No one knows what the future holds, but I am counting down the days until the end of the school year. By my count, there are ten more days with children and eleven more counting are close out day. My new job begins now in mid June. Of course, that is a long story by itself, but I can't complain how it has worked out. I even get a week in between to recharge my batteries. Oh boy, do they need to be recharged.
Today, I got kicked in the privates for the second time in three weeks. I've been doing this for fourteen years. In the first eleven, I was cussed at every now and then, but never physically threatened (much less assaulted). Furthermore, I had never even met a teacher that had been physically assaulted. In three years at my current school I have been bitten, kicked in the privates twice, and had any other assortment of injury attempts. Today was the last straw. My assistant principal decided I may have been hurt and informed our administration, I was required to go to a doctor where a nurse fondled my private parts and I had a urine test done to see if I was on drugs. This was all procedure mind you, but remember that I was victim.
When I returned to school, I noticed that the girl was not only still in school, but wandering the hallway on her own. She of course stopped to laugh at me. Sometime in me snapped. I spoke with the assistant principal and she was trying to send the student home, but mom would not answer the phone (the girl had already been suspended that week). She was too young to give a ticket to and there wasn't a paper trail necessary to send her to our centralized school for discipline problems. In other words, there were a lot of excuses as to why she could not be held responsible. Certainly doesn't make my genitalia feel any better.
It was the last part of the discussion that floored me the most. Seems we cannot hold them as responsible as others because it is likely not their intent to hurt us. Well, we are splitting hairs there. When the child kicked me two times in the leg and then aimed for my crotch it was clear to me what the intent was. Now, get in touch with her inner child, her zen, or whatever but in the good ol' days we had hard and fast rules for this. It doesn't have to be a paddle or a switch (although I'm leaning that way for this girl). It just needs to be the same and it needs to be enough to make students understand that they can't do this.
Throughout my three years at the school I've been told that some of these kids just don't know any better, They aren't getting good parenting at home. They have ADHD or are oppositional defiant. Those are all very real considerations, but if we expect every other child to keep from hitting their classmates and teachers then we must do so with them. Yes, we can give them some accommodations but ultimately they must be held to the same general standards. If we don't then we aren't helping them. We aren't being understanding. We are doing them a great disservice and that is the saddest thing of all.
There is a happy medium between letting them run roughshod over u's and picking them up by the ears. It absolutely floors me that a child can be suspended a half dozen times for anything. We used to have a next step for kids like that. Mind you, this girl came to u's from an alternative school. The next step should be expulsion. If your child is being suspended weekly then your child needs to stay home with you until they figure out how to act.
As for any declaration of rights, I'm okay with it in general. Yet, your rights stop where mine begin. These same kids that have hit me and other teachers have terrorized their classmates. In addition to the regular hitting, one pulled a girl around the room by her hair for no reason. What about those kids rights?
Oops, didn't mean to leave your name out of the question, AH. I've got mixed feelings about it, really. I haven't made up my mind one way or the other.
Just out of curiosity, Scott and or Doug, how do you feel about the UN's Convention on the Rights of a the Child?
There has, of course, been plenty of hyperbole spread around on the issue but some of it doesn't seem completely baseless.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/UN_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child
Like you said Scott, the good old days were far better. The apple cart has been completely turned upside down when children can abuse adults and get away with it. This very concept goes against everything we see in nature. The young are always disciplined by the adults in the animal kingdom. Can anybody think of a single incident where this is not true?
No wonder Scott this society seems to be losing it's marbles. I am not around children much at all, and have largely missed this big change in society. But I do see it..where children are given the same authority and decision making rights as adults. It's INSANE!
And you were forced to go to a nurse and have you're junk touched?? We are all allowed to refuse medical procedures. I wish I could get in a time machine and go back 50 years, when society made at least a little bit of sense.
I remember when I was about 6 years old and a kid was behaving badly in gym class. The teacher went over, and picked the kid up by the ears. The kid never acted badly again in class, and it was the best thing that could have happened to the kid, the class, the teacher and society.
Wow, Scott. Thanks for sharing this. Sadly, growing up in that school district, I saw more student assaults on teachers than I can recall.
When I get upset enough to want to strike someone, and I can't actually do it, try to envision it in a ridiculous way and it helps. In this instance, I would recommend a imagining a good ol' WWF style wrestling move, like elbows from the top ropes or a good clean drop-kick.
Hey Scott,
that is totally jacked up...you will be better off wherever you will be.
They don't have a place to confine students behaving like that.
You're not allowed to defend yourself...I am totally non-violent but an attack is an attack, I might have been inclined to retaliate.