Monty, great posts. With one big exception. The teachers don’t get treated any better by the school bureaucracy than the students do. The most teachers should have to do is to stop bullying incidents they see and report them to someone else for further and decisive handling.
May I respectfully inquire which of society’s problems that we are currently trying to solve in the schools actually should not be handled there? If none, why shouldn’t bullying be handled there? After all, it occurs there.
I’ve heard recent polls show that around 80 percent students say that bullying is their biggest concern in school.
Whether I personally have taught 7th grade or not is irrelevant. Your reading skills have improved, so I won’t post the definition here. I trust you can find it on your own.
You see, the government mandates a certain amount of schooling and the schools are also mandated to be responsible for educating the students. I take it you’re not a medical doctor, but you more likely than not would expect a MD who is not up to performing his medical duties to switch careers. If you do not see the analogy here, it’s hopeless.
Glad to see you can still recognize a fact when it’s presented to you.
It appears I was mistaken in my assessment of your reading skills. I did not call teaching your subject matter malpractice. I called the failure to perform certain tasks malpractice.
Let’s see: back in the 1970s, when I was in school, the teachers managed to supplement the teaching of courtesy and respect my parents taught me. And yet, oddly enough, the teachers still managed to teach the subject matter.
Regardless of where you think something should or should not be taught, you are still not justified in your abdiction of your legal responsibilities. {I use “your” in the sense of “one” and “one’s” here.}
Damn straight you do not have the right to sue the parent for what goes on, or does not go on, inside the home. That is not your purview. If the child is being abused, on the other hand, you have recourse other than civil suits, as you are required by law in many, if not most, jurisdictions in the US to notify the appropriate legal and medical authorities of the suspected abuse.
Teach: the foregoing should be “Several of my colleagues and I…”
Good. You are aware that you can follow-up on the report, are you not?
And you base this assertion on what? Surely, you’re not party to another teacher’s personnel file.
Please tell me that you don’t teach either Reading or Logic. I didn’t say the child could sue, I clearly indicated that for the situation described in the OP the PARENT should sue. Try not to confuse PARENT with CHILD. Nor did I say that it was because “someone tells [the child] ‘No.’” I clearly addressed the situation described in the OP.
Actually, I think yelling at folks, especially yelling between adults, is unacceptable. If the student is a discipline problem, there are guidelines the school district has for you to follow. If the parent is abusive to you, you also have the right to recourse in the courts. Nowhere did I assert the opposite.
Most jurisdictions consider it a crime, or at least a misdemeanor, to threaten another person with physical violence or to steal from another person.
That does not address the issue of your failure to avail yourself of the remedies available to you.
If you say so.
And this abdicates you of your obligations exactly how?
So you base your knowledge of other schools, where you’ve never been, on your knowledge of just one school? Fascinating, given your comment above.
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Notebooks can also be used as weapons. You brought up guns and I specically asked about guns.
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So, you are able to enforce some discipline at this school, I take it?
And you do not send the students you expect of being high to the school nurse for a cursory examination? Amazing.
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I did not ask about some schools. I asked about your school.
I’m ignoring the rest of your post mainly because of your asinine comment about me at the end. You will notice that I did not call you an ass; I merely indicated that the comment was asinine.
Thank you. I’d like to address just this portion of your posting:
The teachers are [sub]presumably[/sub] adults and thus are well aware, or should be well aware, of the avenues they have for resolution of grievances they may have with the school or district administration. These avenues include, usually, a union, an EEO representative, the courts, and governmental representatives at local, state, and federal levels. When I first joined the military, my Drill Sergeant (yes, I started out in the Army before I realized the Navy’s the way to go), when he was explaining a couple of programs to us, said, “If you don’t apply, it’s YOU who told you NO.” That man was brilliant.
I agree that the teacher should report the bullying to someone for decisive AND EFFECTIVE disposition. The situation described in the OP appears to be a mass abdication of responsibility at that particular school. As that situation is in the past, one can only hope that particular school has improved.
One wonders why you didn’t mention an actual incident instead of bringing up guns earlier.
Vandalism is illegal. Has the district taken measures to prevent it? Are there not police patrols at random intervals when school is not in session? Does this vandalism happen during school hours and if so, are the appropriate authorities called to investigate?
Very commendable, you doing your job.
That assuredly isn’t the only reason students fall asleep in your class, is it? I can think of at least two other likely explanations to supplement yours.
And do you not refer such situations to the appropriate authorities (CPS, etc.)? If not, why not?
Oh, so you do practice medicine? :rollseyes:
Then why do you mention it? Anyway, so long as the child, if HIV+ isn’t screwing any of the other students or injecting infected body fluids into the other students, that’s a nonissue.
So you’re aware of at least some violent students and know to watch them?
I can’t fathom what the parent’s age has to do with the caliber of education a child receives. Oh, well. Care to elucidate?
Kind of hard for that child to do the parenting while in school, isn’t it? What does any of that have to do with the teacher or principal abdicating obligations?
Or perhaps the investigation turned up some other information to which you were not party.
I trust you are aware of the difference between a fact and an opinion, and that you just posted an opinion without supporting data.
First: I certainly hope you do not mean to imply that I hate children. This is the comment to which I referred as being asinine.
Second: I am not certified as a teacher, and thus am not authorized to teach.
Third: Wanna come defend the country at sea? I did that for the majority of my career. Come to think of it, plenty of civilians, to include teachers, who had never been in the military were more than willing to tell me how to do that. Also, plenty of civilians, to include teachers, who had been in the military weighed in on the issue also. So you see, your comment above about being on your shoes is irrelevant.
A teacher is obligated to teach the district curriculum as spelled out in the teacher’s contract. A part of this responsibility is to maintain order in the classroom. A teacher who does not have control cannot teach. If the rash of incidents described in the OP happened in the classroom during class, and the teacher permitted them or did not take reasonable measures to intercede on behalf of the victim, then that teacher was indeed at fault. As described in the OP, the teacher did take reasonable steps to intercede, even coming to the defense of the victim when she finally had enough and retaliated.
If most of the incidents took place outside of the classroom–and bullies almost always choose areas where they cannot be or are not being closely observed–and such incidents are reported to the proper disciplinary authority, it then becomes the responsibility of that authority (usually vice-principal or principal) to deal with the problem. This was not a mass abdication of responsibility. It may have been a mistake on the part of the principal for not dealing more forcefully with the bully earlier, but it this is not a clear cut case.
The situation described was a very tricky one even for the principal and counselor, as there was no physical violence involved. Teasing can be, and in the OP, obviously was, traumatic; it can, as in the OP, reach the level of harassment. I am not trying to diminish what happened to this girl.
But such situations present a very thin line for the school. I have, on two occasions, had formal complaints (both dismissed) filed by parents of students after I disciplined them for teasing other students in my class. Had I not disciplined them, I would have been risking complaints from the students being teased. I usually err on the side of the victim. But sometimes it can be very difficult to determine exactly what happened, and what the severity of the harassment was.
The bottom line is that the situation in the OP was not as cut and dried as it seems to some people who have been posting here. This was not mass abdication of responsibility, nor malpractice. It was an error on the part of the principal for not interceding earlier, and for exercising poor judgement in disciplining both students in the same way.
My advice to the parents of students who have been bullied:
Contact the teacher if this is elementary school, and either the counselor or principal if it is secondary. Go there in person, and be willing to discuss the situation rationally and calmly. You’ll get a much better response. Go with the attitude that this is a problem that you and the school should work together to solve, and be willing to cooperate with any reasonable measures proposed by the school.
Contact the school every time a further incident occurs. Again, doing so in person is more effective than by letter or phone. Continue contacting the school with every incident. Every single one. Often, the teacher or principal doesn’t know about the entire pattern because it has not been reported. Reporting every incident enables the school to create a paper trail that makes more severe disciplinary measures easier to enforce.
If you are not satisfied with the school’s response, contact the next person in the chain, and keep doing so until you run out of options.
This is the point at which you should consider legal action. To start with going to a lawyer is to make an adversary out of the school. Problems can usually be solved better through cooperation than confrontation. That said, if cooperation doesn’t work, by all means, go to a lawyer. But always keep that as a last resort. Even a “lawyer letter” is more likely to antagonize people you want on your side. Don’t do that unless you have no other choice.
I apologize if I did not make myself clear. I do believe that any individual incidence of bullying must be addressed in the school; however, I interpreted the OP to be a general question about how to solve the problem of bullying. For this, I think we have to look both within and without the schools to find a solution to this problem. The level of civility among students has declined over the past two or three decades, and I don’t think that schools can be held entirely, or even principally, to blame. This is one area in which I agree with true conservatives: the most important problems we face cannot be solved by government alone.
Please be so kind as to correct “And you do not send the students you expect of being high to the school nurse for a cursory examination?” in my posting above to “And you do not send the students you suspect of being high to the school nurse for a cursory examination?”
Also correct “on your shoes” in my posting above to “in your shoes.”