So, how did they move her from the classroom to the office? Two possibilities exist, it seems to me. One, they did physically intervene to move her, which would not be unreasonable, but would be in contrast to the statements in the article. The other possibility is that the child did comply when some measure of authority was actually exerted. It took five minutes in the video tape for one of the adults to suggest moving to a calm down room. The other adult responds “Good idea!” Unfortunately, the video tape does not reveal whether she was compliant. I suspect she was compliant when a modicum of authority was exerted. As Shodan pointed out, she altered her own behavior markedly when she saw the police arrive. (It is not at all unusual, by the way, for children with ADHD to show differing levels of compliance with mother versus father, and with different teachers. I am not saying that this child has ADHD, but I did want to say that just because a child responds differentially to different stimuli does not mean that there is no disorder present. As a poor analogy: you would likely respond with far less alertness to your alarm clock going off than you would to your neighbor in your bedroom screaming. Does this mean you were not asleep in the latter condition?)
I agree that there is much that we do not know about the situation. However, one does not need backstory to suggest how the situation might have been better managed, or defused. This child’s “tantrum” is quite mild, I assure you, relative to others that are managed far better many, many times every day. Suggesting methodolgies that have been demonstrated to be successful is hardly talking out of one’s ass.
I disagree with this completely. The backstory is essential to understanding why this child acted the way she did, why the teachers acted they way they did, and why this situation escalated. It’s entirely possible the teachers had no other options open to them, due to demands by the mother.
Regarding successful methodologies: One could argue that using pepper spray to stop an attacker is the most effective deterrent, and that everyone should use it if attacked. However, if pepper spray has been outlawed by your town, you don’t have that option. Someone seeing a video of you being attacked could say “Why in the world isn’t he/she using pepper spray?” without knowing you don’t have that option.
Yeah, there’s nothing quite like being a big guy in a bulletproof vest and packing a pistol, mace, and a taser to project an air of authority even a bratty five year old can respect. :rolleyes:
I also noted that the child was physically touched on a couple of occasions - to remove her from the desk when she jumped up there.
So she may have been physically moved, or "herded’ as she was on a couple of occasions on the video.
So I would have recommended, what the hell, you already grabbed her once to get her off the desk. Maintain the grip, put her in the chair, and sit on her or the equivalent while she has the necessary tantrum. But the child needed - needs - to be shown that some adults mean business. Yes, her stupid bitch mother would sue, but she was going to do that anyway.
In a way, I don’t think it matters whether you put the label of ADD or ED or whatever on the child. She could alter her behavior depending on the context. That’s all that can be expected of a five-year-old child.
Gotta agree with Sauron about it at least partically being the mother’s fault. I doubt she imposes any effective discipline on the child, and it sounds rather like she was making sure nobody at the school could do so either. At which point it becomes CYA for the school and the teachers.
Imagine how this discussion would have gone if there were no video to put it in context.
Yeah, but does she learn why the behavior that gets her punished is wrong?
Spanking’s not wrong, but it’s not like flipping a switch. You have to get the kid’s attention, tell them, “I said I wouldn’t tell you again,” or something along those lines, give them four or five smacks (butt only) and then, after they’ve calmed down, ask, “Do you know why I spanked you?” That way they make a connection between the punishment and the behavior that brought it on.
Being a “mean bitch” seems to imply that if Mom’s in a mood, the kid gets smacked, and it doesn’t matter why. So it’s Mom’s whim, not society’s rules. That doesn’t help a kid adjust.
What the hey are you talking about? Who slaps who? Who fights who?
As I recall, when you were in Iraq you were disciplined for fighting. You told us that you didn’t want to go into details, but now I wonder.
Very true dropzone and one of the hardest cultural differences between our two countries for me to get my head around.
I would NEVER think about moving to the States if I had kids. A system that requires armed guards because of the dangers of attack is not a system I’d ever what my kids near.
Your original statement, to which I was responding was “Anyone who claims to know how this situation could have been avoided or defused is talking out of the wrong end of their torso.” There are some clear, tried and true ways that the situation could have been defused. Telling you about them does not mean I am talking out of my ass.
Why the child is acting as she does is irrelevant to the determination that the methodology that they used is not likely to achieve results. It may very well be the case that the school personnel had their hands tied by some protocol established by the school administration. This does not mean that it is wrong to criticize the methods they did use. To the contrary, it points out why such a protocol should be modified. However, I doubt that they were solely complying with a request by the mother.
Pointing out that pepper spray would have worked is not wrong because it is against the law. Finding fault with the victim for failing to use it would be wrong. To the extent that the teachers are being faulted, I clearly have acknowledged that there may be mitigating conditions.
Nevertheless, the teachers do choose to employ a more appropriate strategy after five minutes of poor intervention, when they initiated an effort to move the child to a calm down room. Perhaps they violated the protocol? Or perhaps they failed to exert authority that they still legitimately retained until that time.
I note that you chose not to respond to my observations about this part of the entire situation (i.e., the fact that at some point, they successfully moved the child).
To sum up, if this is their protocol for such situations, it must be modified. The adults in the room must exert control, give commands, indicate consequences, and enforce consequences immediately. Moving the child from the room should occur immediately, not after five minutes. The child should not be placed in an office, but rather should be placed in the type of room that the school personnel in the first video tape describe – a small room to chill out. Hopefully they weren’t referring to their assistant principal’s office when they said this.
It should be noted as well, in terms of unknown backstory, that schools are often motivated not to place children with histories of chronic and significant disruptive behavior problems or other difficulties due to financial concerns. I have had the experience of working with several children for whom an approved private placement for emotional or behavioral concerns was entirely justified, but the school both resisted the placement, and also resisted in allowing mental health wraparound support staff into the school to work with the child. Often times in these circumstances the schools continue to employ ham-fisted and ignorant intervention strategies. Again, I have no idea if that is at all true here, but my point is that it is not always a case of the poor maligned school kowtowing to the whims of a bad parent.
You are white and middle-class (I presume). You would very, very likely not live in an area where armed guards are required in the schools.
It is not “the system” that made a need for armed guards necessary. It is multi-generational poverty, drugs, booze, gangs, parents who don’t know and often don’t care that they don’t know the first thing about parenting and are too often children themselves, parents who try as hard as they can but are forced by economics to not be as involved with their children’s lives as they want, absentee parents who don’t care at all, and the whole host of societal ills we’ve all heard too much about. The system can only react within the limits forced on it by economics.
Not saying that, exactly. I’m just saying that anyone who claims they know exactly how to defuse this particular situation is blowing smoke, because we don’t know the restraints placed on the teachers (and other portions of the backstory).
Because we don’t know how it was accomplished. It’s pointless to comment on those observations without knowing how they got her from point A to point B.
I could be completely wrong on my guesses about this incident. But from where I’m sitting, that’s the way the smart money is betting.
Wondering out loud here about the ineffectualness of the AP’s discipline techniques… is it possible, if there’s conjecture of previous occurrences with this child, that (as someone else has already mentioned) the inclusion of a camera to videotape the incident, might also mean that the school would want the girl’s behavior to appear as badly as it could be?
Ok, I realize that’s probably too convoluted, so I’ll try this instead. If the mother had threatened a lawsuit before because she felt her daughter was being unjustly characterized, hounded, or whatever, TPTB in turn saw the next opportunity as to prove how out of control things actually were. Or at the end of their rope with Jacia (?) running amok beyond anything they were allowed to handle, given the confines/limits placed on them.
After that though, I agree that there were no consequences for her actions as stated. If she’d been warned to stop X, then a follow through was warranted. However, I don’t really see a tragedy with resorting to the pseudo force of a real authority figure. One she chose to at least listen to and who didn’t do her any harm. I assume this tactic is akin to making a kid return a stolen object to the store themselves and own up to what they’ve done. But I’ll freely admit that my interpretation could be off base, since I have no children of my own, nor will I ever.
To be fair, there were armed guards at the British pre-school that my niece attended while living in England. The reason they were there was that Princess Ann’s daughter Zara was also a student and there had been threats by the IRA.
That was the only armed school my children and my nieces and nephews have ever attended. Like someone said above, I think it is mostly a lower income, inner city thing.
Well, I don’t know what the prevalence of armed security is, but I recall having police regularly patrol through the halls of my high school in St. Louis in the mid 80’s. We lived in a comfortably middle class, suburban, West County area. When I was in Jr. High school, in the same region, we also had a school shooting, where one 8th grade student shot two others and killed himself.
I would be a bit surprised, in fact, if poor urban schools had a higher percentage of armed security, only because they lack for so many other resources.
I presume your brother is in a big city, and your statement is referring to urban schools all over America. I have never seen a cop in a school other than visits and dealing with specific situations. This includes me growing up in Colorado, my kids going to school in California up to four years ago and Montana since then.
Maybe schools in downtown New York or Los Angeles require full-time cops on duty, but let’s not give the rest of the world the impression that our whole country is that bad.
One exception to the above is a basketball coach at our school that works as a cop, but he’s there as a coach, not as a police officer.
I’m white and middle-class, and my daughter attends a suburban high school in Baltimore County, Maryland. There are three Baltimore County cops on campus at all times, and they have cameras in those little bubble things that hang from the ceilings all over the school; in the hallways, the stairwells, the gym, the cafeteria, outside - everywhere. The doors to all of the bathrooms have been removed (the stall doors are still in place). All the county high schools have campus cops. It’s the times we live in. Rather sad.
If I recall correctly, I live roughly 30 miles from you, dropzone, and we have police liasion officers in the middle schools and in the high schools. We also have DARE officers on a part-time basis in the elementary schools, who are sometimes called upon as an unofficial police presence in certain situations. For example, when one of our elementary school students brought bullets to school, our DARE officer was called in.
Officially, our district is considered “outlying urban” - not “inner city” but also not “small town.”
(For those unfamiliar, DARE is Drug Abuse Resistance Education - this is the most recent incarnation of the old “Officer Friendly” program.)
Welcome to the Clovis Unified School District (from where I graduated).
This is a pretty upper middle class town with several national exemplary schools. They mainly patrol the perimeter of the high schools and middle schools and are on call to the elementary schools. IIRC they very good at keeping things in check and doing things like trying to get off campus during classtime without a pass was seen as begging to get in trouble. I saw exactly 1 fight in the two years I was there as opposed to 15-20 I saw in two years at my previous “safe” small town high school.
Nope. We live in a smaller rural “city” in Southwestern Ohio about 30 miles east of Downtown Cincinnati. The school in question is one of the larger schools with about 1,000 kids in it. Most of the other schools 'round here have about 200-800 kids and still have the Liason Officers.
Rural areas have just as much, if not more, trouble as the urban areas. In fact, the area I live in has the HIGHEST number of meth labs in Ohio. And it’s pretty much a cornfield.
