Parental Concerns

Parents have lots of concerns about kids in school these days. There’s a lot in the news about bullying.  Much of that talk has been spear-headed by the GLBT community.  GLBT teens are so often the target of these bullies.  I’m lucky in that my district is ahead of the curve on that one.  I see openly gay teens all the time and it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to the rest.

But what if your school is in an area where the crime rate is higher?  What if your school has a higher percentage of kids that have experience in and around the system?  Just the other day I had a call from the office to send a student down.  His probation officer was there.  Whatever this kid has done in his past, he’s been just fine in class.   I’ve had plenty of other kids with probation officers in the past.  We’ve had kids that have come from far-away cities with records that they are trying to escape.

We’ve had things happen in our neighborhood.  Several years ago there was a police officer killed at a bar nearby while he was undercover.  We were on a modified lock-down while the police were tracking down his killer.  There was a rape of a middle school girl within 2 blocks of my school.  There have been stories in the news of various crimes where we find out that the perpetrator attended a program in our school at some point.

I know there’s a law that says we are supposed to be notified when we have a potentially dangerous student.  But in my 15+ years of teaching, I’ve never been notified.  I have a feeling that I probably should have been several times.

For the most part, things go very well.  It’s amazing what is accomplished in my building with all of these undercurrents.  We still manage to teach and get a lot accomplished.  But it’s getting harder.  The issues that they have these days are more difficult.  Their problems are more severe.  It used to be that when you treated students with respect, they would in turn treat you with respect.  Now they don’t even know what that is.  They don’t treat their parents and other adults with respect, so they’re not inclined to automatically treat their teachers that way.  I was having this conversation with my mother today.

My mother is a wise woman.  We have many conversations about teaching.  She’s a retired ECFE teacher and in retirement she volunteers as a guardian ad litem.  In her guardian work, she’s the one that makes the decision if parents are able to keep parental rights or they are discontinued.  She knows her stuff.

So while we were talking this afternoon and I was describing things happening at school these days.  What does she ask me?  “Do you have any mace that you could keep in your desk?”

What?!?

The thought has never occurred to me.  I don’t even know if it’s legal.  But if my own mother is asking me that, what should the parents of my kids be thinking?

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