Spurred by reports of increased harassment of students who are members of ethic and religious minorities since the election, a number of education organizations have issued a call to action. Most of the organizations are as mainstream as they come: the National PTA, the National School Boards Association and so on.
The organizations issuing the call to action are: the AASA, the School Superintendents Association; the American School Counselor Association; GLSEN, an LBGT student group; the National Association of Elementary School Principals; the National Association of Secondary School Principals; National PTA; the National School Boards Association; the National Association of School Psychologists; and the National Association of Independent Schools.
“We come together as national education organizations in the wake of the troubling rash of reports of bias incidents and violence occurring in schools across the nation in recent days,” the groups said in a statement. “As learning communities, schools and school systems are responsible for providing all students with a physically and emotionally safe learning environment. This principle is the foundation of academic achievement, healthy individual development, and civic engagement. Violence, intimidation, and purposefully harmful expressions of bias undercut the core mission of schools and have no place in our school communities.”
The statement applauded the schools and districts “that have already taken meaningful steps to develop and support positive school climate in their communities.” It did not list any examples. In recent weeks, districts like Los Angeles Unified have approved resolutions following repeated school walkouts by thousands of students. Those resolutions call for safe and supportive learning environments, and some have made special mention of a refusal to cooperate with possible future federal immigration enforcement.
Many teachers have also made extra efforts to discuss students’ fears in the classroom and to use the election as an opportunity to talk about civics issues, such as the separation of powers and civil rights.
The groups’ statement asks their constiuents and “all education leaders” to take the following steps:
•”Publicly reaffirm the inclusive values that are the foundation of healthy learning cultures,”
•”Lead a conversation with their school community on the core values of respect and inclusion at the heart of all learning; and”
•”Consider posting a statement regarding these core values throughout their schools and/or all the schools within their district.”“These actions should specifically affirm the right of all students, regardless of race, color, national origin, immigration status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or religion to be educated in an environment free from fear, violence, and intimidation,” the statement said.
This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2016.
Did you watch the last Call to the Audience at a TUSD Board meeting, David?
There was a lot of commentary on bullying in TUSD schools. When you look at the causes of bullying in this particular district — bullying which has been going on for a longer period than just since the November 8 election — what you find is that there’s a lot more to say about how a climate that encourages bullying gets created than this blog piece you have written might lead the uninstructed to believe.
Apparently, sometimes bullying can be encouraged or increased by administrative directives that ask school sites to reduce the number of disciplinary actions directed against certain populations. The administrative motive here appears to be to create a false appearance of fewer disciplinary incidents, when the reality is that the number of disciplinary incidents has not decreased — just the number of incidents reported to the desegregation authority. It has been reported that by manipulating the stats some members of TUSD administration hope to achieve Unitary Status sooner rather than later and to end the desegregation court’s role in overseeing the district’s affairs.
Then again, sometimes bullying may increase in circumstances where desegregation money has been allocated to train teachers in appropriate disciplinary methods and that money did not get applied to the purpose for which it is intended, so the training teachers should have had is not delivered.
And, fascinatingly, according to one of the speakers in this most recent Call to the Audience who happened to be a newly elected member of the Governing Board, sometimes (according to her theory) bullying can take place among members of the Governing Board, and the bad climate a Governing Board member creates can then spread from there into the district’s administration and into the schools. (And FYI, the member of the Governing Board who seemed to have most attracted the attention of this commenter and new Board member was your friend Kristel Foster, David. It appears that this woman thinks Kristel Foster is a bully!)
It will be quite interesting to observe the Board once this new member is seated in her “swing vote” position between two minorities, beginning in January 2017. You might even want to cease and desist your obvious, redundant, and already-irritating-to-readers Trump THREAT commentary temporarily in January to observe and report on some of these TUSD Board meetings, David. Perhaps the actions-in-office of candidates you endorse (Foster, Grijalva) will become more interesting to you and more worthy of your attention when they are members of an embattled minority than they were when these women were members of a three-person majority and running the show?
Nothing surprises me in a sanctuary city. We don’t enforce laws. It is a form of bullying itself.
All you have to do is outlaw those “Make America Great Again” hats. That seems to be what is causing all the problems. It’s just like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.
Drain the Swamp in the Public Education bureaucracy and get rid of all those leftists ‘organizations’.
Nowhere is mentioned the statistics of the reports of increased harassments. Does this include harassments against Trump supporters or only against cupcakes and snowflakes. How many, where, what, when?
Facts, facts, any facts at all?
There is where daily physical activity is so vitally important especially in grades K-5. Emphasizing fair play and good sportsmanship. In my PE classes if there is any sign of bullying or trash talking, we stop immediately and the students go back to class!
Bullying arises naturally out of the classical classroom. All human beings have a drive for status. In perfectly tuned organizations, that drive is satisfied by intense cooperation and teamwork. That perfect tuning is achieved by rules and rewards which both create positive interdependence and focus the organization on creating value.
In the classical classroom, students are largely negatively interdependent. You achieve status by climbing over the person above you and beating down the person below you. When this behavior becomes overt and verbal, we call it teasing. When it becomes blatant and physical, we call it bullying.
This is a game that the poor and minorities can’t win and don’t want to play. They are simply canon fodder. They withdraw. By the fifth grade, the typical student from poverty is reading two minutes per day and doing math two minutes per day. Do the math, less than 5% efficiency.
But, this is the only way we know as a society. We call this thing school. It demotivates students, causes mental illness and creates criminals.
For the last year and a half, I have been running 4th and 6th grade math classrooms where students are 100% poverty and 100% minority. My classroom design simultaneously creates positive interdependence and motivates them.
So far this year, I have been able to average 41 minutes of math per student per day. At the 99th percentile nationwide, students are doing 75 math problems per day. My students are averaging 127 math problems per day.
My students have fun. They really enjoy the class.
The average academic gain per student on the AzMerit math test from 4th to 8th grade is 25 points per year. Last year, averaging 10 minutes of math per day, I was able to gain 35 points about 40% higher than the statewide average. This year, averaging 41 minutes per day, I am hoping (estimating) to gain 60 points and have my students up to statewide averages and another 60 points next year which will not only close but reverse the ethnic achievement gap. Only time will tell.
As a nation, we are caught in a cultural trap. We keep intensifying the toxic aspects of education through “reform”, which by its nature is most hurtful in 4th through 8th grades. In 2015, the productivity of our nations schools (4th to 8th grade) dropped another 4.7% now down 14.6% since the year 2000. The ethnic achievement gap (NAEP) expanded from 2.8 academic years at 4th grade to 3.4 years at 8th grade. This expansion of this gap was significantly higher in 2015, not lower.
Well said sir!
I have a real problem believing that there is an increase in student harassment simply because of the election. I have two children working as teachers, one in Virginia in a private school and one here in Arizona in a public school and neither has seen any increase.
What is happening is the teacher’s unions are upset that their millions of dollars spent to elect liberals didn’t work. So they are busy spreading BS about the traumatic impact on the schools, when the only impact is on them and their loony ideas.
Mr. Safier,
I do wonder where the members of these concerned organizations have been throughout the past several decades. This seems more a call for publicity, not for action–especially not for community organizing, not for local outreach nor training for families, individual kids or members of particular ethnic, class or gender groups. My trust is gone–long gone. Mr. Safier, please suggest and help organize local, actual effort.
Safier can’t do that, Aaron Johnson, because if he did his primary local, actual targets, as was indicated in the first comment in this stream, would have to be HT Sanchez and his cheerleader-in-chief, Kristel Foster.
Sanchez’s botched administration of TUSD and Foster’s collaboration with weak Board governance, failures to implement the USP, and negligent oversight of TUSD’s central administration are probably the factors most responsible for the increased incidence of bullying in TUSD, but Safier– who has written repeatedly to excuse these bad actors and / or has consistently ignored their lies and mismanagement — can’t touch these topics because of his political affiliations.
He is not, as I’m sure you recognize, actually concerned about bullying. His sole raison-d’etre since November 8 seems to be to jump eagerly on the increasingly lame bandwagons the attack-Trump-to-disguise-our-own-massive-mismanagement-of-the-2016-Presidential-primary-and-general-elections-Democrats are cobbling together. A convenient distraction from matters that actually affect the delivery of good education locally, where Safier’s political allies have not been on the right side of just about any issue you could touch on — bullying, implementing policies that keep adequately qualified professional teachers in the classroom, refraining from the mi-use of standardized testing, etc., ad nauseam.
Thanks for helping hold his feet to the fire.