May

27

What’s to be done about kids killing kids?

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management | 6 Comments

It’s happened again- a kid killing a kid. On Wednesday, May 23 2007 , a 15 year old kid was shot to death in a hallway in the middle of the afternoon in a Toronto school. That’s scary for kids, for parents, and for teachers. Parents send kids to the safety of school to learn the three “R’s. Kids go to school, albeit sometimes a bit reluctantly, to learn the three R’s. Teachers go to school, I go to school to teach the three R’s. No one expects anyone to get killed in school. Why are kids killing kids anyway, in school or out of school. What’s going on? How can we stop it? These are puzzling questions that need answers. One answer I see is : it all depends on who you ask. Ask different people; get different answers. Ask some people; get no answers.

I’ve been following this story in the local media where questions around the shooting are being raised. The answers given by the various players in this tragedy like the family of the victim, the friends of the victim, the administration of the school that the victim attended, the police, the politicians, and the experts in the area of youth violence remind me of the answers given in the story about the six blind men who are asked to identify something by touching different parts of it. The something happened to be an elephant. The story goes something like this

Six blind men who touched different parts of an elephant were ask to describe what they thought it was.
The first blind man touched the trunk of an elephant and said “It’s like a snake”.
The second blind man touched the body of an elephant and said “It’s like a wall”.
The third blind man touched the tail of an elephant and said “It’s like a rope”.
The fourth blind man touched the leg of an elephant and said “It’s like a tree”.
The fifth blind man touched the tusk of an elephant and said “It’s like a sword”.
The sixth blind man touched the ear of an elephant and said “It’s like a fan”.

Each of the six blind men described the elephant from his own perspective. Each description was valid given where each man stood. The problem is, of course, that because the men could not see the whole picture (well of course they couldn’t see the whole pictures, they were blind but you know what I mean) they could only describe their individual part thereby they failing to see the essence of the elephant. I believe that when we are asking the question “What is to be done about kids killing kids”, we get answers from individual players based on where they are coming from and consequently miss the essence of the problem and hence miss the essence of the solution.

The poor grieving mothers can never understand why someone would want to harm their children because they were such dutiful sons or daughters. Friends of the victims always talk about what wonderful friends and people the victims were. Everyone loved them. The police talk about the need for people who have information about crimes to come forward with information and tell police what they know. People who are in the know won’t tell because they are worried that they will suffer retaliation for ratting someone out. In this case, the incident happened in school, school officials talk about what they have done to make schools safe and then talk about what they are doing to make them safer like installing more cameras and installing more people to supervise the halls. The mayor talks about the need for tougher gun controls to stop all those guns from the United Stated entering into Canada. Experts on youth violence suggest that kids enter gangs looking for the emotional support their families didn’t give them. We should be giving them this support so they don’t join gangs.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s all the different parts of the elephant. These individual interpretations aren’t capturing the essence of the problem. The individual player’s interpretation of the problem and its solution is not going to make the problem go away by itself. It’s back to that village thing. You know the saying that it take a whole village to raise a child. Well it’s going to take the whole village to stop kids killing kids. Everyone needs to do what needs doing ,as unpopular as that might be. Or, we’re going to continue to read about kids killing kids and continue to hear the different members of the village interpreting the elephant of kids killing kids from their individual perspectives or agendas. We need to see the whole picture before we can get rid of the whole problem.

Some of the comments made by the media regarding my question of what is to be done about kids killing kids have been very insightful. An editorial in The Globe and Mail date May 25, 2007 notes that

It has been clear for some time that a large number of young people in the city’s toughest neighborhoods have guns and feel a sense of impunity in using them… There are many young men in (some of them boys,really) who, when challenged or insulted, will begin shooting. A bus shooting happened after someone asked a young man to stop swearing.

You know, I see that bit about violence stemming from a real or perceived challenge or real or perceived insult at school everyday. I was going to say almost everyday, but then upon reflection realized it was everyday. Just today in my class one kid said something that another kid took offense to, and I had to step in and verbally deescalate the situation. I couldn’t believe it. In a nano second they were both ready to throttle one another. I guess these kids have nothing but their honour and so will protect it at any cost. It just boggles the mind. So many of these kids get themselves into problems because they have poor impulse control and act before they’ve had an opportunity to think things through.

I had another student tell me a month or so ago that he had been stabbed in his upper thigh. I was shocked, but then as the details unfolded the stabbing itself took on a less shocking light. This kid, my student had accidentally stabbed himself in the thigh. He explained that he had been carrying a knife in his pocket and forgot about it, and when he sat down, as fate would have it, the knife stabbed him in the thigh. Now of course ,he and his friends didn’t want any adults to know about this, so they tried to fix the wound themselves by buying some stuff at the drug store and bandaging the wound up. But as he told me, it was bleeding so badly the bandaids wouldn’t stick on his skin so they had to go to emergency room at the local hospital. He commented on all the blood and that his good jeans had a hole in them now. At the emergency room at the hospital, he told the story that he’d accidentally sat on a knife that had been carelessly left on a chair, and it stabbed him when he sat down. That explanation worked for him at the hospital and at home with his mother. I asked him why he was carrying a knife to begin with. He look at me incredulously and told me that everyone carried a knife to protect themselves, and some of the other kids in the class told me that you couldn’t leave the house without a knife for protection. Just think of what that means- a knife in the hand of a kid with poor impulse control and nothing to lose but his honour, or even better yet, a gun in the hand of a kid with poor impulse control and nothing to lose but his honour.

My school has cameras installed in the high traffic areas and many of the 20+ doors in the building are locked during school hours and unlocked in the morning before school to let kids in. You can exit all of the doors but enter only a select few during school hours. That is a major pain in the butt. I’ve gone to my car to get something after classes were over for the day and have to walk way around the front to get back in. The locked doors help keep intruders out of the school and the cameras act as a deterrent and catch kids committing crimes. They really do. A couple of years ago, one of my students who was expelled from school because he took a baseball bat to another kid at lunch over a gambling debt asked his friends, still at school,to say hi to me. Apparently, I was his favourite teacher. But, he was afraid to come into school because of the cameras. He would be in big trouble if he got caught on school premises. Same thing happened just last March. A student of mine who got kicked out of school and wanted to come to see me to say hi but was afraid to, again because of the cameras. He too would be in big trouble if he was caught on camera. So, cameras do work. I’ve got more stories like that, but I’ve made my point already. I’m starting to get spooked out thinking about all these kids. Fortunately, these kids are a minority or no one would want to be a teacher.

I’ve said before that I wouldn’t want our schools turned into jail-like fortresses. I don’t want bars and metal detectors in my school, and I don’t want my school board to have its own police force like they do in Boston. I’ve taught young offenders in jail and in an open custody facility and believe me the atmosphere was so oppressive. I hated the atmosphere. Ironically, the kids were better behaved in jail than in regular classrooms because they had only two choices. They could do what I asked in the classroom or the guards could escort them to their cells. It was their choice. I’m trying to remember. It was a long time ago, but I think that only one kid ended up going back to his cell. I couldn’t stand the guards in my classroom, so I had them removed. That took some doing. But, I had the support of my administrator who was responsible for the school in jail,and he made it happen. They installed a panic button in my classroom just in case something happened, but nothing did.

When I first started teaching in jail, I was a bit concerned about maintaining discipline because, well, the kids weren’t in jail for good behaviour. But what actually happened was this: when I first started teaching the kids kind of checked me out and gave me a few tests I had to pass, and when I passed them I was deemed OK. So whenever new kids came to class, they didn’t act out because the other kids had done some positive PR for me. I was amazed and quite honestly thankful. Sometimes I tell my classes at work that it’s easier to teach kids in jail than it is to teach them. They don’t believe it, and they have a hard time believing that I taught in jail. I tell them I was younger then and we all laugh.

The Globe and Mail article I quoted from earlier makes some good points I want to share

  • The money spent on metal detectors etc. would be better spent on social workers , psychologist and special programs that could reach these kids before they reach for knives .
  • Schools that looks orderly and well maintained are more secure.
  • Vandalism and theft can be almost as harmful to a school as actual violence because they can create a fertile environment for loss of control and community confidence.
  • If it appears that there is no strong adult authority intruders come and create problems

S o there are some lessons here. Ones we need to pay attention to. If the solutions to the problem of kids killing kids were simple, we would have would have implemented them long ago and ended kids killing kids. We, the villagers, need to get together, learn the lesson from the blind men and the elephant and get at an accurate picture of the problem so that we can develop the solutions that get at the problem and finally stop kids killing kids. At least, that’s the way I see it.

 
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Mar

20

The dangers of virtual reality

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management | Leave a Comment

games.jpg“the overpowering stimulation and excitement that virtual reality produces can lull the imagination and numb sympathetic feelings for pain and suffering (Daisaku Ikeda, Soko Education (Santa Monica: Middleway Press, 2001), 53

This quote could help explain a lot of things that I see and hear in my classroom of at-risk kids. . Many of my at-risk students play video games, violent video games most of their time at home. I just checked here to see which games are the most popular now. I was hoping it wasn’t the especially violent ones. But I was wrong. Grand Theft Auto is still right there at the top.

Many of my at-risk students have desk top computers in their bedrooms and play on them into the wee hours of the morning. They have little ones they carry around and play games on when they’re away from home. They play games and don’t interact with other people, except to comment on how many points they have scored or which level they’ve gotten to.

These at-risk students seem numb to the pain and suffering of others and have no empathy for anyone. They glorify violence. When I talk to them about things they just shrug their shoulders and say things like oh well, that’s life. They ‘ve even held fights that were specially staged for and posted on YouTube, that is until the school got wind of it and it was stopped. It just boggles my mind. Perhaps the quality of life is becoming what Hobbes claimed it was- solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

How can we counter the negative effects of virtual reality?

UPDATE-March 22

My daughter Lisa read this post and said that she had recently read that violent video games actually reduced the incidence of youth violence. The only conclusions I’ve come to are:

1. For some reason my at-risk students might be affected negatively by violent games while other students might n0t be.

2. My at-risk kids would be even more violent if they didn’t play violent video games because they wouldn’t get some of the violence out of the system by playing those games (Oh my goodness)

Does anyone know of research that could speak to this? Please let me know if you do.

Mar

17

The carrot or the stick?

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, The Way I See It | 6 Comments

carrot.jpgThe carrot or the stick? That’s an argument I have with myself all the time. Is it more effective to bribe people to get them to do what you want or is it more effective to threaten people to get them to do what you want? Is it more effective to get students to come to school by bribing them with courses, programs , extra-curricular activities etc. that will make them want to come to school or is it more effective to threaten to punish them if they don’t come to school?

I’ve always wondered about the practice of punishing kids by suspending them for skipping school. Suspending kids for skipping school has always seemed to me like rewarding them for skipping school. It’s giving them more of what they want- less school. Oh, I know that suspending a kid from school is supposed to get parents to pay attention and do something to kids to make them shape up, and of course not being able to come to school for entire days is hard on kids who come to school for social reasons, which many kids do. I guess that’s some type of punishment. But, I’m not convinced suspending a kid is the most effective way to get him or her to attend classes.

I want to be able to say with conviction that the carrot is better than the stick. But, I can’t because back there in my mind, always lurking, is Kohlberg and his stages of moral development. From my understanding of his theory of moral development, it seems that the carrot will work some people and the stick will work for other people. Like so many things in life, it depends.

I hate that about life. Why does it alway have to be: it depends. I can’t handle that part of life when I’m sick with a cold, like I am now. I want the answer to be what I want. What stage of life is that! It’s the terrible two stage of life. I want what I want and have great difficulty when I don’t get it- something like my two year old granddaughter. How pathetic is that!

I have come to believe that we’ll do whatever we think it takes to make us happy.

Lisa Rein’s article in washingtonpost.com makes it clear that the stick approach is alive and well. She tells us that Maryland’s law makers are taking the stick approach with kids who skip school and their parents:

The House of Delegates approved a bill that would deny driver’s licenses to students with 10 or more unexcused absences in the previous calendar year…The bill would require school districts to report each case of truancy to the Motor Vehicle Administration, and the student would have to present an attendance record to the state to get a permit… the state punishes parents who let their children skip school — criminal penalties can include as many as 10 days in jail or a fine of $50 a day

Twenty four states in the USA have tied student attendance to driving license privilege’s. Here in Ontario, we’ve done that too. If kids dropout of school before they’re 18 and have graduated, their driver’s license permits will be suspended.

Some law makers want to use even a bigger stick:

Prince George’s lawmakers this legislative session would have forced the worst offenders to wear ankle bracelets and other electronic monitoring systems. A pilot program in the county would have allowed the courts to issue these and other sanctions against truants. But a backlash against the measure from public defenders and civil liberties groups pushed the sponsors to withdraw it. Opponents argued that placing monitors on children would not stop truancy but rather criminalize it.

Thank goodness saner heads prevailed.

Why all the fuss about kids not attending school? Well, it’s more than being concerned about kids not getting a decent education. The The concern is that

Truancy does not affect just the student, Levi (Del. Gerron S. Levi) said, adding that teenagers who skip school are more likely to commit daytime crimes such as home burglaries and vandalism. “This is a way to get their attention,” she said. “The bottom line is it’s not only an issue of missed classroom time. We’ve seen a surge in stolen vehicle and vandalism when kids are out of school.”

Unfortunately that’s true. Kids sometimes do get into trouble when they skip school. I hear stories all the time about what goes on when kids skip classes. Sadly it seems that teachers not only educate kids during school hours, but we also protect the community.

I written here and here about ways to motivate students to come to school that don’t involve threats. Make them want to come to school because there’s something at school that makes them happy. What makes kids happy at school- good adult-student relationships, participating in extra curricular activities that make the classroom part of school more bearable, and more programs for the 70% of students who aren’t planning on going to university.

When all is said and done, maybe there has to be a carrot and a stick. I only know one thing for sure: There are no easy answers- at least that’s the way I see it.

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