It’s more important than standardized testing results, record of behavior management or leadership skills. The most important thing a school can offer to its students is a caring environment. Schools which support and fight for the well being of its students are the ones which ultimately nurture the happiest children.
Uniforms are important for establishing school pride and have been linked to improved behaviour – but there are many more important facets to a good school:
A teenage girl who has to wear special shoes due to a foot condition, has been told by her school she will be taught in isolation if she doesn’t wear the ‘correct’ shoes.
Keeley Skov has to wear achilles tendon supports and orthotic insoles as she suffers from achilles tendonitis which causes her chronic pain.
The supports don’t fit into standard school shoes, and so Keeley wears a pair of black and white trainers to school.
But Wilnecote High School in Tamworth, Staffs, have told the 13-year-old she must wear regulation black school shoes – despite Keeley having a medical note to explain the situation.
The school will not accept the letter and have said they will keep Keeley in isolation until she wears a pair of plain black shoes.
Mum Carrie Skov said: ‘Keeley is a shy girl, she works hard at school and she was devastated. She was in floods of tears.
‘I was told by a teacher that she would be in isolation until she wore the correct shoes and that they would not accept the letter from the hospital.”
The level of violence from school aged children is a real cause for concern:
A high school has been forced to take action after discovering students had uploaded violent videos to YouTube and Facebook of classmates taking part in planned brawls.
The videos, filmed on mobile phones, show large cheering crowds gathering around male pupils as they attack each other in brutal fights over girls and to gain respect.
When a concerned parent anonymously emailed the administration of Lindbergh High School in St. Louis, Missouri to alert them of the dangerous trend, officials immediately swooped into action.
They discovered at least half a dozen videos, each labelled with the names of the two boys taking part, which showed students landing heavy punches and head butts on their opponents.Staff contacted YouTube and the website pulled the violent videos. A Facebook page entitled ‘Lindbergh Fights’, which had more than 120 fans, has also been closed down.
Students told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the fights, which had been taking place for around a month, were usually about girls but sometimes for status.As many as 40 students attended the fights after learning about them through word-of-mouth, they said.
The school has yet to rule whether it will discipline the students – a tough call as none of the fights took place on school property or during school hours, and they do not think they relate to bullying.
Of course these incidents relate to bullying! What else would they relate to? And why does the fact that the fights were off campus have any bearing on consequences? Surely the students have a responsibility to represent their school with distinction. When they don’t – as they clearly haven’t here, the school should be given the authority to punish them.
Tan said that when she had registered her kids for elementary school, the boys’ future teachers had worriedly informed her that they would likely have difficulty telling them apart.
So in an attempt to avert potential mayhem, Tan decided that the boys — who are reportedly identical save for differences in the shape of their eyelids — needed to be adorned with a more distinguishing trait that would set them apart from each other.
“My sons are identical, even to me,” said Tan, according to MSN. “I could only tell the difference between them by having different ankle tags on them before they turned 18 months old.”
I try not to judge other parents, but I just can’t let this one go without making a comment.
Potting training can be a very difficult challenge, especially when you have twins, but there is nothing more disgusting than to practice it at the table of a restaurant:
A MOTHER is facing a backlash of criticism worldwide after she was caught potty training her twin daughters in a busy restaurant.
The mother from Utah was first seen by nearby diner Kimberly Decker, who was having lunch with a friend.
Ms Decker was so shocked by the mother’s actions that she decided to take a photo of one of the young girls sitting in her portable potty seat before she put it on Facebook.
“It didn’t quite register at first what was happening, but when I took a second glance I realized this is NOT OK!
“I decided to snap a picture of the whole incident and then later that afternoon as a ‘joke’ I decided to post it on Facebook. I couldn’t believe the response I got.”
A Florida school district is looking into an incident in which 13-year-old Melanie Conn was bound in plastic wrap by two of her peers while waiting for the school bus.
“This is not a joke,” Conn said. “This could have become very serious if they would have had a little bit more and nobody was able to get it off of her.”
Conn says the bus attendant was aware of an alleged threat from the boys a few days earlier, but did nothing stop it. Volusia County Schools spokesperson Nancy Wait told the station that the district “takes every reported incident of bullying seriously, fully investigates them and, if substantiated, takes disciplinary action.”
The boys have been suspended, and one of the mothers says she doesn’t understand why her son did what he did, himself being victim to years of bullying.
Suspensions are an unsatisfactory consequence. Kids are suspended for wearing incorrect uniform these days. How will this send the required message?
Parents were challenged to play a prank on their children by making them wear embarrassing outfits for their first day of school. But watching the compilation video, I couldn’t help but admire these children rather than laugh at their expense:
Every once in a while, Jimmy Kimmel will ask his viewers to pull a prank on their loved ones and upload the results to YouTube. Last Halloween he asked parents to pretend to have eaten their kids’ candy, and last Christmas he asked them to give their kids a disappointing gift.
This time around, he challenged America to mess with that most sacred of back to school supplies: the new outfit. Instead of presenting their kids with a brand new backpack or pair of sneakers, these brave souls went with something a little more ridiculous and filmed the results.
Children today are seen as temperamental, spoiled, selfish and disrespectful. These kids were anything but. The way they reacted serves as a reminder to adults that they can not be underestimated.
I wasn’t a big fan of the set-up, but I am a huge fan of the kids involved and how well most of them handled the situation.
It’s interesting how teachers often complain as if their problems and challenges are completely unique.
Some point out that they take their work home unlike many other professions.
Others talk about the low wages and hostile work environment.
Many talk about the troubles they have from bullying parents.
In truth, there are a myriad of different professions that struggle with similar problems to that of a teacher. They may not be similar occupations on the surface, but they can have almost identical constraints.
I recently had the pleasure of reading Vadim Chelom’s brilliant new book, Vet Bites Dog. Vadim is a veterinarian and fellow blogger who has a keen interest in educational affairs. He used his expertise to design a program for teachers to help instruct children about dog safety practices. In Vet Bites Dog, a book about his experiences working at a not-for-profit animal clinic, Chelom writes the following:
I take another deep breath. 8PM is just around the corner. People often say that being a veterinarian must be hard because our patients can’t talk to us. The truth is, it’s not our patients which make our work a challenge. More often than not it’s the animal on the other end of the lead. Learning to treat pets is easy. Learning to ‘treat’ their owners is what takes years of practice, boundless patience and expert negotiation skills.
Sounds familiar to the plight of a teacher?
I think it’s important to realise that teaching has it’s unique issues and challenges, but essentially all job with deadlines, paperwork, bosses, expectations and key performance indicators are distinctly similar in many ways.
I urge you to grab a copy of Dr. Chelom’s book. It’s hilarious, revealing and brilliantly written. You may, like me, realise you have much more in common with a vet than had previously thought.
I believe teaching is a co-operative, collegiate, collaborative pursuit to varying degrees. The very idea of singling out a teacher for some sort of specious award is an insult to every other teacher. The whole idea is so much crap.
Erica DePalo, 33, won the Essex County, N.J. Teacher of the Year award in 2011. Last Friday, she was arrested and accused of having a sexual relationship with one of her 15-year-old honors English students, according to CBS New York.
Many of the students that the station spoke with were blindsided by the allegations.
“I was kind of shocked,” Arnold Ajondo said. ”I was a little surprised. She was really close with the students and we all liked her. She was always there after school if you ever needed any help.”
DePalo was charged with first-degree aggravated sexual assault, second-degree sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, according to the Star Ledger.
Jeroen Wolf found 100 people, ranging in age from nought to 100, and persuaded them to reveal on camera how old they were.
He then put all the clips together to make a poignant video showing the volunteers counting to 100 – revealing how the ageing process alters how we look as we continue on life’s journey.
Mr Wolf said his job was easiest collecting shots of youths and middle-aged people, but that he had more difficulty accessing the very young and very old, who are more vulnerable and protected.He admitted that his collection was not completely representative of the population of Amsterdam, where the project was filmed, as representatives of some minorities were more reluctant to appear on camera than others.
There is a misnomer that children today eat worse today than than ever before. This is not my experience.
For starters, in my day it was unheard of for children to be drinking water of their own volition. It was always juice or soft drink. Water was for post sport hydration only. Children today happily drink water. My students are forever filling up their drink bottles. In my day drink bottles were for fitting on your bicycles for long rides in the summer time.
I only seldomly ate vegetables on their own. My vegies needed to be cooked, flavoured and magically reinvented before I would eat them. The thought of opening my lunch box and finding a container full of celery sticks was not something I wished to contemplate. Children today are only too happy to snack on carrot sticks and apple pieces. If you put a fruit and vegetable tray in front of 10-years-olds, you’d better have another tray in reserve. They would finish the contents in no time.
The key difference between then and know is exercise. I played on the street with my neighbours after school. My parents didn’t need to supervise. In those days kids were allowed to play outside without it being seen as dangerous or an example of poor parenting.
School cafeteria regulations and lunch policies can be extremely inflexible on our children. Sometimes I look at the example of our generation and wonder if we are not a bunch of hypocrites. Whilst teachers and office workers leave the premises to get a fast food option for lunch, children are left to eat food our generation would of refused to eat.
Whilst our kids are making the progress, many of us continue to indulge. Take this silly article for example:
Could you consume a giant burger comprising three beef patties, six bacon rashers, six slices of cheese and pulled pork in just 10 minutes?
This is exactly what one restaurant in London is challenging its diners to do.
At eight inches high, this gigantic burger is a real contender for the title of the UK’s tallest burger.
Weighing in with a gut-busting 3,000 calories – more than an entire daily intake of calories for a man – the burger is being sold as part of an eating challenge at the at the Red Dog Saloon in Hoxton.
To take part in the challenge, contestants in the Devastator Burge Challenge must eat the entire burger, with accompanying fries and milkshake in under ten minutes.
Those who manage to defeat the burger earn their photo on the wall of fame behind the restaurant’s bar area.
Not surprisingly, the challenge has taken down many of those who dare to take it on – just 5 per cent of people who attempted it have succeeded. Incredibly, one challenger managed to complete the entire meal in just six minutes.
There is no doubt that our children could improve their diet choices and become a lot more active. But considering the role-models we have out there, our kids are doing far better than the media has us believe.
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