(I mention the date and time that I posted since I couldn't figure out a way to provide a direct link to my comments.)
My thoughts are incomplete and go in some different directions. (I deleted a very small fraction of my original post because it drifted away from what I regard as more important points that I made. Otherwise, the comments are unedited.)
If you're interested in reading some other people's different views about the problems currently affecting our schools, the Chalkboard can provide some stimulating dialogue.
I'm very hopeful that the task force comes up with some viable solutions.
But well before the task force completes its task, individual schools and individual staff members will also be working to come up with positive approaches and strategies for addressing the problems with some students' behaviors, attitudes, and efforts.
Here are those comments I mentioned posting on the Chalkboard:
At Southwest Guilford Middle School, this past school year, there were more students openly interested in gangs than I've been aware of during my previous 10 years teaching there.
Almost exclusively, those students were African Amercians, and more of them were male students than female students.
The sad thing is how that interest in gangs kept those students from focusing on learning because without the negative distraction of gang culture, those students had all the potential in the world to contribute to and benefit from academic culture.
These are not "dumb" individuals, but like whites who belonged to our country's most infamous gang, the KKK, modern-day students who embrace gang culture limit their own positive potential as human beings.
Adults in all roles--as parents, as teachers, as administrators, as law enforcement officers, and as community members--are working against a popular culture that too often glamorizes gang culture and other negative examples of human existence and interaction, including language, behavior, and attitudes.
I just found out about one of the most positive funerals ever, one held by the NAACP, to bury the "N"-word. Some younger African Americans have embraced that word, as well as derogatory words for women, and in so doing, have contributed to a negative culture for themselves.
Excuses have been made for such language and such attitudes, just as so many whites used to make excuses for embracing ugly and indefensible racial hatred.
While there are no doubt still whites who embrace ugly attitudes toward African Americans (and others), that no longer is a part of mainstream culture.
It is remarkable how much progress has been made among white behaviors and attitudes, particularly when you consider that it was not too far in the past when such changes must have seemed near impossible. How was that progress made? How were minds changed so radically? How can we ensure that modern-day progress is similarly made and that minds that need to be changed are?
Our American culture as a whole is guilty of not embracing edcuation as strongly as it should. That is true across racial categories.
Technology (video games, the internet, social networking programs such as MySpace, other communication opportunities, etc.) and popular culture (TV shows, music, etc.) provide distractions and negative influences that make it more challenging for adults to connect with young people.
There are students who arrive at school every day too tired to function adequately because they've stayed up the night before playing video games, communicating with friends, and doing everything but read, study, and engage themselves academically. (It'd be a beautiful thing if we could determine how to get more students to communicate with one another about their academics instead of communicating about some of the subjects they currently focus on.)
Some parents limit or even eliminate those distracting influences from their children's at-home time, but even that is not a guarantee of more positive results because some students simply become resentful and remain academically disengaged.
Another problem that is broader than the issue of gang culture is the way students treat each other. Too many students have only negative gossip to spread about one another and live to be involved in and instigate conflict among themselves.
As much of a problem as we have with some students disrespecting school staff members--(and these students are equal opportunity offenders; they disrespect adults who share their racial identity just as openly and quickly as they might do so toward a staff member of a different race)--there may be an even greater problem with how these students treat one another.
Interestingly, with peer treatment, students tend to interact more with their own race, so when conflicts exist, my observation has been that it is not usually across racial lines.
Our school made attempts this past year to respond to challenges we faced with some students' efforts, attitudes, and behaviors. Our staff members, under the leadership of our administrators, have done so ever since I've been there.
Years ago, when the problems with student behavior and attitudes were not so great, we chose to invest some of our school's money in security cameras. Those no doubt have deterred some students from causing problems and helped us catch some other students doing things they should not have been doing.
We've also implemented strategies designed to control and monitor student movement in our building. Some of those strategies have made a tremendous difference, even if more strategies and ideas are still needed.
This past year, we added the responsiblity of having staff members follow students between their core and encore classes, which is when they had longer distances to travel. We did so because some students were not doing what they were supposed to do during that travel time.
It often helped.
It's unfortunate that some of these steps are necessary, but without them, there is a far greater risk for chaos and disorder.
We also had staff members assigned as individual buddies to students identified as having had past problems with academics, behavior, and attitudes. That worked or failed on an individual basis, sometimes depending on how much individual time and effort staff members devoted to connecting one-on-one with those students, other times seeming not to matter when staff members tried their best to connect and reach out to these students.
Some staff members would go out of their way to spend quality time with these students and/or do special things for them, only to have some of them turn around almost literally the next second and do something to get themselves in trouble. That does not mean that the effort should not be there, only that the effort perhaps has to redoubled or that the approach has to be changed.
Teacher training matters, and providing as many strategies and ideas as possible for staff members to add to their tool box is important.
Maybe part of that training needs to be as intense as acting out worst-case scenerios and forcing teachers to demonstrate how they would respond, allowing constructive criticism and brainstorming sessions to take place afterwards.
I'm reminded of how civil rights activists planned to respond positively to the worst that white supremists might throw their way.
There were workshops during which fellow civil rights activists tested one another, hurling as much ugliness (including the "n"-word) as possible at one another so that they would be prepared not to lose their composure when faced with the very real ugliness thrown directly at them during sit-ins and other demonstrations for civil rights.
It wouldn't suprise me if it already exists, at least somewhere out there, but such hard-core training might better prepare school staff members and law enforcement officers not to react negatively when faced with students' negativity.
I vaguely remember Malcolm X writing of how a woman had responded negatively to him but how he had continued to come at her positively and how that gradually had changed her response to him.
That's easier said than done, of course.
Some of our elected officials remind us how much easier it is to respond negatively than positively when they perceive others to be coming at them negatively.
School staff members are no different.
When a human being approaches us negatively, it is our human instinct to respond negatively in kind return.
So what we are asking school staff members to do, in asking us to figure out better ways to respond to our students, is sometimes asking us to defy our human instincts, to avoid allowing ourselves to be drawn into negative responses to students' own negativity.
That's requesting a Herculean response, but perhaps that is part of what we must demand to diffuse problems and improve conditions.
Perhaps by training us to overcome our personalities and our instincts, we will prepare ourselves better for the challenge.
Middle schools, by the way, have a theoretical component that some seem to suggest is a brand-new idea: the notion of having each staff member assigned a small group of students with whom to connect.
It's called AA (Advisor/Advisee), but most often, it ends up being hardly different from homeroom.
How many middle schools effectively use AA?
At my school, I've never had fewer than 24 students in my AA and usually closer to 30.
Once you go above 10-15 students, the idea of connecting on a more personal, meaningful level becomes a far greater challenge.
Every year, though, I have typically gotten to know students in my AA better than I have other students on my team. During report card distribution, I see each of their collective grades and conduct marks and am able to provide reinforcement and encouragement for those students.
How much more could be done, however, if our AAs had only 10-15 students each?
What logistical arrangements would need to be done to set this up?
Are there any Guilford County middle schools that do have smaller AA sizes set up?
How do they do that, and how might the other middle schools imitate those arrangements?
(It sounds like a form of AA is being set up at Northern High School, from comments above.)
At the middle school level, we also have teams.
At Southwest, I know that many teams have made efforts to provide greater opportunities for their students.
My first two years at Southwest, not one eighth-grade team took any field trips, for instance.
At the end of my second year of teaching, a parent told me that she felt that we would have gotten more positive efforts, behaviors, and attitudes from our students if we would do more for them besides merely teach them (such as arranging field trips for them).
I took her comments to heart, and since then, field trips and other positive opportunties have been created for our students.
There are still students who do not change their efforts, attitudes, and behaviors, even knowing about those positive opportunities being made available for them.
But how many of the students who ultimately become positively engaged in our school environment might have chosen a more negative direction without those positive offerings?
It may be impossible to determine the answer, but the efforts must always be there.
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