Substitute teaching: it has changed my vocabulary. What I used to consider “appalling” behavior, I now consider “interesting” behavior. Otherwise, I’d be insane.
We all use these little coping mechanisms to get through the daily routines of our jobs. Although, few jobs entail “the boss” being carried out of the building on a stretcher.
On Wednesday, I was at Groveport High School when assistant principal Eric Thomas was assaulted by a student. (Here is the actual story.) I didn’t witness the assault; however, I did witness the behavior of parents who flooded the attendance office, minutes after the story aired on TV, to pull their kids out of school.
The parents’ behavior was appalling. To call their behavior “interesting” would require me to sell my soul. The most memorable of the parents was one mother who approached the counter and said, “They need to get f$#%ing control of this school.”
Her rudeness and social incompetence aside, I wondered who she was accusing of not being in control. The teachers? The administrators?
The school has rules, and students are disciplined. But, what good is discipline when there are no perceived consequences? Some students, and their parents, don’t care if they are suspended or arrested. For some, it’s even a type of bragging right – especially, how many times they have been allowed to come back to school. And, what about grades – should those students just fail? Again, it is not a consequence when they don’t care.
These tactics are like threatening to send a vegetarian to bed without his juicy T-bone steak. I doubt it will make a difference.
The teachers are doing everything they can, with their hands tied behind their backs. In-school discipline is only effective when it is acknowledged and carried through at home. Furthermore, state law places limits on how many days some students can be suspended.
So, who is to blame? Allow me to lead you there.
Schools don’t teach kids to be violent. First-graders don’t spend a week on a violence unit that teaches them how to be more aggressive, disrespectful young people, right in-between the “Fall” unit and the “Mammals” unit. Middle-schoolers don’t study derogatory vocabulary in English class. High-schoolers don’t take classes in street-fighting. So, where are these students learning this type of lifestyle – a lifestyle that promotes brutal violence and disrespect?
After witnessing the parents’ behavior on Wednesday, I realized that these parents were acting a lot like their children do in the classroom: cursing, blaming, name-calling, etc.
Parents are sending their kids to school without the social skills to survive in a social atmosphere. If they taught their kids that fighting is not an option, that cursing in public is rude, and that sometimes rules must be followed, then maybe they wouldn’t be there, at noon, picking up their kids from school.
Maybe it is time that parents do their job so that teachers can do theirs.
amen sister! Isn’t it interesting all that you learn about human behavior from being a teacher! If we could only teach PARENTING classes! sometimes those quick interactions like the one you had with the inappropriate mother help explain a lot about the child, don’t they! It is hard to know whether to discipline the child or feel sorry for him because he hasn’t had good teachers at home — so, you thought all you were going to have to teach was English, huh!?!? Oops — did they forget to tell you that you would have to educate parents too! Hang in there! It is the positive impact you can make on a child’s life DESPITE his environment that will keep you going! Love ya!
Ashley, sweet Ashley, my dear young newbie. Do you not realize that those type parents jobs were finished upon conception of their children. What more can you ask for of them? They put so much effort that day, they are much too exhausted to take parenting to any other level…Besides, that is what government day care, and public schools are for. If only they had John Kerry to help them navigate through the educational maize we have created for these little darlings.
Should we fail these kids? Well, duh! They are failures. I’d give them their well earned “F”. That is what that grade is for.
This is one you should submit to the Dispatch First Person column.