they may need help and to keep an eye on them. When I see parents on my campus I always ask if they need help and escort them. Why? It’s good customers service and I have a legal and moral duty to keep students safe.
And I can tell you a few cases where an observant teacher saved a student from potential harm.
Fourth: Whether you agree with school policy or not, LEGALLY that other student’s right to privacy is more important than your right to information. I actually agree with you on this point. Your child was injured because of the other student. They shouldn’t give you the name, but they should let you know what the punishment was if for no other reason n you know that they are trying their best to beep your daughter safe.
I went to school on military installations until the mid-80s and I had many of the same problems that others had in public schools. When I was picked on the administration didn’t do a damn thing about it. If a teacher saw someone getting picked on or a fight breaking out they’d do something about it, certainly, but there was no real mechanism for combating bullying.
As I’ve said in other threads I can certainly appreciate the situation the administrators and teachers are in. It’s a lot easier to punish everyone involved than it is to actually figure out what happened and what the problem is. I’ll echo what alphaboi867 said. The lessons I learned in elementary school was that neither the administrators nor the teachers were there to help me. I was on my own. This applied equally whether I was the one being picked on or I was doing the picking.
Walking your kid to the first day of her new class in the school she is already attending is helicoptering, IMO. This is December–she’s been in the school for how many weeks now? Will you continue to do this every year or when she switches schools? How old is old enough for independence and learning how to deal with her anxieties herself? It’s over and done with now, but don’t expect them to change their policy or welcome you next year when you want to escort her to another new class.
The bus incident: you’ll never get the whole story or the whole truth. I am sure both kids see themselves as either justified or the victim. If fighting is not allowed on the bus, it doesn’t matter who started it. I say this as a parent whose child was given detention for accepting a note in junior high from another student. This note said derogatory things about their teacher. #1 son couldn’t help being sent the note (the sender addressed it to him); he did not send it back, nor did he agree with what was written in the note. He still got detention. I think that was unfair, but it was within the school’s purview to punish both kids.
I have no problem with having to sign in or wear a nametag while I’m in the school–it’s hardly CIA level security. I also don’t have a problem with teachers etc asking me if they can “help” me–it tells me that the staff is alert and pro-active (perhaps it’s because I do the same in my nursing unit and in my library). I have to agree with the teachers here: they suffer enough disruptions during their day, they can’t cater to every parent’s perceived need.
My mom didn’t think I needed to be shipped to the middle school once a week, have class with 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th graders from other schools (when I was in 3rd grade - the bully was a 6th grader), miss regular classwork and have to do extra special “gifted” assignments just because I passed some tests.
I actually ended up continuing to be smart, and probably still “gifted” without the program. The disruption in schedule was not worth it. I did not end up catching teh dum from other students after all.
This explains the nonsense in the rest of your post
See, that’s telling. “We” have to have security on campus, even if “they” are parents. We vs. they. You vs. the parents. You tell us how important we are to our child’s learning at the PTA meetings when you want donations, but we can go fuck ourselves when it comes to taking part.
I’m a paying customer. My “bullshit” is your problem, and I expect you to deal with it.
Class starts at 8:00am. I got there at 7:40 and left at 7:55. I would be interested to know how I disrupted anyone’s learning. And please, I’ve been in schools. A concerned parent disrupts the class far less than the constant barrage of announcements over the P.A. systems and teachers bullshitting with each other throughout the day.
Sure, but well run retail stores are able to do so in a manner that makes me think they really want to help me, instead of looking at me with that sneering nostril like I was Josef Mengele.
This is a huge disconnect. I pose no threat to the safety of your students. I am MUCH more interested in the safety of my child that you are. I have an emotionally vested interest. Since the schools have decided to treat parents like outsiders, schools have markedly gone to hell.
I’m sorry, where is the legal right to be anonymous when one commits a battery? I must have missed that one.
I know why public school teachers are against vouchers. I’ll bet 95 percent of you wouldn’t have a job if parents had free choice of where to send their kids.
I have to agree with this. I was “diagnosed” as “gifted” in the third grade, and for the rest of elementary school I had an extra hour of school every day because of it. In junior high school I was in the “gifted” classes, and my friends in other classes were learning the same things I was - but I always had more homework. And then there was the social stigma of being in the “nerd classes”.
I was completely sick of it by the eighth grade, so I purposely started slacking off and getting C’s instead of the A’s I was perfectly capable of. The plan was to be placed in normal classes when I got to high school, and it worked. I think I was much happier because of it, and I’ve never regretted it.
I went to a private school during middle school, and one day I needed to leave early for some reason and my dad couldn’t pick me up, so he asked his cousin or something, somebody with a very vague relation to me to pick me up. The school had never heard of him, wasn’t on an approved list, etc…
But it was ok, because my dad had called and said this guy was going to pick me up.
At the time I thought, wow, with two people and a telephone you could steal any kid you want.
You still can, provided that one of the people is a woman. As I mentioned above, I am a step-mother and before my husband and I married I was not listed on my step-kids’ school records or even as an emergency contact or “authorized to pick up”. Yet I never had any trouble with the elementary or middle schools (2 of each in different towns) when I decided to pick up the kids from class. Once I did it without their father’s knowledge (we were planning a surprise for him and I picked up the kids a couple hours early). I walk into the office (usually with id already in hand) tell them my name and who I want and that’s, that. However when their father needs to pick them up, he hands over his id (and they invariably ask him for another form of id because they don’t like him to use his military id card, but he does anyway) then they check his name against the computer, then they check the kids’ files for any handwritten notes, and once demanded his court orders proving he was allowed access to the kids, then when the kids are fetched from class they are asked, “Is this your dad?” before they are allowed to leave with him.
I understand the need for security, but this has been my experience at several public schools, in many states; it is not an isolated incident. The security measures have gone from “protecting our children” to “protecting our children from men”. It is not the fault of the policies, it is the fault of way teachers and administrators are implementing the policies.
Because being attacked isn’t the same as being in a fight. Being attacked and struggling or even pushing, shoving or hitting to get your attacker off of you and to protect yourself from further violence isn’t the same as being in a fight. And all too often, it’s classed that way and consequently, good kids who are the victims of violent bullies end up being punished, end up with tarnished disciplinary records, end up losing privileges, because of a “all parties are equally guilty” policy that ignores the truth of a situation in some effort to be “fair.”
There’s nothing fair nor just about punishing someone for being a victim or for acting in self-defense.
Let me tell you something, jtgain. Disruptions of any kind to the daily norm make the kids antsy for the rest of the day. It doesn’t matter what it is. Assembly. Fire drill stray dog on campus. Power flickers. Stranger(s) in the building. Any deviation at all means time taken away from instruction spent getting them back on task.
Your kid is probably cool, but you pretty clearly see yourself as a special little snowflake.
I do not see it as at all unreasonable that a parent would walk a 6yo to a new classroom and meet the teacher for a few minutes before school even starts.
This is pretty much the reason I came to the conclusion that teachers and administrators weren’t there to help me. Your statement is considerably unjust. In the real world we don’t punish people who are the victims of assault even if they defend themselves.
What is with this attitude of keeping kids in a bubble? As you already said, interruptions happen all the time. It’s part of your JOB to handle that. If you can’t do your JOB, then you should quit. You don’t get to harass people that have official permission to do what they are doing. And you definitely do not get to be sexist about it, which, if you’ve missed it, is what is being alleged here.
There is a sense of entitlement in this county–I am not disputing that. But you as a teacher have it as well. You seem to think you have the right not to have to deal with these interruptions. You think you have the right to defy the office, which gave the guy permission to be there. You don’t. If your goal is to ensure as few interruptions as possible, then making a big deal out of it is the worst thing you can do.
All you are accomplishing is guaranteeing that the parent will get mad at you. Get enough of them mad, and they can do a lot of things about it. In my school district alone, I can think of 10 teachers that were fired or had to quit because the parents didn’t like the way they were treating their kids. Part of your job is to make the parents happy–the part of the job that made me turn it down. I couldn’t stand that level of scrutiny.
I’m sure the above is the reason for the level of animosity a lot of teachers seem to have towards parents. But all that animosity accomplishes is to make the situation worse.
With NCLB, RTTT, and the insane emphasis on standardized test scores, there is no spare time in the school day. Huge numbers of kids are classified as special needs. We are trying to run the school system you all (or your elected reps) insisted on having. Blame yourselves if we don’t have the time or inclination to kiss your ass too.
Point 1: Yes - security is an us vs you situation because it that is how security works. You are the intruder into our area just as if I came by your house unannounced and demamnded to be let in to discuss classroom business. If you were invited in for a conference it would be different.
Point 2: Unless it was a private school, you are not a paying fucking customer. You are not my boss and I am not answerable to you. I do not have to deal with your bullshit. I hate the taxpayer attitude that somehow the public sector workers need to satify everyone. Since you obviously have no clue how a school works, the people who are answerable to you are the School Board and if you have a problem with how the school is run, go whining to them.
Point 3: Teachers have to prepare for class and it is very difficult to prep for class to start in a parent wants to talk about their feelings for the 15 minutes immediately preceeding class.
Point 4: Oh hey, you SAY you’re not a threat? Well that’s good enough for me. Here’s the keys to the school. Oh by the way, I’ve had to personally deal with three issues where the parent WAS a threat to a student (either their own or another child)
Point 5: When is a batterer protected by anonymity? How about every time they’re a minor.
It’s is clear that you think that parents should have free run of the school, but the truth is they should not. If your business had security policies in place that I wanted waive to help my girlfriend move despite the office having staff to do that very thing AND I did it during office hours, I would expect the same reaction you got.
Er…she didn’t fight back after another kid pulled her hair AND made her bleed.
She fought back (according to your own words) after the other kid pulled her hair. Which prompted further scratching.
This is probably exactly why the school doesn’t tell the name of the other kid. Its all to easy that from what is a very minor “change” of the facts (and I don’t think its deliberate) a very different spin is put on things.
And just to complicate further, you still don’t know the complete story, yes there was hair pulling, but is there more to the story than that?
And I vote for a bit “helichopterish” to insist on showing her to her new class, I am sure the school would have dealt with this before and know how to transfer a few pencils from one class to the next.