DANGEROUS MINDS

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"What used to be - children are to be seen and not heard - we don't really live by that anymore, thank god! But children now have other issues, like how to stay alive." - Michelle Pfiffer, Dangerous Minds

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From the DC Education Blog. "WUSA Channel 9 has a disturbing report about students attending the Friendship Edison public charter middle school being attacked as they are leaving school each afternoon. The attackers appear to be students from the nearby Browne Junior High. Some of these attacks have resulted in broken bones, and one incident last Friday that involved 50 or so students from Browne attacking exiting Friendship Edison students en mass has prompted the city to beef up police presence in the area." (news video, click here)

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Being an inner city school teacher is very challenging. I feel like Michelle Pfiffer in the movie "Dangerous Minds". This story goes almost as similar with my story: Teacher and ex-marine Louanne Johnson accepts a full-time job at a East Palo Alto highschool without realizing that the students in her class are highly intelligent, but with social problems. She either must give up or learn how to get the students' attention and help them learn.

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I had my first traumatic experience in my first school assignment. One student was sleeping; the teacher asked me to wake him up. So, I carefully said “Excuse me, your classmates went to the cafeteria, you might want to join them”. He looked at me. His eyes blazing red! I stepped back. He quickly grabbed a sharpened pencil and poked it on my throat. He threatened, “Do you want me to cut your throat with this?” Just then the aide came in to check on us and immediately called the security when she saw what the student was about to do to me. Whew! That was a near death experience! Never went back again to that Center." Luckily, the school where I teach right now is far better than that first school assignment. The teachers challenge me to be the best neophyte teacher I can be. And my students, though they're very challenging too, they can be sweet and cooperative to me.

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From time to time children get upset and angry, teachers need to be able to de-escalate the situation. There's a vital need for training. Intervening physically is a predictable occurrence. It could be to hold a child to prevent them injuring themselves or others. But it is going to happen. I had a certain amount of training on Behavior Modification Strategies. But nothing that would have prepared me for the kind of violent outbursts that I encountered from some students. Nothing on restraint techniques, for example.

If that man could get that angry in the street, was there something in his background that could have been detected when he was a child? I felt that my attacker could go the same route, become that angry violent man in the future. If he isn't given the appropriate interventions now, he will grow up to be someone who might stab someone to death at a bus stop because they have looked at him the wrong way or said the wrong thing.

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Now, do you still think it's all "milk and honey" for me here?