SCHOOLS ARE SAFE...97.7% OF THE TIME

“Our Schools are Safe” --- Accurate 97.7% of the time

By Mark McLaughlin

Editor, Citizen-Observer

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Let’s be clear about something upfront.  This is not aimed at the Cameron R-I Schools or any school in the area specifically.  This is a more or less universal set of circumstances that go more to how kids interact with each other  than how schools work to moderate student behavior..

I had a special sensitivity to the bullying issue as I became a teacher and then later I became a counselor.  The effect it had on me in middle school and high school made me a bit socially awkward, and the fear of conflict…and getting the crap beat out of me prevented me from really “advocating for myself,” as highly degreed educational knuckleheads refer to it today.

As a counselor, the hardest thing for me to deal with was the issue of kids wanting to do harm to themselves, kids entangled in abuse or neglect issues at home, or from others, kids using harmful substances (drugs, alcohol, and most recently, vaping), and kids harming each other with low-intensity teasing, up to high-intensity bullying, or worse.

The school environment, in general terms, is focused on “climate”, the perception that a school is a safe place, that kids, by and large, follow the rules, and respect their teachers and each other.

Our local superintendent declared in a press release last week that “our schools are safe”.

I believe that that statement is true in every school, 97.7% of the time.

Administrators, counselors, teachers, paras, and maintenance staff are all more or less predisposed to be pleasant with kids, to like them, to sort out classroom issues when they arise, and to deal with discipline issues “restoratively” if possible, handling as much discipline in the classroom, and one on one as possible.

But it is physically impossible to be everywhere, see everything, and prevent or intervene in every instance of bullying, assault, or worse.

There are too few of us (teachers) and too many of the kids to fly a flawless, 100% efficient combat air patrol.

Teachers give second, third, and twenty-sixth chances to the same individual students who need that positive “teacher” playing goalie as much as anything, trying to protect kids from their own bad decisions.

If 5% of the students require 95% of the deterrent discipline in any classroom, there is a direct correlation most teachers in the profession will agree with…That 95% of the parents they most need to see at parent-teacher conferences, representing the 5% of students creating the most problems in the school, may show up 25% of the time.

No one wants to hear bad news about their child.  No parent wants to walk out of conferences with their teachers with a file full of incomplete assignments their child blew off and now has two weeks to complete for a 50% late homework grade.

But as Mr. Cronkite says, “That’s the way it is…” in education today.

Principals want “kid-friendly classrooms,” lots of work hung on the walls to show off, evidence of projects, speeches, essays, and artwork festooned around the classroom.  Teachers want kids to learn, first and foremost, to grow and improve, to learn from their mistakes, and “show continuous growth” as people, and students within their academic areas, and definitely on test scores.

Teachers want to teach content, and they want to teach kids.  They enter every class session with a plan, have in their mind where they want the lesson to go, and they work feverishly to touch every student, every learning style, and hopefully…to crack the lid off the kid’s curiosity when he or she finds something that trips their trigger.

Most of the adults, not all certainly, but most define success as a quiet, well-ordered day where kids listen, get their work done, and treat each other like human beings.  Oh, and don’t flip them as teachers with disrespect or nonsense.

The reason kids act up in classes is to try to develop “street cred” with their peers, to get noticed, and to be seen as cool by their peers.  Some kids don’t care about being respected…they want to be feared.  Others just want to be left alone.

I didn’t like it when another student was hamming it up to get laughs and attention when I was trying to learn something from my teachers.  But there was something that kept me from standing up to it.  I didn’t like it when a bigger kid picked on a smaller one, but I’d learned the first “law of the jungle”…wolfpack rules state clearly that you don’t step in to help someone else unless you want to get stepped on…Why did I stay silent?

A poor self-image.  I bruised easily as a kid, and I did not belong to the fight club.

For all my teachers did to build me up with six, seven, or eight good things a day, it only took one or two verbal shots, physical shoves(dozens), or a punch in the stomach (three or four) to bring me back to earth.  That others joined in and laughed at me…that was the worst (seemed like every day, all the time).

The bad stuff happened in the hallways, the bathrooms, the locker room, the lunch line, and at the bus stop.

Anything the school could not supervise or directly control became the “Badlands” as far as I was concerned being at school.  

Those were not safe places in the 1970’s.  Video monitoring does not make them 100% safe places today.

Teachers are constantly reminded, encouraged, browbeaten, and even written up for poor supervision of common areas, hallways mostly, all to apply rules designed to build and insulate a “positive school climate”, to make kids feel safe and educators to feel like they have created a safe place for students to attend school.

But as I moved through my teaching career, and into counseling, I and many of my colleagues began to realize that we may have been barking up the wrong tree.

A “positive school climate” will never completely overturn the effects of the “student culture.”

Teachers, principals, and even parents look at the issue of bullying or fighting, or even student disrespect towards peers or staff, and attack it purely from the “rules” standpoint.  What does the school handbook say about that?

I’ll set the stage for the next installment in this series and say this…The norm structure kids have in any school setting among themselves is far more powerful than the best student disciplinary policy there is.

I will leave you with the image that accompanies this story and get back to you with more on this next week.

The iceberg…How much of what’s going on there do we actually see,  much less understand, when we live our entire lives above the surface of the ocean?

More to come next week…