What a day...

[Veronica]

Seriously? You never saw a kid in school make a gun with his fingers and pretend to shoot someone?

I think what has changed is that we've grown up and it's our turn to say the same things our elders said about us.

Karen

Pretending to shoot your teacher because you are POed at her is not the same thing. Using the f word as you discuss the incident with the principal is not the same thing.

I would love to have you come spend a day with these kids. It is NOT the same. Many children in our schools are being raised without boundaries and they cross lines that should not be crossed.

Children have changed and parenting has changed.


Veronica

[Mr. Bloom]

V,

As I've said before:

• I do appreciate how difficult teaching is
• I do appreciate what you do
• I hate the challenges that your are having to confront

Children have changed and parenting has changed.

I do not agree with this. The demographics of your school have changed exposing you to something different, but it's the same issues as our generation in a different package. JMHO

[Crankin]

I agree with you, Mr. S. Whenever I was confronted with these challenges as a teacher (and believe me, it was frequently), I had to search myself and wonder if the values I was used to and most middle or upper middle class white people, hence teachers, have were not the same as the ones my kids/parents had. Most of the time, the answer was no. This does not mean that kids should be allowed to threaten anyone at school or disrespect teachers. But, if I dug a little deeper I would see the situation for what it was. Sometimes, all I could do was wait for the end of the year (or in my case, 2 years, because I looped with my kids), but other times, through a lot of work and help from others at my school, we made tiny inroads with the parents and/or kid.
I think it would be really hard to live through a demographic change at school. It's like the whole world changes. The last 2 places I taught were challenging because we had the kids who lived in 500k houses and also a large group of kids who were immigrants or from a minority culture. Because so many of these kids had no social boundaries or rules at home, for whatever reasons, we made social/emotional learning a huge part of the curriculum, with the Responsive Classroom program (it's called something else now). That, and community service at every grade level forced the kids to focus on something other than ME, ME, ME. The Responsive Classroom was a venue that made it possible to have the time to teach the social skills and manners that so many don't get at home. It wasn't a big chunk of the day (20 minutes 3-4 days a week), but I couldn't start my day without it. That morning handshake and sitting down and doing an academically focused activity, and sharing our outside lives broke down a lot of barriers. When my son enlisted, I had the worse group of kids I've ever had. But, when I sat down in our morning meeting and told them what happened and how upset I was, they came through. They helped me make it through the days ahead.
Was it perfect? Of course not. Teaching is the hardest job anyone can do. In fact, I can't believe I did it for 30 years.