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By Dr. Harry Tennant
Thursday, June 21, 2012 Education Ride 365: Witness The Best & Worst Of People... Schools--->Respond Accordingly! It is my experience that some of the more egregious behavior by young people occurs on school buses. As a school administrator I often dealt with cases of disrespect, insubordination, and bullying issues on "the bus." These types of bad behavior are very common. Drug use, indecent exposure, and even sexual acts---while less common---also occurred most every year. Typically a school bus driver, with his/her back to the students and multi-tasking between supervision and actually concentrating on the road, is in sole command of 40-50 students cramped into a small compartment with plenty of hidden space and time for mischief. Some school buses are equipped with a camera at the front of the bus...a half-measure at best since typically any bad behavior beyond five rows or so is hidden from the single-point camera and microphone. I was always amazed more buses aren't equipped with multi-point video cameras in the absence of additional adult supervision, which is quite rare. Even when available, additional supervision by an adult other than the bus driver, while wise, is not always effective. If you've ever wondered how cruel bullies can be with their words---even to an adult supervising their behavior---try watching all ten minutes of this: In an age when school administrators feel tremendous pressure to focus more on academics at the expense of other aspects of school management...including supervision, when teachers increasingly resist duties and other aspects of supervision in preference to their academic role and responsibilities, and when a healthy segment of our population second-guess school officials at most every turn with charges ranging the full-spectrum from being too permissive to downright fascist on most any given issue, it is clearly prudent to document, document, document. Consider this case (full story here):  Most all of the comments posted in response to this terrible story blasted the school and its personnel without any benefit of disclosure. Without knowing hardly any facts of the case, commentators repeatedly call for the administrators to be fired, for the lawsuit to be successful, and for the schools to "start" doing their jobs. They are vicious in their summary judgement that the school did nothing. It will be interesting to see the school's side. Did they document their efforts? Beyond this, did they have proactive measures in place to address cases of bullying?  On a positive note, an online fundraising campaign was initiated to raise $5,000 for the abused bus monitor in the above video to take "a vacation." In only a few days this effort has raised $348,972. I am writing this at 4:10 Thursday afternoon. Earlier this morning the total was $202,000. That was a mere six (or so) hours ago.
 Americans are tired of bullying. Americans are tired of cruel, seemingly poorly-parented children. Americans (in many cases) expect the schools to completely insulate students from these injustices. What is your school doing ---proactively and reactively--- to combat the menace of bullying? Posted at 6:30 PM Keywords: Education Ride 365 , EdClick , Cycle Of Education , Discipline , Bullying , Bus Behavior 0 Comments |