I can’t view the video because I’m not entirely certain how to download the Quick Time player. When I tried to do so, it seemed to be downloading the I Pod. Anyway, I’ll comment as best I can, using the text of the link supplied in the first post of this thread. Placing my comments in ().
ST. PETERSBURG - Videotape was rolling March 14 when the 5-year-old girl swung again and again, her bantam punches landing on the outstretched palms of Nicole Dibenedetto, the new assistant principal at Fairmount Park Elementary.
She tore papers off Dibenedetto’s bulletin board and desk. She climbed on a table four times. About an hour had passed since she refused to participate in a kindergarten math lesson, which escalated into a series of defiant and destructive acts.
(The video tape represents a **30 minute piece of a total of 1 1/2 hour ** behavior/interaction sequence. Keep that in mind as I continue)
Dibenedetto had used tactics from a Pinellas school district training called Crisis Prevention Intervention:
Let the child know her actions have consequences but also try to “de-escalate.”
Give her opportunities to end the conflict.
Try not to touch her, defend yourself and make sure no one else gets hurt.
(These are **incomplete guidance techiques/strategies to use with a tantruming 5 year old child. ** I will comment on that soon in this post)
As St. Petersburg police officers arrived shortly after 3 p.m., the girl suddenly sat quietly at Dibenedetto’s table. And, just as suddenly, the tactics used by educators gave way to the more direct approach of law enforcement.
An officer sternly said the girl’s name. Then: “You need to calm down. You need to do it now. OK?”
(Notice that in the above comments, the child **had already discharged ** and the tantrum sequence was over. The child was able **to respond ** to the direction of the police officer and comply)
Seconds later, three officers approached and placed their hands on the girl’s wrists and upper arms. They stood her up, put her arms behind her back and put on handcuffs. She bent over the table and let out a terrified scream.
“No. Nooooo. Ahhhhh.”
(Right there, folks. The child had complied, the child was able **to gain ** control and the actions on the part of police officers at that point were not only unfair, they were confusing to the child. **She had followed the direction ** of the police officer and was met with physical force. Of course she let out a terrified scream. You would have too. She did as she was directed. )
The tape ends there.
Largo lawyer John Trevena provided it to the St. Petersburg Times this week after obtaining it from police.
“The image itself will be seared into people’s minds when you have three police officers bending a child over a table and forcibly handcuffing her,” said Trevena, who represents the girl’s mother, Inga Akins. “It’s incomprehensible … She was sitting calmly at the table. There was no need for that.”
(I absolutely agree with the above. The child had discharged, she was able to comply with police officers direction to calm down, she did so and was met with physical force.)
The Police Department declined to comment, citing an official complaint by Akins that has sparked an investigation by the supervisor of the four officers involved. Two are new officers who were being trained that day. Police spokesman Bill Proffitt said the investigation would be complete in about two weeks and the findings would be made public.
The tape’s existence is a fluke. The girl’s teacher, Christina Ottersbach, was videotaping her class as a self-improvement exercise, district officials have said. Educators simply kept the camera rolling when the girl began to act out, prompting Dibenedetto to intervene and Ottersbach to escort her other students to another classroom.
(The removal of other students may have been unnecessary, I’ll explain later in this post)
Later, Ottersbach retrieved the camera from the classroom when the girl began to make a mess of Dibenedetto’s office.
The tape, which lasts about 30 minutes, begins with Dibenedetto alone in the classroom with the girl, saying the child’s name frequently as part of her commands.
(Again, please keep in mind that this is a 30 minute sequence with an hour of build up prior.)
“You need to stop,” she tells her, using her hands to make the sign language signal for stop. “You don’t get to wreck the room.”
(Keep this comment in mind. The AP states:“You don’t get to wreck the room.”)
Using her radio, she calls for help from teacher Patti Tsaousis. She also asks the school office to call the girl’s mother and tell her the school will have to call Pinellas Schools police if the behavior continues.
Word comes back that the mother would not be able to make it until 3:15 p.m. It is shortly after 2 p.m.
(The mother will not be present until 1 hour and 15 minutes after the 1 1/2 hour behavior sequence. The adult has 1 hour and 15 minutes left to deal with the conduct, bringing the entire episode to approximately **2 hours and 45 mintues. ** Keep that in mind!)
A short time later, the girl is heard off camera breaking a ceramic or plastic apple on Ottersbach’s desk.
“Oh, you broke her apple,” Dibenedetto says. “That is so sad.”
(Was she wrecking the room? Was she allowed to continue?)
Throughout the 23-minute segment in the classroom, the assistant principal tells the girl many times to stop, that her actions are “not acceptable.” She tells her she needs to take her to her office to prepare for her mother’s arrival.
(Good choice of words. **No follow through ** on the part of the AP)
The girl responds to each request with a curt, “No.” When the girl reaches out to strike them at times, Dibenedetto and Tsaousis tell her to stop and hold their hands up in defense.
(Ineffective response. At this point the child is still wrecking the room, she is now physically acting out against adults with no follow through.)
Dibenedetto and Tsaousis have two breakthroughs - once when they persuade the girl to clean up a small mess she made near Ottersbach’s office and another when they finally get her to leave the classroom with them.
(Can’t see this, can’t comment)
In the second instance, Dibenedetto brings herself to eye level with the girl and tries to get her to talk about why she’s upset. She gives the girl the option of walking with her or Tsaousis to the office. When the girl relents, the educators praise her for making an “excellent choice.”
(Eye contact should have been made the instant the child refused the math activity. I cannot see the video, cannot view the first exchange so I don’t know if that attempt was made.)
The Times interviewed several top educators, including two district officials who had seen the video and two professors at the University of South Florida’s College of Education.
All praised Dibenedetto for using patience and good training in a tough situation. They said she gave the girl wide latitude to opt for better behavior, used clear commands, called for help from another educator, removed the other students from the room for their safety and to eliminate an audience for the girl, reinforced commands with hand motions and successfully avoided physical confrontation.
(She gave the child TOO much latitude in the sequence. The moment the message was given “You don’t get to wreck the room” and the child continued to wreck the room, the appropriate step would have been for the adult to take control away from the out of control child by removing her from the room. There is no reason whatsoever that the child could not have been removed from the room early on. The situation was permitted to last** 2 hours and 45 minutes**. It could have been interrupted early on. There are appropriate and effective steps in behavior guidance. The teacher rightly gave the message “you don’t get to wreck the room” however this occurred, so far as I can tell, **more than an hour after the behavior began. ** By that time the child escalated. We don’t know what took place during that one hour build up. After the teacher told the child “you don’t get to wreck the room” the teacher allowed the behavior to continue. The appropriate measure at that point is for the adult to take control away from the child by physically guiding the child…in this case physically removing the child from the room to a safe place where she could discharge. The length of time the sequence was permitted to continue, exacerbated the child’s behavior. For those of you who claim that a teacher cannot rightly remove a child from a room, I would ask you to consider those cases where a child has become physically ill, fainted or what have you, in the classroom or on the playground and a child is carried to the office to recover or receive medical attention)
Touching the girl, they said, would have escalated the situation.
(Nonsense. The adult should have picked up the child (there are ways to do so without being kicked excessively by the child) and removed her to another room where it was safe to discharge. What escalated this situation was the fact that adults expected an out of control 5 year old to magically gain control on command. Children who are in full blown tantrum do not have the capacity to gain control until after they have discharged. This situation was permitted to continue 2 hours and 45 minutes which is unreasonable and absurd.)
The two educators “can’t control what the children do, but they can control how they respond to it and, to me, they responded admirably,” said Robert Egley, an assistant education professor at USF in St. Petersburg. “I give them an A-plus.”
(From the information I have in this piece, allowing a behavior squence to continue for 2 hours and 45 minutes is NOT admirable)
Trevena, the lawyer, disagreed, saying it appeared to him the two educators followed the girl too closely around the room. “It almost seemed like there was an intent to provoke the child,” he said.
(No comment. My best guess however, is that there was no genuine intent to provoke the child but the length and duration of the sequence exacerbated the child’s emotional/psychological state. When children are in full blown tantrum, make no mistake about it…they are AFRAID of their feelings, AFRAID of feeling out of control and **it is the responsiblity of the adult who is present to SUPPLY CONTROL) The AP failed to supply boundary the child was incapable of internally supplying. **
Akins, the girl’s mother, said she had complained to the school about the assistant principal’s treatment of her daughter. She said the administrator has been too harsh with the girl. The police had been called to the school at least once before in response to the girl’s behavior. The girl has since transferred to another public school.
(Like it or not, teachers are not automatically instructed in the use of guidance strategeties and techinques during the course of their education. Not only that, state standards do not always require early childhood professionals to be trained in the use of appropriate guidance techniques and strategies or child development. In many states a certain degree of education…in this case specific to the young child under age 8…is NOT REQUIRED.)
Dibenedetto could not be reached Thursday for comment.
More clear cut, Trevena said, are the police officers’ actions and the Police Department’s reaction. “It should have been denounced (by department higher-ups) as absurd, as excessive,” he said. “That, I think, is even more alarming.”
After being placed in the back of a police cruiser, police released the girl to her mother after the State Attorney’s Office informed them a 5-year-old would never be prosecuted.
(I would re-write the above to state…after being allowed to remain out of control for neara 3 hours time, after finally discharging and being capable of complying with the direction of a police officer, a young child was met with physical force, made to sit inside a police cruiser like a criminal and that, friends, is totally inappropriate.)
Educators declined to discuss the Police Department’s role in the incident. But they all agreed that once police are called to a school, the situation is theirs to run. “I wasn’t physically there,” said Mike Bessette, an area superintendent whose responsibility includes Fairmount Park Elementary. “I take it they felt they needed to do what they did.”
[Last modified April 22, 2005, 01:06:17]
My best shot at analyzing the text above. I would have very much liked to view the videos. If my comments seem off base for those of you that have viewed the video, I’d like to hear about your observations.
One more thing. I noticed earlier in this thread Diogenes the Cynic, justifably and rightly express agitation and outrage at the comments made by adults on this thread, for the comments themselves lack any semblance of insight or compassion for the 5 year old child. We do not know the background of the child, family history, medical history, we do not know if the child was ill or fatigued, we do not know if the child is a victim of trauma, or had been separated for lengthy periods of time from her mother. We do not know if the mother is a single parent seeking opportunities to improve the quality of life for her or her child or if Mom is for all intents and purposes, an absentee parent. It is difficult for some adults to witness comments of contempt on the part of other adults toward a young child.
What we do know is that a young child during a period of 2 hours and 45 minutes, was permitted to escalate, trash objects and materials, and after she had discharged and after she was able to meet the requests of police officers, her compliance was betrayed and met with physical force.
For those of you who blame the mother. Parents are not responsible for controlling the behavior of their children when placed under the care of other supervising adults. The adults entrusted with that supervision are responsible for guiding a child’s behavior, supplying consequences and helping the child to develop self control. We might assume that the child has been under the supervision and in the care of the school in question for approximately 8 months. If that is so, and that is just an assumption on my part, 8 months is plenty enough time to develop strageties and plans for dealing appropriately with the conduct of a young child still learning the skills needed to develop her own self control.
regards,
widdley
