BreakPoint Blog
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Will the Technology Really Work? Because there has been too much truancy in a San Antonio, Texas school district, schools are now requiring students to wear a badge complete with GPS locator chip. (Texas isn't the only state that is having trouble with truant students.) Some parents and their children are upset, citing invasion of privacy. However, I'm a bit sceptical about the success of the badges. If I were a student, I'd simply ask friend(s) to take my badge with them to class, and place it in a desk or near the room until class was over. I'm sure some students could come up with even better ideas than me because I didn't skip classes. I think the better solution is to start teaching students the virtue of learning and honesty. Parents need to wake up and realize that they, too, have a responsibility to help their children learn the value of education and hard work. Instead of hiring teachers who teach students self-esteem, schools should hiring good teachers who can teach real subjects like English, math, science, and music. If we don't change this trend, instead of locator badges, schools might soon require students to have GPS chips inserted into their bodies. |
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The reason I bike or walk my kids to and from school and don't let them go to the neighborhood park without me. And don't worry, Jason. They get to take plenty of risks and do lots of fun stuff, all while I, my husband, or a trusted friend are nearby.
There needs to be a ‘Hug’ button on this site. What’s Alan doing these days?
I’d use ASCII braces/brackets and create my own graphic hugs, but in my experience Joomla/Typepad interprets such characters as machine code instructing it to deep-six the “on-topic” parts of my comments. Bites me all the time.
So I’ll just have to improvise:
(“Hugs” on Carol).
Thank you Carol; I’m touched (but then, you already knew that).
Kim, you ask, “What did my parents say about the Ds?” Answer: Why do you think I talk with a limp?
Just kidding. Actually, my folks had that teacher’s number (they told me it was somewhere between one and negative one, but would not be more specific, and math was not my forte. Though I never got a D in it).
Mom and Dad were pretty objective. They knew that, against all odds, I had gotten loser teachers every year from kindergarten to 5th grade, and that Mrs. Moses was merely the latest and most egregious example; the apex of the Bermuda quadrangle in which I was haplessly triangulated, you might say. (Which reminds me, I actually did pretty well in Geometry. Not bragging, but I can tell a deciduous rock from an ignatius 20 meters distant).
The D in Deportment didn’t really faze them. It was the D in Penmanship that did them in. They were just SURE I was going to get an F. Killed my chance to become a doctor.
And the rest, as they say, is History. Right, Jason?
But not for the same reasons as today’s crowd. I’m about as physically intimidating as Barney Fife, sans the one-bullet gun. Even weeping willows laugh when I pass by.
Seriously, the most violence I ever perpetrated in a classroom was when I substitute taught a bunch of junior-highers. There I was, teaching, and an outrageous wasp buzzed into the room right in the middle of my lesson. “Don’t be afraid, kids”, I reassured my sting-averse students. “I’ll take care of this guy.”
And I did. Boy howdy. No sooner did that wasp land on the window pane than I dispatched him with a book just slightly less bulky than the Oxford English Dictionary.
I destroyed the window in the process, of course, and the perverse humor of it all was not lost on that astute bunch of smart alecky teenagers. Thankfully, though, it tied in well with my lesson on “irony”, so all’s well that ends well, as they say. And besides, that was the deadest wasp that ever lived, let me tell you.
But I digress. That was me as a teacher. I originally set out to tell you about me as a pupil.
As a pupil, I used to strike fear into the hearts of teachers *at least* as much as I struck ironic amusement into my students.
Case in point: my fifth grade teacher (briefly chronicled in connection with a separate incident over here: https://www.breakpoint.org/tp-home/blog-archives/recent-point-posts/entry/4/4357 ). That lady gave me the only Ds I’ve ever gotten in all my years. And she gave me three of them! One for Science (another story for another time), one for Penmanship (yet another story for another time), and one for Deportment (the very story for this very time).
Mrs. Moses hated the ground I walked on. I’m not entirely sure why, though I’m pretty sure I know exactly why: I did everything conceivable to get on her nerves. Of course, I didn’t do it on purpose. I was just being myself. These things happen. If you don’t believe me, read the Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter; won’t take all of 10 minutes. Here it is,you’re your convenience: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14872/14872-h/14872-h.htm .
In short, I was Squirrel Nutkin, and my teacher was Old Brown. Again, I say, read it for full effect.
The last straw, so to speak, and that which cinched the D in Deportment for me that year, happened on Valentine’s Day, 1964 (“Friday the Fourteenth”, I still call it). Ah, how well I remember it.
Seems there was a girl in the class named Tzana (and you thought “Rolley” was strange. The *name* “Rolley”, wiseguys). Well, among the many valentines Tzana received from her classmates was one from a kid who couldn’t spell to save his life. So when I saw the envelope in which said valentine was delivered, I naturally howled like a scalded hyena with his foot in a habanero-soaked bear-trap. It was addressed to “Tarzan”. Haha. Still makes me laugh like a subdued scalded hyena.
Only Mrs. Moses did not see as much humor in the situation as I did. Hence the D.
So LeeQuod, I may be the duck and you may be the squirrel, but I’m telling you, some days it’s hard to tell just where the quacks stop and the nuts begin.
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So did I stay on topic? Is “stay” even the right word?
Better YOD me, Gina or Kim. Mrs. Moses would insist.
That is the entire point of monitoring halls. And if teachers can't do it they should either close the school or hire some muscle. What they should not do is say they have a legitimate reason to be afraid to monitor halls. Because it is the weaker students that suffer for it, and they are allowed no choice about it. Teachers' job exists for students, not vice-versa.
With violence increasing in schools, maybe some teachers have a legitimate reason to be afraid to monitor halls today.
Seriously, much as I am amused by the prospect of devising fiendish schemes to outwit the teacher, I can see a point. I underwent little bullying compared to some but what I remember tended to take place because teachers don't know what's going on in the hallway.