Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Anecdotally, I would say it's more likely that kids are less social face-to-face, interacting more via electronic media than in true interpersonal interaction. They continue to be social, but let's face it...being social on Facebook and via text messaging is different than socializing primarily in person.
And people will bully whatever the format. Pecking orders exist in all groups.
I'm guessing that an adult school employee acting as essentially an undercover bullying narc would not be someone students trust and are open with for long.
Bullying, exclusion, and petty rivalries will continue to exist in schools among students just as they exist in all walks of life. Those teachers? Trust me when I tell you with personal authority that their faculty lounge is full of just as much bullying, exclusion, and petty rivalry as their classrooms are. It doesn't go away, and people don't outgrow it. A better use of time and resources would be to incorporate ways to teach students to handle those realities of human nature and behavior and respond in a healthy, manageable manner, useful and realistic manner, because they won't be going away.
Teachers need to be aware of harrassment going on with the students with whom they work, and address it...they're ethically bound to address such things. But people people being mean, unfair, petty, and snotty is a part of life. Kids need to be given the skills to practice dealing with it in a functional manner, not have somebody policing it so they never have to.
I used to work in camps in the summer during college.
The role you describe is essentially the role I took. And the campers trusted me with everything.
I could get a really girly, gossipy-focused girl to sit and tell me the latest stuff she had heard around camp and within a few weeks, she would come up to me on her own and tell me the latest happenings. To make it comical, I pretended like a story was just being reported on the news.
When the "mean girls" would sit and brainstorm as to what cruel things they would do this week, I asked if I could sit with them and listen and they said, "Absolutely!"
During those sessions, they would come up with some really horrendous ideas, but I would just sit, smile, and say, "Oh wow, what an awesome idea! But that's way out of proportion. Person X doesn't deserve something like that yet. Let's come up with something milder for now."
And usually the stuff they ended up doing was only about 10% as bad as they wanted to do originally.
And yeah, I agree with you about the teachers. That's sort of why I don't want to depend on them because they introduce bias into the data.
Those realities you mention were also something I did. There was one time where about four or five teenage girls all decided to just laugh hysterically at this one boy who was also picked on and, to make sure I stayed in character, I laughed along with them. It was undetectable. You had no idea that I was really on the boy's side.
And when we had left that day, I just told the boy, "hey boy X, you didn't do anything stupid. They just wanted to make you feel bad. Don't worry about it."
And he looked fully relieved. If the girls had questioned me, I would have just said, "Well you don't want him to move districts. Then you won't have anyone to pick on anymore! You have to keep him somewhat happy." (Of course that wouldn't really be true. We want him to be fully informed about the difference between perception and actions, but the girls are unlikely to press that much.)
But do you really think that getting the parents involved is as easy as telling them to do so?
Of course not! That's why we have these problems in the first place!
You can't just say, "Well the parents should parent their child." when they have showed a complete unwillingness to do so to this point.
I find the social workers, psychiatrists, etc. ineffective because they aren't very identifiable to the students. They sit in their little office in the hallway and kids feel ashamed to go see them, unless it's already really bad. At that point, it's really too late to do anything meaningful. The attitudes against these kids are already strongly formed.
What exactly makes this idea so ridiculous?
Because tax payers have to pay this person's salary just to go through rumors which may not even be true to begin..that's ALOT of drama, some of the kids are WAY over dramatic.
As for they are ashamed, they need to get over themselves, I was never embararrased, this is just more millenial crap, have to build them up etc, no one did that for me, and I would expect no one to do that for my kid(when I have one)
Because tax payers have to pay this person's salary just to go through rumors which may not even be true to begin..that's ALOT of drama, some of the kids are WAY over dramatic.
As for they are ashamed, they need to get over themselves, I was never embararrased, this is just more millenial crap, have to build them up etc, no one did that for me, and I would expect no one to do that for my kid(when I have one)
It's really not as much as you think.
If they paid the person $200,000 per year, that's only $400 per student.
Less, if you consider that many families in a town do not even have kids.
And, regardless, they're not going to get over themselves.
Even if we think they should, no one wants to be the loser that's going to the school psychologist.
And trust me. People will find out. Just being missing from class or being seen going into the room is enough to start something.
My type of position; the person would talk to everyone; there would be no shame in talking to that adult.
This is what I'm saying. All of these programs are based on the adult talking down to the kids.
My idea feels better because the adult is directly listening to the kids and the kids feel empowered by being on a more equal level with the adult.
That is why I suggest the school hiring an additional person because it would be too foreign to a teacher to do this.
Actually, the good programs are NOT an adult talking down to the kids at all. They are based in listening to the kids about their lives and what happens when you put into place a policy that actually teaches empathy.
Is exclusivity part of human nature? Can we legislate fairness and still nurture creativity and individuality? Can children be freed from the habit of rejection? These are some of the questions. The answers are to be found in the words of Paley’s schoolchildren and in the wisdom of their teacher who respectfully listens to them.
We can teach tolerance and empathy within the curriculum in elementary school, but you are correct that we need to listen not lecture. It is not a matter of forming cooperative groups to work on projects, but of actively encouraging kids to help each other not only at work, but at play. The problem is that teachers are overwhelmed with having to teach to these stupid tests instead of actually teaching for knowledge and using caring and empathy to do this.
We can teach tolerance and empathy within the curriculum in elementary school, but you are correct that we need to listen not lecture. It is not a matter of forming cooperative groups to work on projects, but of actively encouraging kids to help each other not only at work, but at play. The problem is that teachers are overwhelmed with having to teach to these stupid tests instead of actually teaching for knowledge and using caring and empathy to do this.
If they paid the person $200,000 per year, that's only $400 per student.
Less, if you consider that many families in a town do not even have kids.
And, regardless, they're not going to get over themselves.
Even if we think they should, no one wants to be the loser that's going to the school psychologist.
And trust me. People will find out. Just being missing from class or being seen going into the room is enough to start something.
My type of position; the person would talk to everyone; there would be no shame in talking to that adult.
Just how many students do you think attend a public high school? Around here it's over 2000. How many adults with notebooks and color coded pencils following kids around and taking notes would that take? Good grief.
Just how many students do you think attend a public high school? Around here it's over 2000. How many adults with notebooks and color coded pencils following kids around and taking notes would that take? Good grief.
Well I was talking about middle school.
The one in my area has around 600.
Most boys aren't too involved in actually creating gossip, so you can filter them out. That is 300 or 100 per grade.
I think 100 is doable. That's like 20 cliques more or less. If there are 4 chances to find out stuff per day, you could check in with each clique once per week. That sounds reasonable.
So I guess you would need to hire one per grade, but that's still not bad.
Why is there so much animosity towards me for this idea?
I can understand the great vision of a trusted confidant that the students could go to with issues and for help...BUT, I do not believe that vision translates into a good reality. You are going to have the students that pick at the notebook toting person because they see that person as a threat and a narc, you will have students that outright lie to the person just to see how far they can take it, you'll have the students who play "teacher's pet" and bring every little problem someone else is having to the person. Basically, the vision of an older auntie / uncle person that gives everyone warm fuzzy feelings is something of a joke in a middle school / high school setting. The person hired (what school district has the extra additional funding to pay someone to keep track of the gossip? It is my understanding that funding is being cut all over the place for public schools - teachers and staff are being laid off in record numbers) would be viewed as a joke and / or a narc by most of the kids.
I can understand the great vision of a trusted confidant that the students could go to with issues and for help...BUT, I do not believe that vision translates into a good reality. You are going to have the students that pick at the notebook toting person because they see that person as a threat and a narc, you will have students that outright lie to the person just to see how far they can take it, you'll have the students who play "teacher's pet" and bring every little problem someone else is having to the person. Basically, the vision of an older auntie / uncle person that gives everyone warm fuzzy feelings is something of a joke in a middle school / high school setting. The person hired (what school district has the extra additional funding to pay someone to keep track of the gossip? It is my understanding that funding is being cut all over the place for public schools - teachers and staff are being laid off in record numbers) would be viewed as a joke and / or a narc by most of the kids.
This is a fantastic unrealistic idea OP.
lol, it is my understanding that the really gossipy girls have their own notebooks to keep track of things that are going on though, so I'm not sure that that form of teasing would happen.
Maybe the well-behaved students would taunt you for that, as, "Wow, I can't believe you keep track of that."
I expect that there would be some lies, but some students already lie to teachers, so that isn't any worse.
You could keep a ranking onto each student on how trustworthy they are and weight what each person says by how true their statements have been in the past.
If it were me, I would issue a check, plus, or dash in each day for each kid and over time, sum the scores and rank them.
As for having every little issue, if nothing else is going on that day, I wouldn't mind talking about it. If there were more major stuff going on, I could just say, "Oh, not now, Person X, Action Y just happened." Those are "slow news day" sorts of issues.
And what do you mean by "narc." I haven't said I've heard that word used in any current format like ever.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
