I believe that a compliment can change the world in a profound way. If sincere, a person being complimented is much more likely to compliment others, thus begging a chain of positive expressions of admiration and respect. That’s why I completely endorse the concept explained in the video above and I hope it goes a long way to combating cyberbullying.
For more information about this wonderful initiative:
If a school’s gifted and talented program goes no further than those who are gifted at calculations and essay writing they are limiting their scope dramatically. Creativity and the wonderfully imaginative and artistic ways children express themselves warrants some attention when it comes to devising gifted and talented groupings.
The child below may not be a writer or a human calculator but I defy you to argue that he isn’t gifted or talented:
I think it’s highly appropriate for the police to take incidents featuring physical bullying like the one above very seriously:
The argument on a Franklin Township school bus wasn’t particularly unusual. One student had taken a seat that another wanted for himself.
But to Lora Hoagland, what followed was horrifying — a 15-year-old attacking her younger, smaller son for nearly a full minute, the image captured on a cellphone video taken by another student on the bus as it left the parking lot at Franklin Township Middle School East on Wednesday afternoon.
The video, posted to Facebook, was cited by Franklin Township Schools Police in arresting the 15-year-old on preliminary charges of battery with injury and disorderly conduct. It also has left Hoagland with doubts about the safety of her two children, both students in Franklin Township.
She didn’t send either of them to school Friday, likening the scene on the bus to a war zone.
This video shows a student bystander who chooses to walk past a janitor who had taken a nasty fall. I am very disappointed to see this kind of behaviour.
We used to preach to children to love one’s neighbour – now it’s turn-in your neighbour to the authorities!
School children are being encouraged by HM Revenue and Customs to tell their teachers if they know of anyone “in their local area” who is not paying their fair share of tax.
Critics said it was “un-British” of the HMRC to try to turn “children into state spies”.
HMRC has set up teaching modules to guide children through the hazards of pay as you earn and National Insurance contributions.
Some of the modules – which can be downloaded from HMRC’s website – teach school children as young as 11 about paying their fair share of tax.
The revenue uses video, games, facts and quizzes to “help make teaching financial capability and citizenship issues relevant and engaging”, according to its website.
Isn’t it great that we are teaching our children to be underhanded and sneaky instead of kind and supportive? It seems love goes out the window when money and greed is involved.
Excuses, excuses, excuses. Young bullies may be acting out due to their own “need for a sense of significance and belonging“, but they have to accept responsibility for their actions. The children who bullied their school bus monitor acted completely inappropriately and deserve far more than “positive discipline”:
The New York middle school students caught on video taunting and mocking a 68-year-old school bus monitor don’t deserve to be punished, says parenting expert Jane Nelson.
Everyone else in America might be calling for harsh, swift justice to be meted out by both the Greece Central School District and the parents of the kids involved. But not Nelson.
Co-author of two dozen parenting books including the “Positive Discipline” series, Nelson says the traditional means of punishment — yelling, shaming, hitting, grounding, etc. — are counterproductive.
“I think to go after these kids in a punitive way, it just doesn’t help,” she said. Nelson knows that the vast majority of parents will scoff both at that notion — and at her belief that the young bullies are merely acting out due to their own “need for a sense of significance and belonging.”
I’m sick of reading excuses for why a bus full of middle school children acted in a most deplorable way to their bus monitor. There are no excuses for such vile behavior. I don’t care what age you are, you have a responsibility to be a good citizen and decent person. It sickens me to see a pack bullying situation where a soft target is exposed and then tormented without any resistance whatsoever.
Explanations like this are both unhelpful and insensitive to poor bus monitor, Karen Klein:
When kids reach middle school, bullying becomes more common and more sophisticated, experts says.
“Middle school-age kids are sort of an age group that is notorious for an uptick in the intensity of bullying,” said Dr. Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist in New York and TODAY contributor.
During the middle school years, kids are facing intense peer pressure, the pack mentality is strong and kids feel a growing sense of independence – all while their moral compasses are still developing, she said.
“It’s a time when they’re figuring out who they are by sometimes crossing the line and breaking the rules,” Saltz says. “Their insecurity drives a lot of cliquishness and defining themselves as better by making someone else feel worse.”
Don’t even try to excuse this behaviour in any way based on the age of the perpetrators. This is a culture problem. The parents of these children need to do as much soul-searching as the children themselves.
I am saddened to hear about the families of the students getting death threats. What kind of response is that? What is the sense in dealing with bullying by continuing the chain of bullying? This is isn’t even about a bus full of children. This has even wider implications.
Middle school children worldwide should be put on notice. No more excuses. I don’t care how old you are. It’s time to grow up and treat others with respect!
The question that keeps popping into my head when I see footage or disturbing images of bullying is, where is the teacher supervision?
THESE are the distressing and disturbing images, which should shock every parent. Boys and girls, as young as 14, are being involved in ugly, violent schoolyard brawls.
Police are investigating fights between teens from Kempsey High School after 14 fighting clips were uploaded on the internet last week.
The footage, since pulled down from YouTube, shows high school students cheering on female and male kids brutally attacking each other.
Wild punches, kicking and hair-pulling is all part of the no-holds barred brawling.
Kempsey Police Inspector, Michael Aldridge said he is currently working with various groups to identify the people in the shocking videos.
“We are aware of it. The Kempsey fights are being shot from Kempsey high school students who are engaging in fighting,” he said.
“Ourselves with the school, the school liaison, police youth liaison officer and the safety command response unit have all come together and we are reviewing and identifying who is in the videos. We have been working with the school along with other various units, we are going to break down who it is and from there we are going to take whatever action we can in line with the school.”
Inspector Aldridge said the fights were uploaded to YouTube on June 5, but may have occurred in the past year.
The fights occur in school grounds with classrooms and teachers in sight and on soccer fields and parks. Each clip lasts between 14 and 40 seconds.
Kempsey High School principal, Mick Eller said he has seen one of the clips. “There were 21 clips but I have only viewed one of them,” he said.
Mr Eller said some of the clips are of fights that happened last year and students have been disciplined. He did not reveal how many students had been suspended or reprimanded by police.
“School students from Kempsey High . . . have been dealt with at the school level, some have involved police, some haven’t,” Mr Eller said, adding the school has implemented counselling and mediation to curb the violence.
Other highly publicised school brawls can be viewed by following this link and read about by following this link.
Teachers that spit on their students should be punished accordingly. It is unprofessional, unhygienic and completely unacceptable behaviour. But there is more to the story of maths teacher David Pecoraro, who was caught on camera spitting at a boy and has since been relegated to administrative duties as a result of his moment of madness.
The video shows clearly a teacher pushed to the edge of sanity. A student trying to attach his used gum on the teachers rear is rightly put in his place by the teacher. Teachers, especially male teachers, are extremely sensitive with the dangers of being accused of inappropriate behaviour. Students that purposely touch a male teacher’s backside are putting that teacher in a very uncomfortable position.
The video also shows the lack of respect he was getting from his other students. As he screams “I want to teach you maths”, we see a student sleeping and others laughing and goading the defiant, foul-mouthed, gum chewing student.
A teacher was secretly filmed on a cell phone struggling with a male student before appearing to spit in the boy’s face.
David Pecoraro, a high school math teacher, is now working in ‘administration’, after the footage was uploaded to YouTube.
Pecoraro, who taught at Beach Channel High School in Queens, New York, has a row with the student for a few minutes before the confrontation turns physical.
Pecoraro is being investigated on allegations of corporal punishment.
The teacher, who has been in the profession for 19 years, can be heard saying in the clip: ‘You can’t make contact with me, that’s illegal.’
He then tries to explain a math problem to the student who is ignoring the lesson and covering his head with a jacket.
At one point, the student, whose identity isn’t revealed, appears to try to hit the teacher.
Pecoraro then tells the teenager: ‘You’re going to go to jail, you don’t touch me… I want to teach you math.’
The altercation is witnessed by a few other students in the class – along with one boy in front of the camera who is asleep with his head on the desk.
The row continues until the teacher appears to spit at the student who then spits back at him.
The grainy film cuts out after Pecoraro can be seen dragging the student out of his seat.
As bad a this teacher’s actions was, the behaviour of the class was absolutely deplorable. This video should be enough to implicate at least two students with some fairly serious breaches of protocol. First there was the student who should be expelled for inappropriate touching and insubordinate behaviour. Then there is the student who filmed the incident. I don’t care how juicy the footage is, any student filming class and uploading the footage on YouTube deserves to be punished.
Instead, I fear that the only person punished was the one who wanted nothing more than the ability to do his job without being touched, mocked or harassed. If those two other students got off without punishment, it reinforces their despicable behaviour, and allows them to continue their bloodsport.
I pity the replacement maths teacher. I fear they are mere fodder for the next potential YouTube hit.
Topical Teaching 