The above links will lead you to sites on both sides of the debate over Zero Tolerance in schools. I leave it to you to read them, make your own conclusions.
I won’t summarize them, but give you some observations:
A school with a strongly worded rules on dress code and school behavior online, with the consequences for infractions clearly stated. Syllabi/Lesson Plans, posted online as well, readdressing the same concerns. The conduct rules are posted in the main office as well.
What was seen: two students being taken out of the school in hand cuffs by police officers; not one student dressed in the very well laid out dress code (hoodies and hats were worn; scarves as head wear; tee shirts with graphics; etc); students walking around the hallways by the front door guard, near the main office, sitting on the floor; a school official hugging a student (one “rule” was “no contact between students of any type, hugging mentioned); a student walking into the office, talking to a secretary, her trying to send him on his way to class but he cut his class, as he came back in less than fifteen minutes later to “hang out”; and during the classroom change, uncountable number of cell phones and electronics being used in a school they are supposedly banned.
This was one school, but I’ve seen variations played out in many.
I made a mention of this, at times. to various teachers or staff, and the answer is almost always the same: a shrug of the shoulders, or the complaint that no one enforces it, or they can’t enforce them. They don’t get support from any number of sources (parents, the principal, whoever).
I’ve also seen schools where the parents are very involved and supportive, where the rules of conduct and dress are enforced. Are there still problems? Of course. You are dealing with a wide variable of situations. Yet, when rules don’t matter, consequences are basically non-existent…
I haven’t written here in quite awhile. Observing what I have in the last half a year (really, last four years) has sometimes left me dumbstruck. This experience just left me shaking my head.
A 68 year young bus monitor, in upstate New York, was verbally assaulted by a group of Middle School (MS) students. The abuse was caught on video and broadcast on YouTube and all over Facebook and Twitter. According to the article/CNN report, the students will be facing disciplinary actions, and the police are involved in this action.
I’m sure, by now, you’ve seen or heard about the video. The CNN link above only has a fraction of it, and I would not post the entirety of it here. The students who did this need consequences for their actions, not further hits on the video. I do send out my thoughts to the woman who was attacked. My hope is she can find some strength in the fact that she held her own, did not sink to their level and attack back, and that the majority of those sounding off on this are on her side.
We have our share of bullies in all age groups, in all parts of our society. Yet, the majority of our focus is on the school bullies. When I went looking for bully images to use with this post, there were few images that dealt with adults: one adult yelling at a group of kids; one woman berating another. The rest were signage, the red line through the word BULLY and the like.
Alongside issues of bullying in schools, which is desperately needed, I feel all adults (Parents, the workforce, police, politicians, teachers, principals, etc etc etc) need the same sort of awareness programs, if not more so. Not only do they need to learn how to properly deal with this behavior from students, the adults need to see what THEY do that constitutes bullying.
I saw it in action, recently, in working with an older population group. I have seen it in action in schools and business. It seems to be not only a common practice from management to workers at times, but along the peer level. Bullying tactics are not relegated to just children.
Adult bullies, to other adults &/or children, is a seen behavior that is picked up by the young. If an adult does it with little to no consequence, then why can’t a kid? They may not go through that exact thought process, but it’s there: we teach our children outright what we want them to learn, but we are not careful about the rest of our actions, what they observe and take in.
I think we need to label bullying, if we have to label at all, for what it truly is: a hate crime.
Bullying wasn’t okay in elementary school and it isn’t okay now, especially when it comes in the form of a U.S. Supreme Court decision. John Doolittle
Some people won’t be happy until they’ve pushed you to the ground. What you have to do is have the courage to stand your ground and not give them the time of day. Hold on to your power and never give it away.
― Donna Schoenrock
Here are two student video reactions to the bullying of the bus monitor.
You can believe in what you want. As long as it’s not hateful or harmful to others, I’ll even listen to your POV if you promise not to try to ram it down my throat, or try to convince me that your belief is the only right way.
Democrats and Republicans do many wrong things, for the wrong reasons: there are lobbies/big money that have no concerns for the people of this country, only profits.
The blame game is what is hurting this country. I read a series of posts on FB, an anti-President Obama thread, that were volatile and negative spewing. The main thrust was, from the person who started the thread, that he feels all Republicans should say NO to anything coming from an opposing POV.
No listening and judge on individual merits; no attempt to compromise; no attempt to work for the betterment of all the people in the country. Just Say NO was his mantra…and then he and others complained that “the liberals” only spout and don’t listen and run away from a fight.
[Side Bar: As to arguments about Bush Bashing...one thing to disagree with the man, which I do. I have my reasons: my two biggest complaints are: his getting the news of the 9/11 attacks and just sitting dumbfounded in a Kindergarten classroom, not making a move, not directing the country, not showing any action; the second is, when asked about his greatest achievement in office, he talks about a fish he caught. Joke or not, to me, it's not funny. I'm not even going to go into the economic state of the union he left for whoever won the election to pick up after him. Nope. Not going there.]
Before any civil rights acts, inter-racial marriages were forbidden, as were inter-religious ones. They were, for those days, their own “war on marriage” which, yes, I have seen slogans for.
The President spoke his mind and made a stand: he believes in same sex marriage. He did not say any other state of marriage should be nullified, nor did he exclude anyone. He did not say, in any way, that this was a war on marriage. He did not say we all must believe as he did. Many won’t, and that is their prerogative. He is, if anything, advocating the civil rights of the “rest” of the country for consenting adults in love to get married.
If you don’t want to be married to someone of the same sex, or a different religion, or a different skin color, or a different nationality, then: JUST DON’T. But, don’t impose your own POV on someone else.
Why then, as a straight man, am I so behind repealing an amendment based on hatred and bigotry?
I’m also a JEWISH male, and if anyone wants to talk about history of abuse and hatred against a people, then let’s talk. We got ya beat by thousands of years.
It’s time to let things that are NOT important to the running of a country go, and focus on what we can do POSITIVELY and for the GOOD OF THE PEOPLE. The civil rights of American Citizens are being crushed under foot by those who say they love this country.
You love this country, then show it. Stop forcing your negative religious beliefs on others and do something positive with all that energy.
Fight poverty
Fight human trafficking
Fight hunger
Fight injustice (and you better believe this is injustice)
Fight for a stronger economy
Fight to bring our schools back to a place of prominence
Fight for a way to bring this country together, instead of continuously tearing it apart
Dancing around a maypole at Barwick-in-Elmet, Yorkshire
A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
~Albert Camus
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations.
Coincidences on international workers day:
2011: President Obama announces the death of Bin Laden
Why were we subjected to a long wait of TV news time before he came out to announce it?
2007: President Bush announces “Mission Accomplished” re: the “major conflict in Iraq has ended.”
Announced on the USS Lincoln warship: Honest Abe…ahem
1945: the death of Adolph Hitler is announced
1707: Great Britain is formed, merging England, Wales and Scotland.
There are a lot of “big” events on May 1st (and I am sure you can find more on other days: that is not the point here); I just did not list them all. You can do some of the research yourself HERE. I just find it bizarre that three major events in less than 100 years occurred.
My feeling, and all it is is a feeling, no facts (so, yeah, kindly refrain from nasty comments: I’m allowed my feeling on this matter):
Starting in 1945, it feels like something Winston Churchill would have put forward, using a people’s day holiday to make a huge political announcement. It adds gravitas to the whole thing, big an event as it was unto itself. Someone savvy in PR in Bush’s cabinet could have taken notice of this and used that date to push the (erroneous) message out, bolstering the president’s “history” for future generations. Using the ship he did was overkill, imho. Lastly, with all the Bush bashing, what better day to upstage the 2007 announcement but to bring forward the death of another monster, and then make us wait with bated breath, probably smoking a cigarette and biding time to heighten the effect once announced.
Makes me wonder what the next “big announcement” on a May 1st will be.
Hi All…I’ve been away since mid March for a variety of reasons. In April, I spent the majority of my time writing everyday for my Tale Spinning blog, creating an interrelated anthology series. Please take a look HERE.
I’ll be back with BornStoryteller The Creative Series (still have guest posts that I never got around to sharing with you) and one or two other series ideas. That will all start soon, and I’ll do my best to keep a schedule going.
Thanks for sticking around, and thank you all for reading (and commenting) on BornStoryteller.
A week has passed since my last session with my 4th grade classes. I have to say that I wish I was at the school, taking them one step further, instead of sitting here writing about it. Using song lyrics (see Freedom Writers above) that dealt with the themes of Freedom and Democracy (school driven) as a prompt for their dramas has been exciting on this level. I have done this with Thespian level High School students in Master Classes, where they took three hours of work and then presented to a highly charged audience. In the case of this program, it was so much more about the process then the outcome.
I saw a lot of very positive things happening throughout the 9 sessions. While I do admit that the decoding of the narrative lyrics could have been deeper, the fact that they worked very hard at the levels they were at is to be commended. Time was the main factor here, and expectations. I feel I tried to do too much in such a short period of time, and that, again, is a lesson learned. I would have liked the chance to examine their work AFTER presentations, discuss the levels of their work, and then see how they’d revise it all.
Since being in their class only once a week, it really falls on the cooperative teacher to find connections during the week as well. Many partnership programs instill that into the process with the schools and teachers they work with. It makes sense. The continuation of the curriculum unit is important in reinforcing the material being given.
The students worked diligently overall. The ones who tried to slack off heard about it from other group members. They learned to share ideas, some better then others. Questions were asked, suggestions were thought about, tried, and taken IF they worked. Many students built upon the suggestions and created a broader palette for them to work from.
Did the students understand the concepts of the songs? I do feel that the Freedom component is much less abstract then the idea of Democracy. Knowing that slavery is wrong, that human rights should be embraced, that the spirit one has can lead to many types of freedom (yes, we had that discussion from student statements), that oppression is wrong. They got that. Democracy, I don’t feel we addressed it anywhere as strongly as we did Freedom.
Democracy is a big topic, and I think they “get it” but not as deeply as they thought about the idea of Freedom. I know that on my end, I was light on that subject when working with the small groups. I know my song choices were not as strong either. I was looking for lyrics with more narrative storytelling then concept, and the choices were few in what I found for this project.
I felt this was a successful endeavor. We could have done more, and that is a given. Leaving the kids was hard in that I wished we had more time, but I am very happy that I gave them a chance to learn by their DOING, their empowering themselves with their own ideas, their working hard to do the best work they could offer. That is very, very satisfying, on so many levels.
At the end of the 9 sessions I had with my 7th grade students, there was no clear cut answer. Many times in life there are no clear cut answers either, no perfect solution, if there even is one. An open ended abstract idea that propels a good Process Drama can go that way. This one did as well. That can drive product driven educators and students crazy, as I’ve experienced in other PDs that I’ve run.
In this case, the students in both classes seemingly understood that and accepted it. Note the word “seemingly.” Not every student participated verbally. A few were dismissive in attitude (body language wise, if not the few who felt safe or outrageous enough to verbally say so). Were they active in listening? Yes. Were they active participants throughout? Mainly yes. Some of the students were more observers than participants. A few checked out. At times, rowdy behavior led led the students to learning points.
Some of the more exciting moments, in all the classes, was when the students lost themselves so completely in the storyline that they yelled, jumped out of their seats, and basically exploded in a melee of accusations and defensiveness. I had joked with the principal that if she had walked into any of those sessions she would have seen chaotic creative drama and total immersion into the content at it’s finest. It was exciting to see just about all the students get so hot into the subject. Yes, there were varying degrees of the depth they were involved, but they were involved.
During the feedback, I asked them how they felt it went. For my part, doing something like this in only nine 45 minute sessions really wasn’t enough to cover what needed to be covered. If you take the two sessions of setting this up with exercises to get them into a drama framework, and then the last session being a sharing, that really left 6 sessions to the process. Only four and a half hours of actual work within the environment and storyline. Not really a lot of time to go as deep into the problems of bullying as I would like.
The students agreed they wish they had more time, and more time each session. A double class, back to back, would have been stronger for them. They also brought up, and I totally agree, that they wish I had brought in some dramatic work first, as an example (scripted or not), that would have given the abstract idea more weight. I threw out a number of things I would have done if there had been more time. That was one of them, and it seems I should have gone with my original decision to do just what they asked.
I asked for two students to volunteer to create a tableau in the classic image from Augusto Boal, creator of Theater of the Oppressed. In the picture above, the students are posed specifically to represent a type of oppression. We had already discussed that many oppressors use extreme to subtle bullying (power) tactics in all areas of life. The other students were asked:
What do you observe in the tableau?
Who are they?
Who has the power?
Who is the oppressor/bully, and who is the oppressed/bullied?
Can you justify your answer?
Taking the background of where Boal was coming from (small bit of info I gave them), they determined that the Man was bullying/oppressing the Woman. He did not help her, she carried everything (basket on head; child in arms) and looked straight ahead. She was silent in speech (mouth closed) but looked right at him (Imploring? Anger? etc).
Next, I asked the students that if they could physically change this tableau, what would they do? A few came up, made some adjustments: gave him everything to carry, her up front (which became a new bullying/oppressive gesture); had the Man carry the basket and be closer to her; to making them equal in walking level; to…
connecting with each other, walking side by side and looking at each other. Notice her smile. He had one as well, but I missed it in the picture taking. These solutions came from the students, not me or my cooperative teacher.
So..next time, some Boal, some improvised scene work, then the Process Drama. The journaling was successful to see their thought process at work. The discussions were wonderful, and…where does it go from here?
I do plan to touch base with the teacher through email, and I hope I’m allowed to come back in a few weeks, after any and all testing is over, to just sit informally and talk to them again. I’d like to see if after they’ve let some time sink in, has it given them some tools to work with bullies and tactics to create change. That is the one problem with being a Teaching Artist. When your assignment is up, it’s up. You may go back to that school in the next year, you may see some results from your work, but there is no direct follow-up.
That is something I will start to suggest. We have a planning session before the whole thing starts, usually weeks if not a month before starting. Possibly there should be that same post program discussion, let time pass and see what came of the work.I’d like that, for myself, and hope that the students took life long lessons out of this.
Bullying is on all levels of society, some outright, some subtle. How do you work to change it?
Process over Product. Product over Process. This is a discussion many Drama educators have to deal with. Products with Theater classes are the performances, scripts, set designs, etc: the end results that culminate with something that can be assessed for grades, portfolios and transcripts, and normally for a larger sharing then just the normal day to day classes. The process part gets you there, and it still has it’s points where assessment of the ongoing work is visible and viable.
Process Drama is an ongoing delving into a storyline, based usually on a theme &/or subject. The students and teacher explore their subject matter In Role, and this does not run for just a couple of classes. I have run Process Dramas that have taken months due to the interaction, twists and turns, and new thoughts that the students have brought into the situations. Sometimes the discoveries take the work into an area that wasn’t initially planned, and this leads to new learning, new ideas. There is no wrong idea when you are creating.
When using actual historical action and theory, deep research needs to be explored, facts integrated into the ongoing interactions, to really examine how decisions were arrived at, how conclusions were made, and why. When the idea behind the work is more abstract, there is not always a “final answer.” Decisions, opinions vs. facts, looking at the story idea through various points of view (POV), and more can foster and hone critical thinking, leaps into creative problem solving, and opening up dialogue that may have never entered their consciousness.
The 9 session program that just ended for me was theme driven. It was not run in a Drama classroom, but an English class where they had read the book The Bully already and had started The Outsiders. Using the abstract ideas of bullying, the students went into role, working out the different sides and view points of a small community afflicted with an event that went too far.
This past Monday, the students had a chance to discuss all that had occurred during the previous eight sessions. They talked about their learning moments:
how it felt to be in the shoes of someone else;
how switching roles, after playing one part for a number of sessions, caused some confusion, some a different sense of power, and some to really see how it feels to be on the other end;
how easy it is to be blamed for something when you are just associated with a group;
how easy it is to just yell and over talk one another so nothing can ever be solved;
how writing a journal of their feelings in and out of character created questions and connections they may not have had before;
how having to problem solve, without using any form of violence, brought them to some new view points
They all agreed that this is not always a black and white problem. There are considerations of WHY the bully is a bully, under what circumstances the power role reverses, and how bullying is NOT just a problem for students but also with the adults in society.
Parents, siblings, teachers, police, politicians, business people (at all levels): all have their instances of bullying, of people becoming bullies in different situations, of power shifts and socio/economic shifts. So..we discussed what can be done in the schools.
What can be done with adult bullies? Have you been an adult bully? Why?
Part 2: I will discuss of the feedback, my learning curve during this process, and a few other tidbits.
Working with an ongoing Process Drama program on bullying, opportunities for connections with everyday life abound. Yesterday, it was announced that Osama Bin Laden was dead. Earlier on, I had discussed the beginnings of this program (The Blackboard Jungle, April 11, 2011). Today was the penultimate class, after two weeks off.
Summary: The Process Drama on bullying is centered around the books “The Outsiders” and “The Bully.” 7th grade students, in five separate groups, roll played members of a small community in the 1950′s: Bullies, Bullied Kids, the parents of both sides, and members of the school. Word got around that one of the bullies went too far and threatened to kill one of the bullied students. A meeting at the school was called.
The resulting weeks had arguments, questions, heated discussions, accusations, and assumptions being tossed out. It also had: critical thinking, creative dramatics, problem solving, communications, connections, cooperative/collaborative moments, journal writing (literacy) in character, decoding of material and concepts, abstract and concrete thinking and more. Its been exciting overall.
In a previous class, astudent was heard voicing a very derogatory comment to a visitor to the classroom. This, in itself, was numbing in that the teacher of this group is responsible for the Anti-Bullying group in the school. This became part of the lesson: their understanding that these comments, innocuous to them as it may be, is as potent as physical violence is in bullying. It became that current event into a teaching point.
The death of Bin Laden became another teaching moment, where an event led a great part of the classroom discussion. Today’s session was about Bullying: Problem Solving without using violent methods. Using this very current event, the comment made above by the student previously, and President Obama’s speech of last night, we were able to connect the ongoing drama storyline with reality. The learning grew deeper and stronger, and the problem solving became more real for the students.
Next week is the last session. The students will be asked to reach a conclusion based on all the previous sessions and what we discussed today. A visit to a 2nd Grade classroom is part of the reflective process: the 2nd graders have written posted essays on why you should not be a bully, and will talk one-on-one with the 7th graders. Then: a discussion on the entire unit of study.
Yeah, I’ve been beaten up, but I’m not beaten. I’m not beaten, and I’m not quittin’.
The Blackboard Jungle, 1955
What makes a bully a bully? Why are some bullied? What responsibility does the school administration have beyond the lip service of their “No Bullying In This School” (and other such worded programs)? What happens when students are found guilty not by proven facts but through association? What role do parents play in all of this?
Those questions, and more, have entered into my ongoing Process Drama with a couple of 7th grade classes that I am the Teaching Artist for. Taking my jumping off point from the books “The Outsiders” and “The Bully”, I was asked to create a 9 week program that would engage the students on a deeper level. My apologies for using some Wikipedia as defining some work here and there: it’s just the simplest explanations I could find.
We just finished Week 7. I have to tell you up front that I call my Mondays at this school my Pleasure Days. I love the work the students in these and my other classes have done. They’ve risen to the challenges of the art form and really have surprised me often. That’s a good thing. They’ve made intuitive leaps, shown creative and critical thought, have overall proven themselves to be active listeners, passionately engaged in the material, and struggle to adjust to a world that is and isn’t their own.
The one thing that’s sad is that they sometimes don’t see the bullying that they do without thinking. It’s so ingrained in some of them. How they put down each other: mostly ribbing, but there are some cutting remarks. I had a visitor today observing me: an Asian woman, who heard, upon entering, a disparaging remark about her heritage. I did not find out about that until later, and will use that the next time I see them. They don’t get verbal bullying as the power it has.
From the beginning, I had planned this day. Previously, the class had been split into Five groups: The Bullies, The Bullied Students, The Parents of the Bullies, The Parents of the Bullied, and The School (Principal, VP, Guidance Counselors, Teachers). They’ve been in role all these weeks. Today was my day to really mess with their minds (a remark I made on Facebook that got a lot of fun responses to):
I switched their roles for today, changing their POV: The Bullies became the Bullied, and visa versa. I moved the “adult” groups around: The Parents of the Bullies became the The School; The Parents of the Bullied became The Parents of the Bullies; The School became The Parents of the Bullied (might be hard to figure without a scorecard/graph, but you’ll get it). No one had the same role they’ve been playing for so many weeks.
The outcome: both classes got into it (the second class I was more focused and it went smoother); there were some interesting comments from the POVs; some still kept up the persona they had in the other role, but spoke IN the new POV; some were obviously confused in this, but added some great information in the confusion.We ended with a discussion about how it felt to be the “other side”, what difference does it make in seeing things from a different point of view. They gave great answers. BTW..their teacher is a wonderful cooperative collaborative teacher. I’ll ask him another time if he minds if I name him. But..a great partner.
The shame of all this is it’s only 45 mins once a week. They really are going full bloom..and we have to stop. Part of the ongoing work of this is that they have to Journal after every session, IN CHARACTER VOICE, and what’s been written really shows how deeply some of them are thinking. I’m always jazzed when I leave the school, wanting to come back for more.
The bigger shame: some people don’t see any worth in Arts In Education. I wish they would come to my classes. I have something to educate them on.
Came across this on FB, and thought it’d be a fun challenge: post one blog a day for the entire month of April. It’s open to anyone, doesn’t cost anything but the time it would take to write at least a 100 word blog, and it might help increase traffic on this site and my website? Put me in coach, I’m ready to play. (Not sure what that line keeps coming up for me…I’m not a sports person by any means).
So, I’ll be rambling on about being a Teaching Artist, about Arts in Education, about the silly things students say and do, about the wonderful things students say and do, the injustice in the world, joining global communities, why diversifying in today’s market is important for an artist, trying to book shows, why sometimes it just feels like I’m just hitting my head against the wall, why I still like traditional stories over true stories, and whatever is necessary to make the Blog Every Day In April a reality.
Zero Tolerance and School Safety
