One of Our Biggest Problems

There is an issue among schools today that is often overlooked and ignored. There are many many things I could talk about. This is one I never see happening. And it’s one of the most simple things around. Apologizing.

Simply put; kids don’t apologize. For anything. Ever. Their parents never make them apologize. Administrators in schools never make them apologize. They are never made to face and acknowledge those whom they have wronged. The result of this is much like the result of living on social media. There is a sense of entitlement and invincibility that develops. It gets to the point where kids don’t just believe, but know that they can do whatever they want without any meaningful consequences.

I recently read an article about the abuse teachers must endure if they want to keep their job. Physical. Verbal. Emotional. It’s a daily thing. This has happened to me constantly in teaching. Death threats abound. Countless cuts and bruises. Permanent disabilities (yes, plural). And do want to know who is never held responsible?¿ The kids who cause all this damage.

I remember one day a couple years ago. I was working in a horrible school. Honestly, it was horrible. Fights were so common they no longer had consequences. You’d get sent home for the rest of that day if you drew blood. Unless the parents refused to come. Which happened almost every time. Well a friend of mine taught in a particularly nasty 4th grade room. Several kids had known feuds between families but they never adjusted the classes. I was in my room with the door closed, trying to enjoy my first plan time in weeks, when I heard the screaming. I had a radio on me but hadn’t heard any calls go out, so I peaked in the hall to see what was happening just in time to see my friend stumble out her own door (which a child had just thrown her through) and another kid in the hall shove past her and back into the room to go after some other kid. I started to run down the hall while calling for help on the radio. My friend was visibly exhausted. Whatever this was had been happening inside her room for a while. She said she’s been calling the office for 10 minutes but no one would come. So I called again saying we needed help NOW. The reply? Everyone is busy. Do what you can. I stepped in to try to keep the fighting kids apart. In the process I got shoved into the door and my arm was slammed and scraped across the door jamb. At that point I screamed into the radio that if they didn’t want me to throw all my training out the window and handle this in my own way that they would get someone there immediately. One person slowly made their way down the hall, clearly annoyed. By the time they got there the two of us had gotten the fighting kids apart and things had started to calm down. So I got scolded for “being rude on the radio” because “they had things to deal with” and I was “out of line” to make such a big fuss about something so small.

My friend collapsed to the floor. I stayed with her until the end of the day. No one ever talked to us about what happened and those kids were back in there the next day.

So what emergency had kept our administrators and counselors from helping us? A military parent had returned from duty and surprised her daughter on the other side of the building and all the people who were supposed to be helping us didn’t want to miss their chance to be on the news. Yep. Apathy is not restricted to the kids.

This is far from my worst encounter. So why bring it up? Because it was closest I’ve ever come in my entire career to getting an apology. But it didn’t happen that day. Or for several after. About a week later the kid who had slammed my arm was mouthing off to his teacher as I was walking by. I stepped in and gave him a piece of my mind. I didn’t yell or do anything inappropriate, but I told him no uncertain terms that for him to take out his anger on other people was not ok. I then showed him my arm. At this point I was sporting a nice 6 inch long deep purple bruise. I told him that this is what he does when he gets mad. He had no idea he had done it to me. He was shocked, but said nothing. I told him he had done that to his teacher as well but I was willing to bet he would never take responsibility for his actions. I then made him apologize for mouthing off in that moment and told my friend to not hesitate to call me if he needed to come to my room for a while. (Students were often sent to me because they would return to their class ready to apologize).

Two weeks later the whole school had a “positive post it” event in which teachers and students would write kind things and put it on doors or give it to someone. On my door appeared kind words and notes of me being a favorite teacher. Then there was one that simply said “sorry I bruised your arm. It was the only unsigned note, but the writer was obvious. I later found out his teacher told him to write it. But still, he never had to face me.

This is our problem. We’re so worried about making kids feel ashamed that we just let it all go. Or worse, we dish out unrelated consequences that the kids sometimes enjoy. Sleep all day in ISS for yelling at someone or flipping off a teacher? I’ll do that ALL THE TIME!

Apologizing is a lost art. Seriously. Looking someone one the eye and bringing yourself to their level while admitting that you did something you knew you shouldn’t have is a hard thing to do. It can be mortifying. But to avoid a kid growing up believing they are above everyone and everything is to make them stand in those situations and acknowledge that they are not. And it has to start young and it has to be handled consistently and with high expectations. And they have to deal with the fact that not all apologies will be accepted. Some people will remain mad at them for however long they decide to be mad. In some cases they won’t be able to repair the relationship. That’s part of life and if they don’t start learning it young, they will never learn.

When I was teaching third grade, I made a poster and hung it on my wall. It was a starting point on learning to apologize, and I made my students follow it every time something went wrong. “Im sorry for_____ It was wrong because________ Next time I will________” And I was strict with this structure too. They were not allowed to scoff or roll their eyes or they would start over. They weren’t allowed to say “because it was wrong”. They had to think harder than that. They weren’t allowed to say “next time I will not (insert shown behavior)”. They had to think of at least one appropriate way to handle the situation. Later in the year I required them to ask if the person accepted their apology and they were required to accept whatever answer they got with grace. If at any time in the entire process they showed attitude they were start from the beginning because I refused to let them continue their disrespectful behavior. Longest apology I ever had lasted a full hour. The rest of my students did their independent work during that time (I always had a lot of that prepared just in case), but even if they just sat there and watched what I was doing they were learning what I saw as a very valuable lesson.

My own three year old has to apologize for things big and small. This boy will go to school knowing that we admit our wrongs and we own up to them.

Maybe if all kids were raised with that ideal again our teachers would stop getting abused. Maybe kids would start to see the value in their own education. Maybe they would take responsibility in other areas of life (chores, schoolwork, grades?). And this new age crap of publicly shaming your kid online for something? It’s bullshit. It makes you look like a bad parent. Saw one the other day where a mom recorded her son dancing and crying because he had danced on a table at school. The whole time she was berating him and making fun of him. That won’t change his behavior. It’ll just make him more sneaky. She should have made him write out an apology letter and read it to every single person he had disrupted that day. He should have been made to go to the principal with a sincere apology and ask for forgiveness. Instead, there’s now a video of him online forever to shame him. For dancing. How ridiculous.

It’s ok for a kid to feel bad about their actions. It’s not ok for them to never have to look at themselves in a critical manner. It’s not ok for them to be shamed without ever actually making amends. Can we please end this era of no consequences? And can administrators stop making empty promises about it? Like the principal who told me I would get to sit down with the kid who told me he hoped my unborn baby would die and tried to get a bunch of kids to jump me. Or the asst. principal who told me I was “being ridiculous” for locking out a student who threatened to stab two of my students and rape me. Both of these were recorded and no consequences followed.

Suspending a kid is easy. Making them face themselves is important.

Why Teachers Shouldn’t Intervene

Would you let your child harm another child and have no consequences? What about their teacher? What about a teacher trying to prevent them from hurting another student? What would you do if you found out your child did this to an adult?

What you are looking at are images of my arms. The first is about two and a half inches long. The second bruise is only partially shown. It extends a full six inches up my arm. I can’t show it all because of an identifying mark on my arm beyond the scope of what you see. So what happened? I intervened. God help me, I stepped in when I saw a violent situation in my school which was threatening to become even more violent. I held a door to keep a student from attacking another student even more than he already had while a third student rushed the second to the nurse – head in his hands.

It all happened in a matter of seconds. I’m bringing my class down the hall. I see two students run out of their room and the door slams behind them. I hear something slam into the classroom door. Shouting. Then I see the teacher pressed up against the window in the door. I stepped over just as a student popped the door open while screaming at his teacher to let him through and she is trying to hold them back. I asked “do you need help?” She barely got out the word “yes” as I noticed her whole body trembling and on the verge of collapse.

I took the door and told her to step back. My skid proof shoes were not helping me. I was sliding and it took all my strength to keep this kid from busting out. I asked if the office had been called. Four times. No one in sight. I told my class to find someone. Thank heavens my students are great at keeping their heads about them in these situations. Unfortunately they’ve had a lot of practice and we’ve discussed how to handle it in several class meetings. We’ve never had a situation like that in our room, but they sadly see them more than any student should. And because our office is so overwhelmed and overstretched by the slough of calls they get every day, I am often the one to step in.

I have told my kids the same thing every year I’ve been in this district. If you are stupid enough to get into a fight (because yes, punching someone over being called a name is stupid), then I will not be putting myself in harm’s way for you. And in the event that you are blind-sided, I will know that something led up to it and I will only do what does not get me harmed. The only time I will fully step in is when a teacher is in an unsafe situation or I believe that severe and unwarranted bodily harm is about to be dished out.

Of course my kids want to ask me all kinds of “what ifs” for this. I simply tell them that they need to assume I will not go to bat for them. I have already suffered two permanent injuries from stepping in, and I am tired of pushing my limits for kids who basically don’t care and parents who enable the behavior to begin with. And yes, I know that is not always the case, but in my school it is always the same kids getting into fights and the consequences are minimal if anything.

I have told my co-worker to give her students the same speech and just let them metaphorically kill each other. I’d try to guide the kids into the halls where the cameras will catch every little bit of it, but she has lost too much weight from the anxiety of having these kids in her room and no teacher should be forced to compromise her health for the job.

This is why it absolutely kills me every time I see a story on the news or being circulated on social media of a school fight in which the teacher is standing back, and sometimes recording, the situation. And every Dork, Ignorance, and Turd is flinging their hate at the teacher for not jumping into the fray.

To start, parents have an obligation to teacher their children about dealing with conflict in a healthy and non-violent way. It starts in infancy and continues throughout their life. The mentality of hitting back being ok is utterly ridiculous to me. That’s how the majority of this crap gets started. And just because you TELL your kid to never start it doesn’t mean they’re gonna listen to you. All you’ve done is give them an out and an excuse for their violence. The scapegoat is that the other kid MAY HAVE touched them first. But since both kids are saying that, how can we possible know for sure? Kids can not navigate the gray in life and when someone playfully punches their arm, not realizing they are in a bad mood or just not up for a joke, it goes south. Fast.

I’ve heard it a million times. “My mamma told me I can hit back!” “I didn’t really hit him!” “You did too!” “Dude, I was playing. I was telling a joke!”

That’s another lesson my kids learn early. Play turns real too easily. Don’t start the play and you won’t end up in a fight. If you can’t teach your kid a few non-violent solutions to their problems and they aren’t comfortable coming to you to help with them, you need to re-think what you’re doing.

Second, a huge reason teachers don’t step in is because most, if not all, schools have a team of staff members who are “properly” trained on how to handle physical problems. And if someone who is not trained steps in, they could potentially face losing their job. So maybe they want to help, but they also know that they NEED to be there tomorrow to help the students process what happened. Some children are not equipped to process that without a little guidance. And others may fear their teacher from that day forward if they see her pulling two crazy kids away from each other or, heaven forbid, restraining someone.

Now let’s talk about the recording. What are you worried about? That the truth will be preserved? That the school will be able to see exactly what happened?? Everyone always jumps to privacy. Newsflash: every teacher who records that is doing it strictly for the sake of documentation, and sometimes for their own protection. They turn it over to administration, verify that it was received, then delete it from their device. We aren’t stupid.

But do you know what IS stupid? Thinking that two kids who got into a brawl are going to be honest about what happened or even be capable of remembering everything said and done in a fight. And you would be shocked at just how often kids will lie and claim that a teacher somehow caused damage when they weren’t in it at all. For whatever reason, schools have stopped trusting the people they hire and instead listen to the emotionally unstable minor with everything to lose.

So let’s return to the pictures above. I already told you what went down. Want to know the aftermath? Not much. I filled out an incident report with a sub nurse who didn’t even look at me, then I went back to my class. The boys who were fighting? They were put in buddy rooms for the rest of the day. That’s it. Now, ask me if I got an apology. I’m sure by now you know the answer is no. That kid was strutting down the hall the next day, looking at me as if he owned me. And I’m not allowed to talk to him about what happened or what he did because I’m supposed to trust that the office/administration staff “took appropriate action” and nothing else needs to be done.

Let me tell you: if I ever found out that my kid did this to any teacher, they would be marching their rotten little butt into that classroom and delivering one hell of an apology as well as performing some kind of service for that teacher for a while. Cleaning tables, picking up garbage, erasing white boards. Hell, I’ll come up with something to help that teacher out. And my kid will have no privileges at home for a while either! They will fully understand the weight of their actions. Until all evidence of bruising is gone, they will do that teacher’s bidding courteously and with a smile! And you better believe I would make sure the teacher knew that they do not have to go easy on my child with these tasks because they sure as hell didn’t go easy when giving those bruises!

And if I were the administrator of a building where one of my staff got hurt, I’d be checking in with them daily to make sure they’re alright. Oh wait, I did do that in retail management. It was really easy too! “Hey, how are you doing today?” “How’s the arm feeling?” “Let me know if you need anything, ok¿” See? Easy.

Legally, I could press charges against this kid’s parents for what was done to me. You bet your boots I can! Since no one ever actually made this kid face what was done to me, it’s incredibly tempting. But alas, I also have consequences to think about. And for me, making sure that someone is held accountable for my injuries also means that I would probably not be invited back next year. I would be viewed as vindictive and/or a loose cannon.

So stop attacking teachers for taking care of themselves and their livelihood. Stop assuming that a teacher stepping in suddenly causes everyone involved to magically diffuse and walk away. It doesn’t happen that way. Start talking to your kids daily about what happens around them and to them and how to handle it in a non-violent way. Be supportive of their teachers. They are doing everything they can to teach not just your child, but many others at the same time. And I’m willing to bet that some of the subject matter they’re pouring into their minds is not always something you fully grasp yourself.

The Theft You Didn’t Think About

There are moments in every person’s life that stand out among the rest. Some are good, some are bad, and some are just extremely impactful. Today I want to talk about the last one.

Now, like every parent on the planet, there are things my parents did wrong, messed up, or should have handled differently. Despite this, I turned out alright. And despite this, there were SO many things they did that taught me clear and concise life lessons that have stayed with me all my life.

One of the biggest, is consideration for others.

I don’t remember how old I was. I don’t remember the season outside. I do remember being with my mom in the grocery store. And like any little kid being dragged along in the store, I was bored. We weren’t in an aisle where I could look at the exciting products I wanted to try and get my mom to buy. We were just in a normal aisle.

To kill time, I found myself putting my hand against the boxes and pushing them back until they hit the back of the shelf. I found it amusing that each item could be pushed a different length before hitting a barrier. Several times I pushed the products back. Then my mother saw me.

That’s when I heard it: the dreaded middle name. I was grabbed roughly (but not enough to actually hurt) by the arm and swung around within inches of my mothers face. She demanded to know what I was doing and who was going to fix it. Being a kid, I was scared and confused by her questions. Fix what? I didn’t break anything. I didn’t even open a box.

That was when she pointed out to me that every time we come to the store, every product is sitting right at the front so we can see, read, and grab it quickly and get on our way. She made me realize that SOMEONE had to actually make that happen. Those bags and boxes don’t just jump to the front of the shelf of their own accord. And no one asks us to straighten up as we shop.

That day I got to straighten every one of those items while my mom stood by with her arms crossed, pointing out that because I was too busy thinking only of myself, we might now be late to our next destination. And what if that next place had been the park or a birthday party? I’d been wasting someone else’s time.

I’ve remembered that my entire life. Never again did I do anything to make someone’s job more difficult. I refold clothes in the store. I put them back on their hangers. I make sure that any product I decide against buying either goes back in it’s proper place or at least into the hands of an associate who will be able to replace it properly. It takes almost no time at all, and it helps keep the world functioning smoothly.

When I encounter young people who have never learned this, it’s hard to be mad. They simply have never been given the right perspective. However, when parents are directly involved, that’s infuriating.

I encountered two such young people one night in the store where I work. They were having a lot of fun unwrapping and playing with products. I watched for a few seconds, hoping that a parent would appear and make them stop. When that didn’t happen, I emerged from my location to get the products back from them. Both children ran away the second they saw me (showing they knew they were doing wrong). I followed and found one, running around like a crazy person. I brought him back to where he had been standing, and calmly told him that he could not play with the products and could not unwrap them. I told him I needed the products and their tags back. At this point, he lied to my face saying they were like that when he found them and that his sister had pulled something off. When I told him I had watched them both unwrap stuff, he lied yet again. I then asked where his parent was with the intention of taking them to said parent and asking that they not be left unsupervised. To my surprise, a woman was crouched in the aisle not five feet behind these kids the whole time and had the audacity to yell at ME. She demanded to know what my problem was. I told AND showed her the problem. She simply told me she would handle it from there. Being powerless, I had to walk away.

Thankfully, she kept her kids close. However, she did try to pass no less than $50 worth of expired, fraudulent, and unacceptable coupons.

Sadly, that made it abundantly clear how her children learned to be such selfish little creatures.

So please, teach your children the importance of thinking before they act, and the consequences of those actions. I ended up finding $40 worth of product that these children had destroyed and strewn all over the store in an effort to hide the evidence. Between the kids and their mother, that’s $90 from ONE shopper. Now multiply that by every inattentive parent out there. It adds up fast. That’s not money taken from the man or from corporate America. That’s money that can no longer pay the electric bills, the salaries, and the retirement of the people you so easily dismiss as unimportant little specks.

Please think about that the next time you want to just take that small product or let your kids destroy product or, God forbid, you try to pass fraudulent coupons or go to the swap meet (the headquarters of coupon fraud experts). Think about what your actions saying to others. Please.

This just makes me mad

I am starting off by saying a may offend a few people with this post. If you’re offended, stop reading it. I’m not twisting your arm to stick around.

What this post really comes down to is food, but I’m connecting it to school.

In one of the two elementary buildings I work in, I was informed a few weeks ago about a third grader who has already started her period. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I started in 6th grade, as did most of my friends. Some started later, but 5th and 6th grade was when it happened for my generation. So 3rd grade!?!? EGAD!! But that’s not all…

Today I was invited into a conversation with a small group of teachers who frequently encounter a different little girl. Apparently she has had several tests and her mother has been told she will have her first period ANY DAY. Here’s the crazy part; she’s 7. She’s in FIRST GRADE!!! And do you think the mother had talked to this little girl about what’s going to be happening to her body?? Nope!! So today she ran to her teacher in panic saying her “juices” were coming out. She has no idea what’s happening to her body. Oh, and she’s also experiencing cramps, but she’s not intellectually able to define or understand these occurrences.

Now, I know there are a ton of little girls across the country starting their period much earlier than in the past. The thing that gets me is parents continue to ignore the reason for all of this.

Let’s get real simple here. What causes a period to start? Hormones! What causes menstrual  symptoms, complications and onset? HORMONES! What do food producers constantly fill our food with?!?!?! Let me hear it! HORMONES!!!!!!

Now, I’m not saying you’re a bad parent if you take your kid to McDonald’s now and then, or anywhere else for that matter. However, I AM saying you’re a bad parent if fast food is a staple in your child’s diet. I know there are many other sources, but seriously, if you’re gonna take your kid to a fast food joint every day or even every other day, you might as well let them drink pure gasoline. It’ll have equally tragic consequences.

I am far from a health nut. I eat fast food sometimes. I drink alcohol. I put things in my body that I could easily so without. The trick is that I do all of this in moderation. I tell myself no. When I have kids, they’ll hear “no” frequently. It’s part of being a responsible adult and parent.

Oh, and just a little food for thought: early onset puberty is linked to early onset uterine, ovarian and breast cancer in girls. So stop feeding your children poison all the time and give their bodies a chance to thrive!!

Also, please use turn signals on the road.