Archive for the ‘Social lives’ Category

Should schools take any position on the wrongdoing of their students outside of campus?

I raise the question because of a call this weekend from a childhood friend who lives in a New Jersey town that resembles Alpharetta. A few nights ago, my friend received a frantic call from the 18-year-old girl across the street. A group of boys had shown up uninvited to a small birthday party the teenage girl was throwing  — it was an all-girl movie-watching party — and the boys were rampaging through the house and stealing stuff.  Could my friend send her husband over to get the boys to leave?

The girl’s own parents were out to dinner, but had been aware that their daughter was hosting the all-female gathering. The parents had not expected any boys to show up.

As my friend’s husband crossed the street to investigate, a teenage boy burst out of the house, ran up to him and slugged him in the face. No words were exchanged prior to the blow. The boy ran and disappeared through another …

Continue reading When students throw a punch off campus, should schools throw the book at them? »

This piece came to me as a letter to the editor from an elementary school administrator in DeKalb County. I thought it was worth sharing:

By Rouzier Dorce Jr.

I recently attended the high school graduation ceremonies of a young man I mentored while he was in middle school.

Robert had moved out of my community to attend high school in another area because he felt  he had a better chance at playing ball. Communications between us dwindled to an occasional email.

When I received Robert’s invitation to his high school graduation, I dropped everything and made the trip. I felt a father’s pride while I helped him fix his tie. When I commented how much like a man he seemed, Robert reminded me that it had been five years since we saw each other.

Robert had trouble reading, and we surmised that his deficiencies might have been responsible for his challenges in middle school.  Our weekly meetings helped with his behavior.

However, every time I would venture into the academic arena, …

Continue reading Three babies and no high school diploma: “I was supposed to help.” »

Phoebe Prince. (AJC file)

The Boston Globe is reporting that five of the six teens charged in connection with the bullying of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince have agreed to admit to a misdemeanor.

Prince committed suicide last year, allegedly in despair over the bullying she encountered at South Hadley High School.

According to the Globe, prosecutors will drop more serious charges against the teens in exchange for the pleas.

The lesser charges will likely spark outrage from people angered by the torment Prince experienced from older classmates in her Massachusetts high school. The teen’s tragic death became a catalyst for anti-bullying laws and tougher policies in some places.

But a criminologist from Northeastern University told the Globe that the resolution was reasonable.

“The district attorney wanted to make a strong statement and draw a line in the sand, which she did,’’ said criminologist James Alan Fox. “But for so long, we ignored and tolerated bullying, And to say at this …

Continue reading Phoebe Prince: Resolution of bullying charges coming »

I am a longtime fan of journalist Joe Nocera’s writings. A business writer for many years, Nocera now has a column in the New York Times and was inspired to write about a 13-year-old student featured in a larger New York Times magazine story about a dedicated middle school principal.

Nocera tackles a problem that we often discuss here: Can schools overcome family backgrounds and parental indifference?

We all agree that family is not destiny. A child should not be written off because of sorry parents. But family is an important factor and sometimes it can be the deciding one. There are inspiring stories of students overcoming their backgrounds, and schools have to recognize that all students have potential, even those whose parents never attend conferences or see to it that their children go to school.

Through a truancy project, a friend volunteered to work with a young mother whose 9-year-old had missed nearly a third of the school year and was facing retention. My friend …

Continue reading Are we asking too much of schools when we expect them to transcend indifferent parents? »

There is an interesting story on AJC.com on the higher rates of suicide attempts by both gay and straight teens in politically conservative areas where there are no gay rights programs in schools or anti-discrimination policies that extend to sexual orientation.

A study involving nearly 32,000 high school students found that the absence of gay-straight alliances, policies against bullying gay students and anti-discrimination policies that included sexual orientation “raised the odds and were a substantial influence on suicide attempts even when known risk contributors like depression and being bullied were considered, said study author Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Columbia University psychologist and researcher.”

I am not sure how easy it is for gay support groups to operate in Georgia high schools. In 2006, it took a federal court order for a gay activist group in White County High School to hold meetings on school property. School officials had tried to ban the meetings of the …

Continue reading More suicide attempts when schools lack supports, policies for gay students »

School officials in Wyoming objected to this "boobies" bracelet, which is meant to raise breast cancer awareness. (AP Photo)

A while back, I wrote about the tussle over “boobies” bracelets in schools. Schools were banning the breast cancer awareness bracelets, which announce  “I (heart) boobies.”

The issue ended up in court. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania issued a preliminary ruling that the bracelets are not lewd or vulgar and can’t be banned by schools.

While I agree that the bracelets are well meaning, they target the wrong demographic — adolescents likely to overreact to the word “boobies.”

Clearly, the bracelets’ purpose to bring attention to breast cancer succeeded but I still think the “boobies” portion represents a potential distraction in school. A judge disagreed with me and with the many schools around the country that have banned the bracelets.

In siding with two Pennsylvania middle school students who wore the bracelets on their middle school’s …

Continue reading Federal judge: “Boobies” bracelets in schools are not lewd »

In the kids do the darnedest things category, the Wall Street Journal reports a new trend among adolescents: Smoking Smarties.

Kids crush the tart little candies into a powder in the wrapper and then pour the powdered mix into their mouths and exhale a cloud of sugary dust. Some more advanced Smarties “smokers” are even learning to blow “smoke rings” with the popular kids’ candy.

This mimicking of an unhealthy adult cigarette habit is bothering schools. I don’t buy that Smarties are a gateway drug, as one parent in the story alleges. As the makers of Smarties note, children can do this with many different brands of candy. (They may use Smarties because they have lots left over from Halloween. We still do.) Nor am I sure that this trend is serious enough to spur school policies, but it does amaze me what kids can come up to amuse themselves and irk adults.

Anyone see this going on in Georgia schools?  The only oral trend I have seen with my twins and their classmates is a …

Continue reading Smoking Smarties: A gateway to detention in schools? »

As many of you predicted, a Douglas County middle school has backed off plans to suspend three students for Facebook postings because of the privacy issues implicated by the principal’s actions in forcing one of the students to log on to the social network at school and show her the postings calling a teacher a “pedophile” and a “rapist.”

And as many of you also predicted, the parents are considering suing. They ought to be grateful, not litigious.

If these were my kids, I would tell them that they got a break this time, that they are walking away from a dangerous mistake that in the future could cost their jobs.

I would tell them that they attempted to ruin someone’s good name for kicks and that is a sign that they are immature children and that I will now have to treat them as such, no phone, no computer, no parties, no movies. At least one of the parents has taken some of those actions, but I wonder if the reprimand will be undermined by the parents’ thoughts of going to …

Continue reading Rights and wrong: Using Facebook to defame teachers »

When he puts his children on the bus for school, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he asks himself two questions: Will my children be safe and will they learn?

The question that I would like to pose in view of his concerns: Can the White House impact either of those issues from afar?

Duncan thinks so, and has expanded his agency’s effort and outreach on bullying, including the launch today of StopBullying.gov.

“No school can be a great school unless it is first a safe school,” said Duncan this afternoon in a conference call with the media, part of a White House conference today on bullying.

“We all know that bullying is not a new phenomenon,” says Kevin Jennings, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools, who was also on the media call.  “We all know that bullying has been pervasive or some time. But there comes a time in history when something that we have tolerated for a long time is no longer tolerable. That is the tipping point we have reached. …

Continue reading Is bullying a matter of national urgency and should president jump in? »

More fallout from Facebook. This developing case out of Douglas County re-inforces the problems to schools from student postings on Facebook. In this case, the middle school took strong action, but I wonder if the actions will hold up if there are court challenges.

Where the school might have crossed a legal line is when the principal ordered the 13-year-old girl who called her teacher a pedophile online to log onto her Facebook account so the official could read the offending post and ensuing responses by her friends.

(Can someone explain why parents let young kids have Facebook pages? I still don’t get that as it seems ripe for abuse and problems.)

Take a look at the updated story on the AJC.

According to the new AJC story:

The investigation by Douglas County school officials resulted in the suspension of Alejandra Sosa and two other Chapel Hill Middle School students. They could face harsher penalties, including banishment to a school for children with behavior problems, …

Continue reading Facebook poses problems to schools and raises privacy, free speech questions »