(no subject)
Sep. 12th, 2014 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* Republicans are calling for a full on invasion of Iraq and a likely permanent commitment to "hand hold the Arab Armies" fighting there. *facepalm* Because that worked out so well the last time.
* "Racist Georgia State Senator Wants To Keep Blacks From Voting:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/09/racist-georgia-state-senator-wants-to.html
* Real Talk About School Dress Codes and the Shame Suit
I never once in eight years of teaching enforced dress code. My experience was the too low neckline or short skirt or too tight trousers or too loose trousers solved themselves as the kids figured out why it was a bad clothing choice on their own. My experience was dress code enforcement was way more distracting to the students than the clothes were. My favorite example was the office put masking tape over one half of a band name and the boy and his friends spent all day trying to figure out why. I couldn’t help them. Only a really dirty mind could construe it sexually and I could only think someone in admin had a dirty mind and no knowledge of popular music. If they’d let it go, it would have been vastly less distracting.
It also tends to be very discriminatory as to who the office decides to pick on, something I remember well from my own teen years. It looked the same watching my kids try to navigate very arbitrary enforcement.
I do get that we couldn’t let them where overtly sexual slogans or cartoons or things promoting activities illegal to them or plain illegal, and trust me, I saw a lot of things I didn’t particularly want to see while teaching. (Not just ass crack, but underbutt on the boys. Seriously, eeeeew. Nor did I want them pulling up their shirts to show me any piercings. *shudder* In my experience, it was the male dress code violations that tended to go waaay too far. With the girls, if I saw things I didn’t want to see it was accidental and fast. How did I handle seeing things I didn’t want to see? I’d catch a glimpse and make sure my eyes avoided the problem area for the rest of that period. Because I’m a grown up and I am perfectly capable of not standing around staring at the accidental boner or nip slip or whatever. Because being an adult fixated on the details of their clothing and bodies is creepy). The thing is though? I could not see a single ounce of good me hassling some girl about the exact distance her skirt was from her knee would do and it would get me way too involved in parts of their lives I didn’t want to get involved in.
It also tended to create an oppositional atmosphere. Yes, I could be a hard ass. I catch you picking on the kid with a learning disability or worse yet harassing that kid so he’d blow up because you think getting that kid in trouble is funny? Your life was going to get very nasty very fast, because I would make damned sure every teacher you had that year knew what you were up to and the right person would get in trouble every time you played that trick. I had a short list of shit you did not pull in my room, and I was really clear where those lines were. I was also very, very clear, that my goal for the day, every day, was for my kids to feel safe in my room, for us all to treat each other decently, and for work/learning to get done. If you went along with that program, there was a lot of lee way.
I was also big on aiming for fair. One can’t always get there, but one can try. Dress codes tend not to be fair. (Because of gender norms, because certain kids can get away with things others can’t, because rules get interpreted arbitrarily, because sometimes, the kids themselves have no idea what they did wrong, because a family might not be able to afford a whole new set of school clothes just because a girl had a growth spurt or because the principal randomly decides to start hassling a kid over something not in the printed rules.) Dress code is often about punishing kids for being poor, or new to the district, or because certain staff don’t like a certain kid.
That shame suit thing that I’ve posted about a couple of times infuriates me both as a teacher and a lifelong feminist. The reasons it’s wrong from a feminism and basic human decency perspective likely don’t need explaining. It’s also terrible teaching. Singling kids out for public shaming is not okay. It’s not just makes my blood boil cruelty; it’s professional malpractice. Inflicting that degree of humiliation and emotional trauma isn’t just harming today’s learning for that student, it is likely making them hate school in a long term generalized way. Add this trauma to other bad stuff that happens to kids in schools, maybe you just turned someone who had the potential to be a great scientist or inventor into someone who drops out of high school. Maybe they could have been an amazing doctor or teacher or diplomat.
In the Districts around here we are still dealing with the generational trauma of the Federal policy of kidnapping native kids and taking them to abusive boarding schools to be beaten for speaking their own language. I have listened to the Elders speak about the atrocities done to them and their parents. People are still scared to come to parent teacher conferences because of PTSD. People are still scared that we will hurt their children or grand children or great grand children. The schools here are desperate for native teachers, because the ones who had the potential to be amazing teachers mostly don’t want anything to do with a profession that inflicted these horrors on their families.
When I was teaching, I carried that legacy with me in my mind every day. Every child has had a bad teacher who did them harm. Some children, regardless of racial/ethnic background had parents or grand parents who had a whole lot of completely justified anger and/or fear tied up in schools. Hell, given what was done to me, the years of institutional abuse my own school inflicted on me, I didn’t have to look to far to see the way a bad teacher, a bad administrator, a bad school could become a meat grinder. I did my damnedest to protect my kids. I couldn’t control what happened outside of my door, but inside that room I did all I could to teach with empathy instead of cruelty. I would much rather educate than humiliate. I very much wanted to be part of the cure and not part of the disease.
Singling kids out and humiliating them is part of the disease. How can staff protect them from bullying when staff are the bullies? At that school they singled out a new girl at their school to humiliate for no other reason than they enjoyed it. There is no sound disciplinary reason to do it and it was clearly way more disruptive than that innocuous outfit she was wearing. The compassionate thing here is also the best thing for the student and the school. Instead, they made the opposite a matter of policy. On purpose. The adults decided to do this pointlessly cruel thing not just to this girl, but who knows how many others, and I must wonder, do they do this to the boys too? I’m willing to bet that the policy was designed to slut shame girls, and I don’t think the sort of mind that thinks any of this is okay ought to be allowed around children unsupervised. It’s creepy and abusive.
* So what's with the weird posting schedule? I got time shifted temporarily to diurnal and got sick with a lung infection. I'm slipping back towards normal scheduling, but my lungs keep getting worse, and the construction is fucking with my sleep, which messes with my ability to get things done.
* ...And Squirrel just discovered someone's stealing money out of his account. Including the fund raiser money. He's gone downtown to close and move the account, but I'm not sanguine they'll replace the funds. They didn't last time.
* On the hotness on Outlander: http://snacky.dreamwidth.org/751312.html
* "99 Red Balloons - played with red balloons:"
* Some of you may be too young to know what the hell that was about, so, I'm giving you English and German both, since the German is better, but you likely don't know what she's on about unless you are fluent in German or an Xer:
Three decades later it still gives me chills.
* Fundraiser to pay insurance and back rent: http://djinni.livejournal.com/507872.html
* "Racist Georgia State Senator Wants To Keep Blacks From Voting:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/09/racist-georgia-state-senator-wants-to.html
* Real Talk About School Dress Codes and the Shame Suit
I never once in eight years of teaching enforced dress code. My experience was the too low neckline or short skirt or too tight trousers or too loose trousers solved themselves as the kids figured out why it was a bad clothing choice on their own. My experience was dress code enforcement was way more distracting to the students than the clothes were. My favorite example was the office put masking tape over one half of a band name and the boy and his friends spent all day trying to figure out why. I couldn’t help them. Only a really dirty mind could construe it sexually and I could only think someone in admin had a dirty mind and no knowledge of popular music. If they’d let it go, it would have been vastly less distracting.
It also tends to be very discriminatory as to who the office decides to pick on, something I remember well from my own teen years. It looked the same watching my kids try to navigate very arbitrary enforcement.
I do get that we couldn’t let them where overtly sexual slogans or cartoons or things promoting activities illegal to them or plain illegal, and trust me, I saw a lot of things I didn’t particularly want to see while teaching. (Not just ass crack, but underbutt on the boys. Seriously, eeeeew. Nor did I want them pulling up their shirts to show me any piercings. *shudder* In my experience, it was the male dress code violations that tended to go waaay too far. With the girls, if I saw things I didn’t want to see it was accidental and fast. How did I handle seeing things I didn’t want to see? I’d catch a glimpse and make sure my eyes avoided the problem area for the rest of that period. Because I’m a grown up and I am perfectly capable of not standing around staring at the accidental boner or nip slip or whatever. Because being an adult fixated on the details of their clothing and bodies is creepy). The thing is though? I could not see a single ounce of good me hassling some girl about the exact distance her skirt was from her knee would do and it would get me way too involved in parts of their lives I didn’t want to get involved in.
It also tended to create an oppositional atmosphere. Yes, I could be a hard ass. I catch you picking on the kid with a learning disability or worse yet harassing that kid so he’d blow up because you think getting that kid in trouble is funny? Your life was going to get very nasty very fast, because I would make damned sure every teacher you had that year knew what you were up to and the right person would get in trouble every time you played that trick. I had a short list of shit you did not pull in my room, and I was really clear where those lines were. I was also very, very clear, that my goal for the day, every day, was for my kids to feel safe in my room, for us all to treat each other decently, and for work/learning to get done. If you went along with that program, there was a lot of lee way.
I was also big on aiming for fair. One can’t always get there, but one can try. Dress codes tend not to be fair. (Because of gender norms, because certain kids can get away with things others can’t, because rules get interpreted arbitrarily, because sometimes, the kids themselves have no idea what they did wrong, because a family might not be able to afford a whole new set of school clothes just because a girl had a growth spurt or because the principal randomly decides to start hassling a kid over something not in the printed rules.) Dress code is often about punishing kids for being poor, or new to the district, or because certain staff don’t like a certain kid.
That shame suit thing that I’ve posted about a couple of times infuriates me both as a teacher and a lifelong feminist. The reasons it’s wrong from a feminism and basic human decency perspective likely don’t need explaining. It’s also terrible teaching. Singling kids out for public shaming is not okay. It’s not just makes my blood boil cruelty; it’s professional malpractice. Inflicting that degree of humiliation and emotional trauma isn’t just harming today’s learning for that student, it is likely making them hate school in a long term generalized way. Add this trauma to other bad stuff that happens to kids in schools, maybe you just turned someone who had the potential to be a great scientist or inventor into someone who drops out of high school. Maybe they could have been an amazing doctor or teacher or diplomat.
In the Districts around here we are still dealing with the generational trauma of the Federal policy of kidnapping native kids and taking them to abusive boarding schools to be beaten for speaking their own language. I have listened to the Elders speak about the atrocities done to them and their parents. People are still scared to come to parent teacher conferences because of PTSD. People are still scared that we will hurt their children or grand children or great grand children. The schools here are desperate for native teachers, because the ones who had the potential to be amazing teachers mostly don’t want anything to do with a profession that inflicted these horrors on their families.
When I was teaching, I carried that legacy with me in my mind every day. Every child has had a bad teacher who did them harm. Some children, regardless of racial/ethnic background had parents or grand parents who had a whole lot of completely justified anger and/or fear tied up in schools. Hell, given what was done to me, the years of institutional abuse my own school inflicted on me, I didn’t have to look to far to see the way a bad teacher, a bad administrator, a bad school could become a meat grinder. I did my damnedest to protect my kids. I couldn’t control what happened outside of my door, but inside that room I did all I could to teach with empathy instead of cruelty. I would much rather educate than humiliate. I very much wanted to be part of the cure and not part of the disease.
Singling kids out and humiliating them is part of the disease. How can staff protect them from bullying when staff are the bullies? At that school they singled out a new girl at their school to humiliate for no other reason than they enjoyed it. There is no sound disciplinary reason to do it and it was clearly way more disruptive than that innocuous outfit she was wearing. The compassionate thing here is also the best thing for the student and the school. Instead, they made the opposite a matter of policy. On purpose. The adults decided to do this pointlessly cruel thing not just to this girl, but who knows how many others, and I must wonder, do they do this to the boys too? I’m willing to bet that the policy was designed to slut shame girls, and I don’t think the sort of mind that thinks any of this is okay ought to be allowed around children unsupervised. It’s creepy and abusive.
* So what's with the weird posting schedule? I got time shifted temporarily to diurnal and got sick with a lung infection. I'm slipping back towards normal scheduling, but my lungs keep getting worse, and the construction is fucking with my sleep, which messes with my ability to get things done.
* ...And Squirrel just discovered someone's stealing money out of his account. Including the fund raiser money. He's gone downtown to close and move the account, but I'm not sanguine they'll replace the funds. They didn't last time.
* On the hotness on Outlander: http://snacky.dreamwidth.org/751312.html
* "99 Red Balloons - played with red balloons:"
* Some of you may be too young to know what the hell that was about, so, I'm giving you English and German both, since the German is better, but you likely don't know what she's on about unless you are fluent in German or an Xer:
Three decades later it still gives me chills.
* Fundraiser to pay insurance and back rent: http://djinni.livejournal.com/507872.html
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-14 02:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-14 03:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-14 07:28 pm (UTC)When I was in school, I never worried about a dress code because I wore a uniform for most of my school years but in high school we had no real dress code, and it was a Catholic school, but people were allowed to dress however they wanted to for the most part and we had a great variety of styles and fashion on campus, which was appealing.
Growing up, all I can remember about some teachers that really pissed me off was they didn't take racist remarks seriously. One time, a group of kids surrounded me and kept calling me racist names, then began pinching me, and when the teacher opened the door to the yard to see what was going on, she didn't do a fucking thing!! I told her about the racist remarks ( and every year in grammar and middle school, someone would say shit like thayt) and the response from every teacher, including the bitch who allowed those kids to bully me, was "It's not a big deal, just ignore it." And then I would end up getting into a fight over it if the kid chose to keep saying those things. It made me wonder...where the fuck a six year old would learn to say Chink or Jap or sarcastically bow like someone from Asia.
I think for me, bullying wasn't taken seriously at ALL when I was a student, and I was bullied though I always fought back and then ended up getting in trouble for fighting back.
Just some years ago, my second cousin complained about kids saying racist shit to him ( he's black/Japanese) and a teacher told him the same thing they told me for years. His dad, my first cousin, and his wife, went over to the school and had a serious talk with the principal about racism and how remarks like what was being said should never be tolerated and the teacher had a responsibility to enforce that.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-17 03:55 am (UTC)I never taught at a school where I couldn't count on admin taking bullying seriously. That was on purpose. Racist remarks were super rare and on the rare occasions they were made, I could count on Admin coming down like a ton of bricks. I sent an American boy down once for doing that slanty eye crap and he was gone for the day and they did a suspension where he had to do all these projects to do with racism. The other handful of incidents were immigrant on immigrant (Mexican vs. Ukrainian or vica versa), and one pro-Hitler thing my first season in the field. We made it rare by being zero tolerance for that sort of thing. I also knew I could go to admin about persistent sexual harassment, picking on the disabled kid, and homophobic or general bullying.
It was way better than when I was in school under the "punish the victim" theory. you are my agish. Likely that's what was going on. I used to get in trouble for fighting back because the adults would not intervene.
It is absolutely the job of staff to put a stop to bullying and there is no excuse at all for allowing people to get away with racist remarks.