WM: Some of these possibly criminal assaults are teachers being assaulted by kids young as six. This is a whole new ballgame at the schools.... in the case of criminal assault, I think all parties need a cooling down period.
WM: Actually, the threat as I remember it, was that you would shame yourself if anyone found out you'd misbehaved so much that you were being suspended. Once you had a suspension, you were on the road to degradation and could be expelled and be forced to go to public school (yikes!). My parents didn't always back the teachers, but they let me know I'd be eating off the mantel for months should I so disgrace--or bring unwanted attention to--the family.I believe suspension was a policy that worked when it was a privilege to go to school, and then only when parents backed up the teacher, right or wrong. ("You make trouble in school and I'll give you real trouble when I find out about it.")
WM: This was called "detention," a much less odious affair entirely. You were sent to a room by yourself and given a volume of the encyclopedia which you were to copy onto paper, starting at the beginning. If you did not have enough written at the end of one hour, things got much worse pretty quick. I wound up doing the As for daydreaming usually, which the nuns didn't tolerate.I wish there was enough staff that if a student can't be trusted to behave in the classrooms and halls, she or he can do his work in a "suspension room" situation--tutoring, not caretaking. Could this be a place for volunteers?
I just don't see the point of creating a situation in which a student mustWM: Some kids have fallen way behind. One of the reasons they act up is to diss the skills they cannot do. Book knowledge is scorned if a kid can't read. He's/She's building street cred while acting out. There's a lot of shame around not being able to read and a lot of sneering denial (sneering seems to be a major teenage trait). I sat with a gang banger wannabe in Cathy's Grade A one day, pointed out a 2-paragraph article on page B-3 of the Strib and handed it to him to read. It took him over ten minutes and he didn't wind up with a really good grasp of the fairly simple text. This kid was 15 or 16 years old. Everyone needs to read, of course, but criminals and wannabe criminals need to read very well in order to stay out of prison. The two paragraphs I handed the kid were about a crackdown on kid's his age by the juvenile criminal justice system.
fall behind on his work by having to leave school. Too many of the kids
are marginal students, already. Some kids act up precisely because they get rewarded with time off--suspension. Life is more fun off campus.
WM: Some are acting up because they're in severe emotional pain for invariably very good reasons. This is one of the biggest reasons why a school system "fails." The kid needs super nurturing and he needs it from his own family. You can find a big brother/sister, a social worker, a church, a Guardian Ad Litem, but the kid is aching for family nurturing. No matter the qualities of the teacher, the school cannot provide that for a kid, much as they might like to.Some need to be deprived of their audience and faced by a totally lonely situation. They're acting up for the audience. Get them away from their audience.
How do we change that equation?
WizardMarks, Central
_______________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
