School Safety
March 3rd, 2010
I witnessed one of my best friends getting shot in the daylight and I couldn’t do anything – we were in the wrong place at the wrong time… It takes time but I am going to have to take back everything the devil stole from me. It’s a work in progress, but with prayer and supplication I will do it.
Eleventh grader, Dyquan Caldwell, shared his tragedy in “A Mile in My Shoes Writing Project: African-American Males Telling Their Own Stories.” According to a recent study, teenagers like Dyquan are more likely to walk to school, pass through a metal detector when entering school, have major distractions from doing school work, have fewer opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities, and sadly, more likely to report that their teachers say and do things to make students feel bad about themselves.
February 24th, 2010
Chelsie, a vibrant freshman in third period, is no longer vibrant. Most days, she’s not even present. When she does show up to class, she often comes early and alone. Her grades have slipped. She makes up excuses in the computer lab about why she can’t go online or she pleads a stomach ache and heads for the nurse’s office. When she’s in class, Chelsie prefers to work alone and not in groups. If other students ask her to join a group, she snaps at them.
Chelsie’s change in behavior is consistent with that of a cyberbully victim, Hindjua and Patchin wrote in Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying.
February 15th, 2010
Life in summer English 11 was pretty peaceful until I allowed the class to divide themselves into teams for a review game. My students were completely engaged in the game. They enjoyed any opportunity to compete and began to trash talk. You can imagine how the trash talk escalated from good-natured ribbing to real insults. The original lesson plan had called for a friendly game with vocabulary words and a go-to-the-bathroom-free pass at stake, but it escalated to an event that was about honor, justice, pride, and revenge. They began to shout, stand up, and scatter desks.
February 8th, 2010
Like it or not, what happens in cyberspace doesn’t stay in cyberspace. According to a recent Pew Research Center report, 15 percent of our students have received a nude or nearly nude photo or video of someone they know. Four percent are sending sexual photos or videos of themselves.
As teachers we know that the schoolhouse gate doesn’t serve as a barrier to information from the real world. The sexual text messages and instant messages (sexting) our teens send to one another during their online evenings can create a lot of trouble during the offline school day.
February 1st, 2010
Your students are spending a lot of their free time online. Think of the number of hours you estimate they spend online. Double it. The doubled number is probably closer to the truth.
According to the Norton Online Living Report 2009, parents believe their children spend 21 hours online. The reality is that students in twelve countries reported spending 39 hours online. Don’t tell me these kids don’t have time to finish their assignments or clean their rooms.
November 18th, 2009
Teen pop and TV star Demi Lovato has joined the National Center for Bullying Prevention. Lovato, 17, was homeschooled from the age of 12 because of bullying problems. Lovato has a successful TV show for teens and a music career; however, most bullying victims don’t fare as well.
October 26th, 2009
Social aggression among girls includes behaviors such as social ostracism, gossip, talking behind backs, verbal attacks, glaring and eye-rolling, and manipulating relationships. Victimization is related to a number of mental health outcomes such as depression, loneliness, and poor self-concept (Crick & Bigbee, 1998; Crick & Gropeter, 1996; Paquette & Underwood, 1999). Teachers are all too familiar with the impact that outcomes such as these can have on students’ school performance and attendance.
February 16th, 2009
Our students are digital natives, a term that means that teens look at the Internet, cell phones, instant messaging, and text messaging as a part of their normal social lives. Adults are digital immigrants who use technology as a tool to supplement our lives. For students, asking them to turn off the communications technology is like asking them to eat steak without a knife and fork. Sure, the kids could eat the steak, but it’s messy and awkward without the right tools. Our students are so used to their digital tools that face-to-face communication and online communication blend seamlessly.
That seamless blend of the live and the virtual makes cyberbullying, bullying that takes place through a digital medium, a more complex problem to solve than just turning off the cell phone or logging off the computer. Thirty percent of our students have experienced cyberbullying, the effects of which extend beyond the online universe and into their offline world – including the classroom.
January 28th, 2009
We all want our classrooms and schools to be safe for students. But a safe location isn’t enough, according to a Girl Scouts of America (GSA) study about girls’ safety. “Trusted relationships, in which girls feel valued and supported, are what make girls feel emotionally safe,” researchers for “Feeling Safe: What Girls Say” wrote.
January 23rd, 2009
According to a 2007 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 25 students has a food allergy; that’s up 20 percent from one in 30 students in a 1997 study.
Students with food allergies can have reactions to the allergen that range from tingling, itching and hives to anaphylaxis, a serious and rapid reaction that can lead to death.
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