Non Mopar rant! High school politics.

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Gryzynx

Gryzynx

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OK, I am officially a cranky old fart.

I have a 15 year old in high school. He's a good kid, quiet, stays out of trouble. Attends high school math class, needs one of those expensive TI graphing calculators. Don't ask me what for, they just need them. (sigh). So, we buy one and off he goes. Now, I'm lucky, it causes no financial hardship, but there are those who cannot afford to shell out $100 for a calculator and the school rents calculators as needed. Turns out my son has a classmate in that situation. This kid probably is not financially stressed, (small community, I know who his folks are), he is quite popular and he has a history of harrassing my kid. One day, my kid's calculator disappears and the other kid now has two, the rental calculator and one he "found". We try to do the right thing. I coach my son to approach the kid and teachers, explain the situation and recover the calculator. Weeks go by and I ask him how it turned out. He was told that since there were no personal identifying marks, he could not claim the calculator. Teacher wants nothing to do with this. I call up the principal, explain that the teacher refused to help resolve the situation and I would now turn the matter over to the police. My son had his calculator back within hours.

Schools supposedly have an anti-bullying policy, zero tolerence, yada yada yada. They know what is going on, yet they have no backbone to deal with it. They actually encourage these little sociopaths and and turn them loose on the world. As an employer, I then have to deal with them and their entitled attitudes and I'm sick of it! I realize there is nothing new here, It's happened before and it will happen again, but at least in my day, this could be resolved without resorting to threatening to call the police.

There, now I feel better.
 
If "Ralphie" can do it, your kid can too.

scuttfarkas.jpg
 
Why the heck wern't the punk's parents held accountable? It's really not the schools/teachers job to instill moral values in poorly raised children. I would've made a personal visit to the brats parents first including the bullying issues.

I hope that didn't sound harsh as it was not meant to be.
 
Schools now a days are brutal. Kids are told to turn the other cheek. I understand the non-violence and bullying, but you also should be taught to stand up for yourself. My kids have been suspended numerous times for standing up for themselves. I have always explained to them that there are rules to follow and there are consequences for breaking them. But dont expect harsh punishment from me when my kids are defending themselves. Christ I remember I had a teacher in grade 7 or 8, that had enough of a kid talking in class, the kid was a loud mouth and was constantly doing it, but the teacher would wind up from the front of the class (loudmouth sat at the back) and he would fire and I mean FIRE a piece of chalk at the kid!! He never hit the kid, but that teacher could have pitched in the big leagues for sure, cuz he would let er rip at about 90 mph!! He did that about 3 times before the loudmouth got the hint!! Yep now a days teachers dont want to be accountable, or involved in jacksquat. Glad to see your son got his calculator back. Tell him to permanently mark EVERYTHING with his name and ph# on it.
 
abodyjoe said:
your kid should have kicked his ***.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, then his kid gets suspended for two weeks. Well, at least that was the result of me teaching my daughters to never start a fight, but always finish one.
 
ramcharger said:
Why the heck wern't the punk's parents held accountable? It's really not the schools/teachers job to instill moral values in poorly raised children. I would've made a personal visit to the brats parents first including the bullying issues.

I hope that didn't sound harsh as it was not meant to be.
Click to expand...


Harsh works for me. Unfortunately, the kid's father works for the same company I do and he's in a union position where I am in a management position, so that gets awkward pretty quick. I think the parents are decent people and on the surface, things look pretty favourable for the kid. Involved in sports, reportedly quite popular, real Al Bundy in the making. My kid tends to be the nerdish type and that makes him a target. One of the problems seems to be peer pressure, particularly drug use. My son will stay away and he's vocal about his anti-drug stance. His peers regularly go for a puff between classes. Yes, the star athelete's go too and they probably are the ringleaders here.

My beef is the teacher who refused to get involved. Schoolyard squabbles happen, unfortunately, my son would not likely end up on top. I have an older son who is quite capable of defending himself, however he is the one who makes friends easily and is prone to a few excesses in the social areas. In his early years, he was bullied due to his size. He was the fat kid. It all came to a stop when he finally lost it and pretty well pulverised some kid. That got him some respect, but I don't condone the method.
 
i was in the same spot as your kid earlier this year, except i had the $200 cause my sister needed it before me, and some little punk stole it and claimed he"found" it...

so i approached him about it, he says theres no evidence its mine. i ask for it back, cause we all knew it was mine. so i walk away.

oh, and by the way, im a very physical threatening person, being 6'4" and broad in grade 10 isnt always the greatest match

luckily im physically threatening, and i wakl up to him the next day and politley ask for the calculator back, he says no. i say then we can go behind the school and discuss this after school is over... he gave the calculator back..

two things i learned from this.. the teachers dont care, and the kids my age are kinda wimps..
 
Thats PC for ya.

Stands for 'Politically correct' OR 'Passive @#nt'.

everyone is trying to avoid life and it's problems, too bad it's costing 'u.s' dearly.
 
I drive a school bus as a few here know, and it seems it's being left up to us to keep these SOB's under control and follow the rules. Rules like stay seated and pick up your garbage. Oh we write out "misconducts" on the trouble makers and what do they get, lunch hour detention, big hairy deal. Don't get me wrong 95% of the kids (when I'm full I got 65 on board) are good and just want to be left alone and get to their destination in one piece. Last month I had two of the three stooges causing a ruckus in the back of the bus (grade 8's and 9's are the worse) and wouldn't tone it down so I circled around and went back to the school. I pulled up to the front doors and told one of the monitors to go get the principal to my bus. When he got there I told him the trouble that was being caused and looked him straight in the face and informed him that this bus wasn't going anywhere until he did something about the troublemakers. He yanked the SOB's off and I didn't see them for 2 weeks and when they came back they were quiet as a mouse.

Thank god that fear and intimidation still works in this case for not only the kids but also for the principal. Oh yea, I also contacted these kids parents and cut them a new one too.8)

So that day a few life lessons were learned. 1/ crime and punishmment, 2/ take responsibility for your actions or you'll be forced too, 3/ I know where you all live and have your parents cell phone numbers, 4/ Most importantly is Don't Piss Off The Driver if you want to get home on time. 5/ Welcome to the world ya little turds.:-D:-D
 
i graduated in 1971,we had jocks/greasers and me hippies,never had probs,big HS,smoked weed etc,just had a good time,would hate to do it today
 
i am 34 graduated in 95. when i was in high school my brother and I were picked on pretty hard by idiots, we would complain to our perents, they would talk to the school, the school would have us sit down just the kids and talk about it and next week it would continue. well this kid kepted bugging my brother until he lost it and broke the kids cheek, orbital bone, jaw, and nose. my perents has to do the court thing but no one bugged my brother after.
may be not what you want to hear but you will have to take a stand at some point in life an he did.
 
bayyum said:
i was in the same spot as your kid earlier this year, except i had the $200 cause my sister needed it before me, and some little punk stole it and claimed he"found" it...

so i approached him about it, he says theres no evidence its mine. i ask for it back, cause we all knew it was mine. so i walk away.

oh, and by the way, im a very physical threatening person, being 6'4" and broad in grade 10 isnt always the greatest match

luckily im physically threatening, and i wakl up to him the next day and politley ask for the calculator back, he says no. i say then we can go behind the school and discuss this after school is over... he gave the calculator back..


two things i learned from this.. the teachers dont care, and the kids my age are kinda wimps..
Click to expand...

good job Bayyum always try to talk first...Then you have to do what you have to do..
 
My son was elected to the school board at the age of 21. He stands for education and accountability. Accountability of the administration too! Boy, that gets him a lot of trouble. We tought he was going to get death treats because he started a rule that kids have to have a 1.5 average to play sports. JUST A 1.5. After the rule was past they had trouble getting the administration to enforce it.
 
abodyjoe said:
your kid should have kicked his ***.
Click to expand...

The good ole days are over. If teachers or kids even put a hand on each other here, It could be considered sexual harassment. Fights get you arrested now, no matter how old you are. For some reason there have been A LOT of fights at my school within the past month. Feels almost like I'm in the ghetto now but yet I'm in the country. I almost got into a few fights myself recently. Then I remembered, I dont want to be arrested and sued for hurting another kid. The school can even get you in trouble for fights outside of school, in your own yard.
 
A good way to get people, specially bully's to stay away from your kids is for your kids to make everyone think he's freaking nuts.
There are sevaral ways to do this, use your imagination.

In my case, I was nuts and everyone pretty much left me alone ever since kindergarten when I took a yard stick out of my teachers hand, broke it over my knee after she was cracking me with it, and held the sharp part up to her throat and told her if she ever pulls my girlfriend's hair again I would kill her.

That gave me a really good start in the makings of a "don't mess with this kid" reputation which pretty much stayed with me the rest of my school days.

This was back in the day when a school teacher would not think twice about smacking a kid in the face or pulling their hair, ear, scratching them with their nails, pinching, cuff to the back of the head.

I was actually a good kid but for some reason had an uncanny desire to jump into the fire when someone was getting picked on regardless of how big the kid was.

In second grade, the biggest, fattest bully in the school pushed down my twin Sister on the playground and I went berzerk, ran up behind him and jumped on his back and put all my weight on his head and steered him headfirst into the dirt which stunned him pretty good, and from there I proceeded to give his head everything I had until I had no steam left in me.
Took three teachers to pull me off and earned me a stern talking to and yet a pat on the back from the principle for sticking up for my Sister against a bully.

I never passed an opportunity to help out the victom even if the dude was bigger and could probably kill me if I didn't act fast.
 
Gryzynx said:
OK, I am officially a cranky old fart.

I have a 15 year old in high school. He's a good kid, quiet, stays out of trouble. Attends high school math class, needs one of those expensive TI graphing calculators. Don't ask me what for, they just need them. (sigh). So, we buy one and off he goes. Now, I'm lucky, it causes no financial hardship, but there are those who cannot afford to shell out $100 for a calculator and the school rents calculators as needed. Turns out my son has a classmate in that situation. This kid probably is not financially stressed, (small community, I know who his folks are), he is quite popular and he has a history of harrassing my kid. One day, my kid's calculator disappears and the other kid now has two, the rental calculator and one he "found". We try to do the right thing. I coach my son to approach the kid and teachers, explain the situation and recover the calculator. Weeks go by and I ask him how it turned out. He was told that since there were no personal identifying marks, he could not claim the calculator. Teacher wants nothing to do with this. I call up the principal, explain that the teacher refused to help resolve the situation and I would now turn the matter over to the police. My son had his calculator back within hours.

Schools supposedly have an anti-bullying policy, zero tolerence, yada yada yada. They know what is going on, yet they have no backbone to deal with it. They actually encourage these little sociopaths and and turn them loose on the world. As an employer, I then have to deal with them and their entitled attitudes and I'm sick of it! I realize there is nothing new here, It's happened before and it will happen again, but at least in my day, this could be resolved without resorting to threatening to call the police.

There, now I feel better.
Click to expand...

schools are a joke anymore my wife went to 1 one the top 3 highschools in Pa so as you know when we had kids (our kids had to go there as well )i didn't mind as years went on things just kept getting more and more out of control it got so bad there that the school had loc. police walking the halls to stop the fights and when i say the familys were all well to do people most of the kids that drove to school had lex. bmw vetts just to name a few so it not just your school
 
I will say that I am a teacher. Yep.....one of them.



I never reply to these threads because they tend to take the same slant on several of the boards that I visit. Never been flamed in 15 years on the net, let's hope it does not start here!

One thing to think of is this. Schools reflect what comes through the door. In my school at least, many things are better than a few years ago. There are some changes however that are a bit disconcerting. Regardless, I don't have alot to do with what enters my room for the first time at my school.

In my opinion, schools are aware of these changes in the student population and are making efforts to change. It is not happening fast enough though I will state.

I think we can all agree that our culture has seen some significant changes within the past few years. I am still struggling with it. Getting closer to some solutions, but it is not easy. Strategies that worked well even five years ago don't now.

There is the triangle where parents blame the school, the school blames the parents and the kids blame one or the other depending on need. That really helps no one. I used to call it "running the triangle". Not good.

There are many good teachers, schools etc. There are also many that need help. It can be struggle but it is also the best job on earth for me at least.

What I tell parents to do is the following:

1. Talk to teacher first and find out what is going on.
2. Talk to administration if the teacher can't or won't fix it
3. Talk to the district. That usually works pretty well around here if it comes to that.

All I can say is that it is a tightrope for sure being in this business. I encourage you to spend a day with your child. School is a different place than even a few years ago. Lots of good, and some bad.

Regardless, a visit could be enlightening for sure.

FWIW-ROB
 
jeeper said:
I will say that I am a teacher. Yep.....one of them.



I never reply to these threads because they tend to take the same slant on several of the boards that I visit. Never been flamed in 15 years on the net, let's hope it does not start here!

One thing to think of is this. Schools reflect what comes through the door. In my school at least, many things are better than a few years ago. There are some changes however that are a bit disconcerting. Regardless, I don't have alot to do with what enters my room for the first time at my school.

In my opinion, schools are aware of these changes in the student population and are making efforts to change. It is not happening fast enough though I will state.

I think we can all agree that our culture has seen some significant changes within the past few years. I am still struggling with it. Getting closer to some solutions, but it is not easy. Strategies that worked well even five years ago don't now.

There is the triangle where parents blame the school, the school blames the parents and the kids blame one or the other depending on need. That really helps no one. I used to call it "running the triangle". Not good.

There are many good teachers, schools etc. There are also many that need help. It can be struggle but it is also the best job on earth for me at least.

What I tell parents to do is the following:

1. Talk to teacher first and find out what is going on.
2. Talk to administration if the teacher can't or won't fix it
3. Talk to the district. That usually works pretty well around here if it comes to that.

All I can say is that it is a tightrope for sure being in this business. I encourage you to spend a day with your child. School is a different place than even a few years ago. Lots of good, and some bad.

Regardless, a visit could be enlightening for sure.

FWIW-ROB
Click to expand...

I read that and respectfully, I still dont see what you are trying to say.

Do you have an opinion on how things should be handled?
it seems that teachers hands are tied with zero tolerance rules that have very little to do with common sense on a case by case basis.
I'm sure that can be frustrating to teachers as i have the utmost respect for the one's who really work hard and care.

How do you feel about qualified individuals, "principle" or other teachers trained to carry weapons in schools in case of another columbine deal?

I talked to my Brother who is a highschool principle and he say's "nah, we don't need to do that."

I asked him "What if some nut comes in and starts shooting everyone up?" but he dismissed it as if it would never happen in "his" school, he did not want to hear it and he is an avid hunter and knows guns well.

I just said "Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."
"And nobody needs to know you have it."

I also talked to a black, not that it matters, highschool principle in downtown Atlanta, at bad school district with lots of gangs and violence.
We had the same conversation and he told me "It's not allowed, but I have one tucked away on me right now as we speak, and I never leave home without it."
"I am not about to die or let someone else die because of the wussification of america concerning this issue."
"If I go to jail for saving someone's life, then so be it."

Just wanna know how you and your fellow teachers think about that , jeeper.
 
You asked a good question. I read my own reply, and I kinda asked myself the same......what am I trying to say?

Zero tolerance sounds good. It makes a nice sound byte. I don't think it works so good in practice. As far as weapons and packing guns at school........not something I want to do. No strong opinions there from me. I would not be opposed to a trained individual having one. No problem at all if someone wants to pack at work......

I guess it comes down to this. We have a culture that is ailing in my opinion, and the problems that we face are far larger than just "kicking butt a little harder". Been there, and it did work awhile ago. You may think that I am a left leaning weenie, far from it. Consequences work undoubtedly. However, what do you do with a student who does not care? What do you do when the parent actively fights against rules and regs? What about when the teacher lies to save her skin? It is not a cut and dried world unfortunately. The easy answer is this, just get rid of the kid who does not do what he has been asked. Then where do they go? Think about that for a second. Alternative schools work for some. Get rid of the teachers and schools that stink? Maybe, it has happened.

My school is small, rural and very poor. We struggle. Many of my students are essentially raising themselves. Many of their role models are TV or other entertainment based figures, not other adults in the community or family members.

The answer in my opinion is for all of us, myself included, to do the best we can to engage young people. To work with them, guide them, help them and pay attention to them. They need that more now than ever. If we don't do this, we will lose an entire generation I am afraid.

The real change has to come at the heart level and only after some serious introspection and acceptance of personal responsibility. Each American needs to do that and teachers should be doing that daily......several times a day!

We all need to buck the tide of "wussification" and the "whatever" culture that we live in, which is difficult to do in a school setting for both students and staff.

It is challenging to be a Clint Eastwood in a Bravo TV world.

ROB
 
Jeeper, I appreciate your input. If my son's math teacher would have cared half as much as you did in just replying here, problem would likely have been solved.

There are good teachers and bad teachers. My oldest had a real good cop/bad cop act for a pair of teachers when he entered 1st grade and it pretty much set the tone for his six years of elementary school. I mentioned he was a big kid and the bad cop assumed this meant my son was a bully when the reverse was true. It was miserable. School change to junior high along with a move of our residence and everything changed.

My mom was a teacher thru thu 70's and 80's. Pretty much was pushed out at age 60 because she did not represent the new way of doing things. Anyways, she probably did not have nearly as much trouble with the kids as she did with the parents. When she passed away a few years ago, I was surprised to see how many of her former students showed up at the funeral. She always treated them like family and she put extra effort into the tough cases. Some pretty rough stories came along with the territory. Abuse runs rampant where you least expect it.
 
It's nice to hear some reason from the other side. I have read case studies on this, and quite frankly, Jeeper is spot on in stating that "running the triangle" helps noone. While there will be facutly in the wrong sometimes, putting a blanket blame squarely on the teachers (while ourselves being out of school for 20-30 years) is taking the easy way out. Teachers were permitted to dispense a reasonable ammount of discipline when I went to public school. Things were pretty smooth. Issues were handled. It's the neglectful parents of the troublesome latch key kids that sued to have the laws changed that instigated this problem. We as a society are to blame for allowing this. Anyone who puts the blame on the teacher is, in most cases, no better than the bully.
 
Jeeper, you' re a good soul, would never call you left weenie for what you stated.

Sometime all it takes to touch a young troubled kid who don't care about anything is simply for an adult stranger to recognize them and give them a smile every time they see them.
Seeds like that will stay with that kid forever, I know, I was that kid.
 
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