Posted on 04/04/2005 12:49:21 PM PDT by SmithL
When teacher Bonnie Taylor swung open the gym doors of El Cerrito High School last week, she expected to take the stage at an assembly -- not take one on the chin.
The 56-year-old came home bruised, bandaged and outraged after a 17-year-old girl punched her in the face and jabbed a pencil at her hand.
The student faces suspension and possible expulsion. That doesn't make Taylor, a teacher of 33 years, feel any better about returning to work.
"Physically, I'm fine. Mentally, I'm still upset and angry," she said.
Student assaults are becoming more frequent in California, statistics from the state Department of Education show. Growing concerns in the West Contra Costa school district have prompted new demands from the United Teachers of Richmond to more strongly discipline unruly students and to protect teachers.
"They don't mind giving their life for education, but it should be a figurative thing, not a physical thing," said union President Gail Mendes.
According to a 2004 report, an estimated 90,000 violent crimes were committed against teachers on campuses nationwide from 1998 to 2002.
About 4 percent of teachers surveyed nationally in 1999-2000 said they had been attacked by students, according to the 2004 Indicators of School Crime and Safety report. Male teachers, city teachers and those at middle or high schools were more likely to be targets.
The magnitude of the problem is difficult to track. Like many states, California's data includes all school employees without separate statistics for teachers.
Recommended expulsions stemming from student assaults or batteries on school employees has grown steadily from 668 in 2000-01 to 1,053 last school year, according to the state Department of Education. However, those figures count students punished for violence against employees, not the attacks themselves.
"Who knows how many didn't get reported," said Chuck Nichols, a safety consultant for the state Department of Education.
In the 33,000-student West Contra Costa school district, the union recently added new safety proposals during contract negotiations.
The teachers want the district to pursue legal action if a student injures a teacher or damages property. The district would also reimburse teachers for injuries or repairs caused by campus assault or vandalism.
The union, which represents about 2,000 teachers, also wants stiffer punishment for students who break the rules.
Teachers can banish students from their classroom the day of an offense and the next day. The union wants to expand classroom suspensions for up to five days to prevent what Mendes calls "the revolving door."
When students violate a rule, such as using profanity, teachers send them to the principal's office from where they often return during the same period.
"All the kids around them see that and they think, 'Gee, if you can get away with it, I can too,'" Mendes said.
Swearing does not amount to homicide. But lax punishment for minor infractions encourages more aggressive acts, Mendes said.
"It starts with children being verbally disrespectful to teachers. It moves into using foul language. And it escalates" to physical attacks, she said.
The district has rejected the safety proposals. Lengthening classroom suspensions might violate student legal rights, said Laurie Juengert, lawyer and member of the district bargaining team.
"The district believes that proper disciplinary action should be taken against students who injure teachers," Juengert said. "However, we have to follow the due process requirement for state and federal law."
Researchers say documenting the problem is the main obstacle to preventing violence against teachers.
Most public education systems do not record or report the information in a detailed manner, said Susan Gerberich, director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Control at the University of Minnesota.
"You're really getting the tip of the iceberg of what the problem may be," she said.
This year, the center embarked on a first-of-its-kind investigation of violence against teachers. Researchers will survey at least 12,600 of them in Minnesota over three years to study what happens to them and why and identify risk and protection factors.
Most studies of campus violence prevention have focused on children.
"There's been very little attention paid to teachers," Gerberich said.
To meet federal reporting requirements, California schools report expulsions related to Education Code violations that include disrupting school events, carrying a weapon and assaulting or battering a school employee.
But few want to admit their schools are violent, and chalking up more expulsions offers little reward for a principal looking for approval from higher-ups.
"They see that as a bad thing," Mendes said. "Well, it is a bad thing that the children are out of school and aren't learning. But it's a good thing for other students who are in the classroom and are learning."
In Oakland schools, state-appointed administrator Randolph Ward ended the practice of dismissing student crime.
The district reported 10 recommendations for expulsions from assaulting or battering an employee in 2000-01, before Ward arrived. Last school year, the district recommended 156 expulsions for attacks on employees; the year before that, 92.
Teachers often shy from reporting abuse out of pride or to maintain the facade of invulnerability, Mendes said.
Once, a teacher casually told her that boys routinely grabbed her breasts in the halls. Another called Mendes after getting elbowed in the ribs by a student.
Neither filed a report.
"'Why bother? Nothing's going to happen.' I hear that from teachers all the time."
As others have so aptly pointed out......the public school system is reaping what they were hell-bent to sow, parents' choices and preferences and beliefs be damned.
Reap it, teacher unions. NO pity here.
There is still corporal punishment in schools; it is only that the kids are punishing the teachers.
I agree that the parents are at fault too...but you have to admit...that even though there might be conservative teachers..they are a rare bunch...as far as my experience with the school system goes..but the powers that be...those who set curriculum have by and large been driven by a liberal humanistic agenda. And the policies they have put in place have been of a liberal bent. Many parents of todays students are products of the same liberal school system and have brought this agenda to a second and possibly even third generation.
Once they took God out of school and replaced Him with the humanist god...they were ripe for the kind of behavior that is manifesting itself in our schools today.
No one is truly powerless when it comes to addressing the so called powers that be or those who make the rules. But I do believe that you are what you speak. If you think you are powerless...then you will indeed be powerless.
This makes me think of the Nazis during world war II. "They were just following orders" when they killed millions of innocent lives. It is a shame that some of those who are in charge of teaching our children have copped the same attitude. "We are powerless", "we can't buck the system"..."we were just following orders". The newest victims are our kids...the old adage of "evil abounds when good men do nothing" seems to fit here.
The school system has allowed the plumb line to be taken away and there are now generations of people who have had little or no God or moral guidance in their lives. They have no anchor..and they are bringing up anchorless children.
You'll never sell that to the teachers unions and politicians.
States are now raising their school leaving ages to 18. Indiana recently tried, and failed, to raise it to 19.
Progressive educators either do not believe in classical education for obvious reasons or do not know it exists.
They are. Depends on the district. Sometimes it depends on the Principal. Most high school administrators I have known (most not all) won't take any SH** from any punk. I have taught for the last eight years in an inner city high school. We have had knifings, shootings, numerous beatings (fights daily) and loads of gang activities. Teachers have been jumped and threatened with firearms, you name it. Nothing has ever happened to me, not even remotely, although I have helped to subdue other kids and some of the autistic kids who sometimes ACT OUT due to their condition.
Speaking as a former State Probation and Parole Officer, I am currently working with state legislators and the Governor to pass a law that would give teachers direct notification as to which of their students is either on parole or probation for a violent felony and what the exact disposition of the case happens to be. It further would give classroom teachers direct access to the individual probation and parole officers of said students. It is usually a condition of probation that a student be in class, on time, and well behaved at all times. If this is violated, forget being suspended, they can be arrested and these punks (despite all bravado) do not want to return to the slammer. Uniformly teachers love this idea and so does the legislature. Well everybody except the liberal RATS...but in Florida, they don't really count much anymore....except for whine values. At this they provide endless entertainment.
As I said, I've never been targeted. Dunno why. Maybe it's because I always start the year by showing my students my military photo album. Pics of me doing some pretty amazing stuff and do ing it with some pretty heavy firepower, and in some extremely heavy metal. I've got a pic of my wilder days with a drastic MOHAWK haircut.....and some other kewl pics. Anyway, it leaves an impression.
I also go to great lengths to make buddies with the varsity football team. Especially the linemen, whom I will tutor after school, etc. Once I establish myself anybody being so foolish as to threaten me in any way gets a visit from the front line, after school. A lot of these football players have a real chance at a full ride scholarships for their abilities.
I wouldn't expect to be able to sell it to education professionals. Their self-interest is in ignorance and the incompetent. If their clients were smart, they wouldn't need their services.
It's a lot like professional trainers or health care professionals. Their customers are people in poor health and not those in good health. Once people are in good health, they have no customers. So they have to maintain a pool of people in poor or marginal health -- by not improving their health.
Newspapers and media are the same way. They thrive on uninformed citizens; once people are informed, they have no need for popular notions of information because they are the original sources themselves.
The students of this phenomenon call it "disintermediation." What people formerly required many different specialists to do for them, they're now capable of doing for themselves. In writing, the pool used to be limited to those few who were excellent typists -- in order to produce anything publishable or readable. The word processor changed that -- eliminating secretaries.
One basically needs to teach one skill -- learning to operate a computer. From that one skill, one can learn anything else he needs to learn -- as he requires to, and not just because some educational guru says he has to. With so much that can be learned, one has to learn what he is most interested in learning at the present and put off learning just for learning's sake. That is not the classical education.
When one is intensely interested in a subject, he can very easily read the entire library of information on that subject in a month to a year. If he is not interested, not motivated, he will naturally be disinterested and resistive. That is the major failing of education of this time -- that it thinks it is about subjects rather than this desire to learn, regardless of the subject matter. It especially fails for those who are prodigies in a certain field, which everyone is to some degree.
How society functions is that interaction of those with diverse talents and not forcing people of diverse abilities to learn the same curriculum whether it interests or serves them or not. That is the prescription for failure. They learn things that are abstractly useful while ignoring those lessons that are immensely practical. They are teaching a thousand year old curriculum rather than the skills necessary today -- in much the same way they did a thousand years ago.
The bright spot in education is the home schools. Such products are winning all the academic prizes now mainly because their teachers teach to the student rather than to the curriculum. Additionally, that's where most of the prodigies have to be schooled because they would be tremendous problems in the traditional schools of mass education. Education in this day and age should be personalized and custom-designed to each student. The old school model is just obsolete and serves nobody but the teachers unions.
There's no person anywhere who doesn't want to learn something. You have to find out what that is rather than forcing them to learn what they don't want to learn -- or surely they will resist and turn on you. Most teachers do not know how to learn; they only know how to teach. The student wants to learn how to learn -- and that's what the teacher will not teach him, because most don't know the difference.
Hope they both came out feeling like winners. Cna't have somone feel like they lost.
Well said!....the problem is we have to share this world with their monsters!
Moral Absolutes Ping.
It is indeed partially the liberal/leftist teachers' union's fault, or responsibility, that kids are turning into thugs and hellions.
But they share this responsibility with a host of others - lax parents, parents who care more about their own "self fulfillment" or sex lives than their children, Hollyweird and other entities whose goal it is to destroy morality and any sense of character or virtue, those high-up educrats whose plans for us would curl our hair (or straigthen it) if we but knew their goals, churchers and other religious organizations who don't dare to teach the truth (or don't know it to teach it) and on and on.
What about the old fashioned virtues of honesty, loyalty, trustworthiness, chastity, humility, steadfastness, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us? If one moral absolute is rejected, they all must be rejected as they now have no foundation.
It's every man for himself, and in such a dog eat dog world, complete barbarity is not far away. And what happens after that? Jack booted thugism.
Let me know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.
The newest article for the ping list!
Look,some of these little gangstas could care LESS whether a teacher is liberal or conservative,white or black,male or female.They will resist anybody who dares to stop their antics.
And,take it from me,when you are at an asembly and bottles fly across the auditorium,those bottles do not have a political preference regarding their target!
My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another Beast People, animals half wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert,— to show first this bestial mark and then that.
- Edward Prendick
There's alot right with what you said, however a single teacher cannot do much to change the system. Parents actually have more power in that regard.
I don't know what you do for a living, but most worker bees, by themselves have little power over how the business works. On the other hand, yes, we should continue to try. I was not suggesting I sat passivly by, I'm suggesting that every time we see this stuff happen there is a raft of posts blaming teachers. That's patently silly, but they do it anyway.
So, let me say it again. Classroom teachers don't set policy. Most of the time we would like it to change, because it impacts us. Not all teachers are liberal (depends on where you live but in East Texas, many of us were conservatives). (Where I taught)most of the teachers were church going, Bible believing folk.
Now, when I start teaching here in Palm Beach County, I'm quite sure the situation will be totally different. Pray for me!
susie
I was horrified when I started teaching to see 20 year old men in freshmen classes! I had no idea you could go that long. Most of them never turned in an assignment, and their goal seemed to be to just stay in school as long as possible. I suppose it's better than getting a job. Plus, if you qualify, you can get free breakfast and lunch.
I don't know, but it seems stupid to allow them to to continue when they are not actually trying to get an education. Personally, I think they should not be able to retake a class over and over on the publics dollar.
susie
Of course, no one should argue with this position. But in practice it is not as easy as you suggest to motivate the learner. Even one on one a teacher needs a lot of skill to find what motivates a kid. Then you find that he would really like to learn how to play those guitar riffs he hears on the Metalica albumn. And you point to the computer and suggest that he do a gogle search.
After learning that it takes lots of practice to master a musical instrument, you try again to interest the person in a "classical education" "Did you know that the guitar was invented in ancient Greece?" you say. does this work? I doubt it. Now this kid may become motivated, or he may be using dope and never get motivated. But there are lots of these kids out there being "educated" along side the genuine learners, and often holding them back.
But your claim that teachers are in a conspiracy to not teach because if students learn, they can't teach them any more is partly true. California had a whole bilingual teaching industry based on the idea of not learning English until grade 6. Of course English should be learned in grade 1 but then the grades 2-6 teachers would not be needed, and bilingual teachers even got paid more. So doubtless this can happen. In other areas, like science for example, the teachers have a different plan. Teach enough interest in science to get kids to take more of it. Thereby ensuring more students in the advanced classes. It would work in math too, since most students do not pursue every advanced math class that is offered.
Yes, but there is more going on here. The schools used to eventually declare a kid persona non grata and just like that he was no longer a ward of the school. Judges have held that this is not a valid interpretation. Schools get paid per student, but a student who is not worth the ADA pay should have some place to go. Vocational school would be a good plan. But there are few vocational schools andy more, and few jobs waiting for those who go to them. And the schools have been told to keep troubling schools until they are 18 no matter if they have to assign a teacher to supervise them with no education taking place. These kids should be allowed to be "let go" and this is not happening. And I mean after they get out of jail, the schools have to take them back and this is not a good solution for the schools or these kids.
WE gotin this situation because communities rightly fear a bunch of no good trouble makers hanging around with no school and no job. So they insisted that the schools keep them.
Your comments remind me of this warning given to me by a co-worker upon starting a new job:
"Don't ask Mel anything; if you ask him what time it is, he'll tell you how to build a clock."
That's frequently the approach taken by bad teachers. When somebody asks, "How does this computer work?", all he wants to know is which button to push to turn it on -- and not the history of operating systems and calculating machines. The kid who wants to play the guitar, doesn't want or need to know the history of guitars and music theory -- which a lot of teachers will insist he needs to know before they will teach him what he wants to know. They're not listening to his question (needs) -- the deeper significance of it because they are so full of their own knowledge, bursting for a chance to exhibit it.
He's highly motivated to know what he wants to know -- but he has no interest in what YOU want him to know, and wonder why he is not motivated as he should be. Then you wonder why you cannot pound the lesson into his head.
This is precisely what I'm referring to as bad (the old) teaching -- you determining what he needs to know rather than he driving his own learning, which is very, very powerful. People have a natural interest in learning -- unless it has been made tedious and obstructive by the educational experience -- which has very little to do with real learning, but continues because that's what "teachers" learn is what teaching is -- just out of habit and tradition.
When one dispenses with all the superfluous, learning is very effective and self-reinforcing. Learning just for the sake of learning is a waste of time -- and discourages further learning. Learning that immediately pays off, is self- and positively-reinforcing. Unfortunately, much of what is regarded and carried out in the name of learning, teaching, and education is of this coercion to learn everything rather than what is necessary -- while the necessary will never be taught.
A good example is the tax return. I think mastering the 1040 Form and Instruction Booklet should be the standardized achievement of every high school graduate because that mastery implies all the useful skills of living in today's contemporary society. Not trigonometry, not Latin, not ethnic studies, not Shakespeare, not liberal studies, etc., etc., etc. But in mastering the 1040 Form and Instruction Booklet, one will learn critical reading, necessary math, business, law, investments, human relations, etc. -- as a practical matter, and in doing so, have his first marketable skill and realize the practical value of learning -- and not just because he can sound like he knows a lot. And that is what the education game and activities have mostly devolved into -- rather than the simple, very powerful human instinct to learn -- because it makes a very real, practical, demonstrable difference in everything he does.
I will pray for you. As I pray for our school teachers. My daughter and I pray every morning for her school..the teachers and her classmates.
But excuse my ignorance about things concerning unions. Don't teachers have a powerful union? ..and if it is powerful...how can they (the teachers) have no power? I don't understand how union workers can be so out of the policy making of the place where they work...doesn't that kind of defeat the point of having a union?..I have had no experience with unions...so excuse my ignorance.
I can only speak to my experience in my school district....but it's the fourth largest in the nation. We have several top notch vocational schools and the process by which you enter is extremely competitive...they're not the dumping grounds for trash, IOW.
Baker Aviation teaches all facets of aircraft maintenance and I'm not talking Cessna's! With Miami International Airport directly across the street, there's jobs aplenty waiting on grads. Extremely high paying jobs. Then there's Turner Tech and that's a place for everything from auto mechanics to A/C repair and everything else. There are other programs, too. But as I said, they're for the highly motivated with a drive to succeed but those who just know the University thang isn't for them!
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