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Leave a comment Posted on anti-social behavior, Public Education, students, teaching

Eyewitnesses to Teacher Scuffle with Student Become Eyewitlesses

A video went viral last week of Santa Monica High School teacher/coach Mark Black restraining a student in his classroom.

When the public first saw the video, reaction was negative about the teacher.

Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District superintendent Sandra Lyon issued a statement calling the event “utterly alarming” and labeling “the kind of physical restraint used by the teacher [as] unacceptable.”   She further promised the family of the student involved “support that they may need.” 

Then details emerged that the student allegedly had marijuana and had first attacked Coach Black with a box cutter.

Public opinion turned, viewing Black as a hero (a collective voice saying, “Finally, a teacher unafraid of putting an unruly student in his place”) and Lyon as a villain for hastily condemning the Coach without knowing all the facts.

Worse than Supt. Lyon’s rush to judgment was her rush to side with the student and offer his family assistance.   One wonders, why offer to defend an alleged criminal over a long-time, highly regarded employee?

Due to the public backlash, some calling for her resignation, Supt. Lyon released a second statement days later, softening her tone towards the teacher, “In no way was our action to place the teacher on paid leave a determination of wrongful conduct.”

On Tuesday, the 18-year-old was charged with five misdemeanor counts including threatening a school official, possessing a box cutter as well as marijuana. A second student, aged 16, was also charged with battery.

But there is one more antagonist in this story and that is the group of students who stood motionless, watching their teacher struggle with an out of control peer for 58 seconds without doing anything.

Yes, we don’t know what preceded or followed the video segment.   We do know that the video segment is 58 seconds long, and when you watch the video, it seems to last longer than a minute. 

Students had enough time to take out their phones and videotape the incident (two other student phones are seen in the frame also taping it), but no time to do something, to act, to help their teacher.  Cold-blooded inaction.  Forget about physically intervening because that sometimes can worsen a situation.   But not a single teen can be heard on the 58 seconds even calling for help.

These young people are not eyewitnesses but “eyewitlesses.”

One might dispute this charge of apathy by pointing to the outpouring of support for Coach Black with the 22,000 likes on a Facebook page or the nearly 9,000 signatures on a change.org petition.

However, anonymously clicking a button on a computer in the comfort of one’s home is not the same type of courage as doing something about an event happening in front of your eyes.

Last month was the 50th anniversary of the murder of Kitty Genovese, the Queens, New York 28-year-old woman whose screams in the middle of the night were heard by dozens of people for 30 minutes without anyone coming to her aid as her killer stabbed her in 3 separate attacks before ending her life.   This is where the phrase “I didn’t want to get involved” originated and where neighbors not helping neighbors became the theme of city life.

What happened last week is not of the same magnitude as the Genovese case, but human behavior remains unchanged.   Those kids did not want to get involved.

In recent years schools have had to deal with lockdowns whenever an outside predator invades a school campus.   This story highlights another kind of lockdown that no drill can defend against, and that is a lockdown of the human soul.

Leave a comment Posted on anti-social behavior, Justin Bieber, students

Leave it to Bieber!

When working with teenagers, I try to keep up with the latest trends so that I can namedrop a Kardashian or crack a joke about Instagram to let them know that this old man teacher does have an awareness of youth culture.

So not only I do know who Justin Bieber is, but I know how his arrest last week in Miami impacted his fans, my students.

His name has now been added to the long list of celebrities gone astray.   The only real surprise was how long it took the tween superstar to fall from grace.  Next on the hit parade will be his somber mea culpas (too bad Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey no longer have their post-Oscars specials) offering regrets over his illegal actions.  

To the Beliebers (the term coined for Bieber followers), Justin can do no wrong.  I’m not sure if they understand the severity of his actions.

What decent person allegedly drag races 60 mph in a 30 mph zone with an expired license while under the influence of alcohol and drugs (did Bieber already forget last November’s death of “Fast and Furious” actor Paul Walker in a car going over 100 miles per hour?), uses profanity towards police officers while resisting arrest, then smiles for his mug shot as if it is for the high school yearbook, and waves to cheering fans upon leaving jail?   

Instead of concealing himself beneath his hoodie, he uses his exit as a photo-op.   Such brazenness would not exist if Bieber were an average citizen, but being in the public eye fuels the blatant lawlessness that his adorers view as a badge of honor.

Of course, this raises the real problem of this latest example of celebrities running amok:  there is no shame anymore in our society.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines shame as “a feeling of guilt, regret, or sadness that you have because you know you have done something wrong.”

When I walk around campus I regularly hear students swearing like sailors, dropping f-bombs as if they get paid to use them.    There is no attempt at cleaning up their vocabulary when a grown-up walks by because they feel no shame in using such language nor do they fear any repercussions.  Welcome to the 21st century.

Who knows how much of Justin’s upbringing, born to teenaged parents who were never married, marred his value judgment.   Like father, like son, both have their arms fully tattooed.  And, as the New York Daily News reported, Jeremy Bieber may be an enabler in his son’s shenanigans, apparently “partying with his famous son” at nightclubs, participating “in the SUV caravan that allegedly blocked traffic” for the illegal drag racing.  

When a parent is acting like a teenaged delinquent, the child has no guidance.   I guess his folks are simply “leaving it to Bieber” to figure things out.

I used to teach Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel The Scarlet Letter about Hester Prynne who, as a result of an adulterous relationship, must wear a large red letter ‘A’ upon her chest as punishment so everyone in towns knows what she did. 

By the end of the book, Hester actually uses the public ostracism to transform herself into an upright individual, the ‘A’ standing for angel.  Shame can lead to positive change.

Some of my students say that while they don’t condone his behavior, they may still buy his music.  That’s too bad.  Until he cleans up his act, we should shun entertainers like Bieber who feels no shame in behaving badly.   Just don’t ask him to tattoo a letter to his chest as punishment; chances are he’s already done so.

Leave a comment Posted on parents, Public Education, students, teaching

Later in the Day, Not Earlier in the Summer

Glendale schools opened on Aug. 12, the earliest start date in history, doing away with the traditional September-through-June school calendar that hasn’t been all that traditional for a while now. The back-to-school ads that once appeared in newspapers and on television before Labor Day now surface after the Fourth of July.

The rationale behind this “August creep” is for students to finish the fall semester before winter break, and for students taking Advanced Placement tests in May to receive more instructional days earlier in order to maximize their success.

In others words, the school calendar is skewed toward secondary students who have semester finals, and in particular, the minority of students who take AP tests. For students in kindergarten through fifth grade, there is no reason.

The argument of having students take their fall semester finals before winter break so that they don’t forget the material while on vacation isn’t sound. Students used to come back after vacation for a couple of weeks of school and then take their finals.

Now, they come back after one week off for Thanksgiving for two weeks before finals; not much different than before.

The notion of providing students more time to prepare for AP tests so that they produce higher results is also not valid.

Students this year actually have one less school day before the May AP exams than last year. While the school year began one week earlier, there are additional days when school is not in session before AP testing: two extra days during Thanksgiving and three extra days during winter break.

Carly Lindauer of the college board said that she is unaware of any “evidence to show that simply starting school earlier, and having two to three more weeks of instruction, automatically leads to higher AP exam scores.”

And what about the energy costs to run air conditioning during August, which has an average of about 11 days that reach 90 degrees or more, based on Weatherbase statistics?

Notice how hot and muggy it has been this week.

The district frequently sends out emails to staff about turning off lights, copiers and computers. Yet the amount of money it costs to run the air conditioning all day at all of its schools must exceed the savings of turning off coffee makers. I was unable to get a district official to comment on this.

Where I work, there are older buildings that use a chiller that has to be turned on as early as 4 a.m.; otherwise, classrooms will not be properly cooled that day. If students can’t focus on a teacher in a stuffy room, who cares how many school days there are in August?

Tina Bruno, executive director of the Coalition for a Traditional School Year, said that evidence suggests that “states with the highest cumulative scores on college entrance exams, Advanced Placement testing and the National Assessment of Educational Progress share some of the latest school start dates in the nation.”

The quality of the instruction and parent involvement have more to do with kids doing better in school than spending more time in school in August does.

If school districts care about what’s best for kids, then perhaps an examination of the start of the school day, rather than the start of the school year, is where their focus should be because more studies show the academic benefits of starting school after 9 a.m., rather than starting in early August.