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Social media elevate school fights to new realm
Norwalk Reflector ^ | May 26th 2015 | TNS REGIONAL NEWS

Posted on 05/26/2015 5:08:07 PM PDT by ExSoldier

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I'm a teacher with 25+ years of experience in the fourth largest school district in the nation. If you're a parent you need to pay particular attention to this article. This is showing up more and more as ambushes for bully's and not so much as pre-agreed to combat (like Fight Club). That means there will be plenty of spectators to witness a kid's utter humiliation and it will stick with that kid for a very long time, maybe even a lifetime. The psychological impact can change the life course of a child. Perhaps in the ability to make and keep lasting relationships of all intensities. It could impact the choice of career and progression therein and much more. In my district, we have exactly seven more school days left in the year. All the old scores and grudges (fights) are being settled in that time. If that's true where you live, then the kids are in a danger zone. Just a heads up.
1 posted on 05/26/2015 5:08:07 PM PDT by ExSoldier
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To: ExSoldier

See, homeschooling is bad because homeschooled kids miss out out on this kind of socialization ...


2 posted on 05/26/2015 5:16:00 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Claire Wolfe should check her watch. It's time.)
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To: ExSoldier

I was a student who didn’t hit puberty until age seventeen. I weighed 56lbs when I started high school. You think that there is an increase in bullying today because you personally lived in a bubble and you refused to believe things that you did not want to believe.

Welcome to reality, ExSoldier. It is the same as it ever was.

The difference now is exactly the same as the difference between police corruption today and police corruption in the past.

Ubiquitous cameras crush the deeply desired illusions that people lived in by choice.

People who cherish the illusions they held and don’t have the fortitude to deal with reality that they ignored or enabled the problem in the past. So they throw out the pathetic assertion that the problem long talked about by others and long denied by themselves has just now appeared.

But it didn’t just appear.
Cell phone cameras is what just appeared.


3 posted on 05/26/2015 5:34:10 PM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: ClearCase_guy
Boom!
4 posted on 05/26/2015 5:34:23 PM PDT by 9thLife (The dream is free. The hustle is sold separately.)
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To: ExSoldier

Who pays for the cell phone?

I thought Obama provided them for free.


5 posted on 05/26/2015 5:55:00 PM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (Lord God help us.)
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To: ExSoldier

Is there any hope for this subculture? Are they just doomed?

I want to wave a magic wand and stop the vicious cycle but it just gets worse every subsequent generation. How do we fix this without taking all the fatherless babies away from their mothers and raising them in Catholic convents or some such thing.

This problem seems doomed to go on forever worsening.


6 posted on 05/26/2015 5:57:13 PM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (Lord God help us.)
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To: ExSoldier

Hmm, looks like an extra mag is in my future. Two is not enough ...


7 posted on 05/26/2015 6:02:04 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Is it really all relative, Mister Einstein?)
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To: ExSoldier
Students must figure out a way to resolve conflict, other than fighting, Hubbard said.

This woman is clueless: THERE IS NO CONFLICT other than a fabricated one as an excuse to attack. This is a sport, or a hobby.

8 posted on 05/26/2015 6:27:03 PM PDT by A_perfect_lady
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To: Freedom_Is_Not_Free

It’s not clear to me how they managed it, but Victorian England had a large population of uneducated, ruthless gutter rats in every big city. I’m thinking mid to late 1800s when Capitalism was taking off and their society hadn’t figured out how to deal with “the dregs”.

Somehow they turned it around. While they never eliminated poverty, and they did eventually slide deeply into socialism and decline, there was a period (1900 to 1940 perhaps) where England seemed to build a stronger social fabric and have somewhat fewer people living life at the bottom.

Whatever they did is probably what we need to do.


9 posted on 05/26/2015 6:29:08 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Claire Wolfe should check her watch. It's time.)
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To: Freedom_Is_Not_Free

Put them in cages. In the Pacific Ocean.


10 posted on 05/26/2015 6:36:34 PM PDT by The Toll
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To: ExSoldier

Stay in one piece down there.


11 posted on 05/26/2015 6:58:47 PM PDT by GenXteacher (You have chosen dishonor to avoid war; you shall have war also.)
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To: ExSoldier

We are witnessing the fall of Rome and the beginning of the next dark ages, rejoice in seeing history unfold before our very eyes.


12 posted on 05/26/2015 7:16:12 PM PDT by MrBambaLaMamba (Obama - "I will stand with the Muslims")
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To: MrEdd

When i was in grade school there was a special, admin-approved area for fighting and wrestling. It was good fun. In highschool there were fights every Friday night down by the Piggly Wiggly.

That was.... A very long time ago.

A while back I ran into a guy who once cold-cocked me at a party in highschool. He apologized. I had forgotten about it. No one told me I was supposed to be “psychologicaly traumatized.”

Boys are no different now than they were 1,000 years ago.

The real problem is the absurd number of teacher’s raping children.


13 posted on 05/26/2015 7:47:16 PM PDT by Noamie
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To: ExSoldier

Have school security open fire on them. This’ll stop.


14 posted on 05/26/2015 7:49:57 PM PDT by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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To: MrEdd
You think that there is an increase in bullying today because you personally lived in a bubble and you refused to believe things that you did not want to believe.

ROFLMAO! Whatever gave you that silly idea? Read my FR Home page. I've taught in some of the toughest inner city high schools in Miami, FL. I have lost dozens of students to gang violence and had a colleague of mine, get jumped after school, because he had the AUDACITY to confiscate an iPod from a female. When he confiscated it, she slapped him on the spot. He sent her to the office expecting an arrest as is county policy.

But the poor thing was simply misunderstood and TPTB sent her home on an outdoor suspension (speaking of which in 2005 that school had the highest number of suspensions for violence in the nation: seven THOUSAND--7000 -- in one school year on a population of just 1800!). She returned that afternoon with her crackhead mother, her golden gloves boxer brother and another guy. They jumped the teacher after he'd just finished tutoring some kids for their FCAT exams and they broke his jaw in three places. My class is just across the hall from his. I was out sick that day. Next day, my kids come to class and AXE me if I'm now 'Fraid to come to work? to which I responded thusly: "Look son, I'm too young to die and too old to take a A$$ whuppin' so, I'm just gonna KILL YA."

Their eyes got wide and they said: "Yeah we figured you'd say that." That was because at the other inner city high school from where this one had recruited me to teach a psychology and sociology class, I'd had a little incident where I'd had to put a kid on the ground, screaming. But that was just a small thing, there. It impressed the kids though.

My other buddy at that school (retired Airborne Ranger 1st Sergeant from the 1st Ranger Battalion) had taken out nearly a half dozen kids on his own amidst a sudden gang fight in his class. That was quite interesting. When I say taken out I mean out cold as in unconscious, but not dead. Can't remember if he broke bones.

Code Red shooting incidents were common. One time I was home sick again (it was a "sick" building and I was always having headaches and breathing issues) and a buddy called me on my cell asking if I could "see it." I asked see what? and he replied the dead body riddled with bullets in the street beneath my class room that year. I missed all the cool stuff that year.

Finally I got sick of having the "state" all up in my face (everybody was harassed) -- they kicked 35 teachers out the door to other schools. I survived the cut because we were a triple "F" school and I had very good stats. But I got burned out and requested a transfer.

When I went into my middle school where I am now, I asked: Okay, how many knifings here? They were aghast. It's really quite a nice school, but I need to be teaching the high school kids so I'm trying to transfer to a nice suburban high school next year. I'll probably retire in four or five years.

15 posted on 05/26/2015 9:52:25 PM PDT by ExSoldier ("Terrorists: They hate you yesterday, today, and tomorrow. End it, no more tomorrows for them!)
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To: ExSoldier

My point flew entirely over your head.

Things were as bad as you describe at some schools back in the sixties.


16 posted on 05/26/2015 9:59:22 PM PDT by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: Freedom_Is_Not_Free
Is there any hope for this subculture? Are they just doomed?

That's an interesting question. It depends. For example in the 17 years I taught at those two inner city high schools, I never experienced the first incident of racism from any student. Even those I'd had suspended or expelled. But the teachers and administrators that were "of color?" The hatred rolled off of them in waves. I had a principal for a few years that refused to look any white person in the eye when greeted with a "Good Morning!" he might respond but he wouldn't even glance your way.

95% of my students, when they were finished with my assignment in class, they'd take out a Holy Bible and read or have a quiet "study" among themselves, to which I was delighted. Some of the LIBTARDS in that school, among the faculty would suppress that activity, but not me.

OTOH, about 5% of those I taught were totally welfare state minded and of them maybe 2% would be ripe for radicalization to Islam and recruitment. That happened to me in 2001 right after 911, but that's a long story for another time. The small percentages were shunned by the "good kids" and they would come to me and apologize profusely when one of them (entitlement children) would act stupid in class.

17 posted on 05/26/2015 10:03:59 PM PDT by ExSoldier ("Terrorists: They hate you yesterday, today, and tomorrow. End it, no more tomorrows for them!)
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To: MrEdd
I understand. I was horribly bullied. I'd had ribs broken during the initial integration of schools in the '60's. Changed my life forever. From the time I first learned to swim, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I wound up with a degree in Criminal Justice and an army commission to the Infantry. Later I would become a law enforcement officer and I just got my Master's in National Security and Counter Terrorism. I studied the martial arts because of the bullying. I've used that as an adult educator. As an NRA certified Instructor these last 25 years I can't tell you how many teachers I've trained for the Florida Concealed Weapons Permit. They all insist I not tell anybody!
18 posted on 05/26/2015 10:09:13 PM PDT by ExSoldier ("Terrorists: They hate you yesterday, today, and tomorrow. End it, no more tomorrows for them!)
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To: MrEdd
My point flew entirely over your head.

And you entirely missed my point, MrEdd. The point is that it's no longer just the violence which has always been there. But now it's an organized spectator sport and large crowds may show up in the terms of a "flash mob." Now, suppose the kid (victim) is walking home with friends and the mob shows up, the violence can easily spread to them. Probably will. At the very least they will be forced to watch the victimization of their friend and have to see it over and over on the various media frequented by that age group. I don't have an instagram account. Most of my family does, but I don't because I don't want to be followed by my students. It's the numbers and instant global sharing that is new here. The ability to organize. Not the act itself. Goes far beyond cell phone cameras as you asserted.

19 posted on 05/26/2015 10:21:20 PM PDT by ExSoldier ("Terrorists: They hate you yesterday, today, and tomorrow. End it, no more tomorrows for them!)
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To: MHGinTN
Although I can't carry at school (yet) when I'm off duty and out and around, I carry a Sig MK25 9mm in a CROSSBREED IWB holster. with 18+1 in the mag and one 20 rd extended spare mag, I figure I'm good if I do my job with placement of the rounds. Shot placement is always the key, right? Even with a 45acp and only 8+1 and an 8rd mag as spare, if I've got a few dead ones at my feet or scattered about, I doubt the rest will press the attack. Punks are cowards. Now, if I'm worried about an ISIS attack, that's different. Then you would have a very valid point.
20 posted on 05/26/2015 10:28:53 PM PDT by ExSoldier ("Terrorists: They hate you yesterday, today, and tomorrow. End it, no more tomorrows for them!)
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