Ten year old suspended from public school for making gun sign

I don't disagree with you that schools can be ridiculous in their attempt to reshape society----but like I said---I don't know the full story here. We have a series of articles being written in my city about the schools that are considered failing. These are schools in gang ridden areas, where the children are hugely disrespectfull, parental interest in the children's education is almost nil, and death and tragedy happen in a huge proportion of these kid's lives. This particular school deals on a constant basis children who have fathers, brothers, uncles...being killed by guns held by gangsters and thugs. They are being brought up by gangsters and thugs. Pointing a finger to a classmates head in THIS environment is much different then a suburban school with kids playing indians and cowboys. The culture of death is something these teachers deal with---and the culture of disrespect where a majority of students are simply out of control.

Each school is different and no, I don't appreciate liberal teachers but I know in SOME schools the intent is to leave the gang life at the door.

 

Pointing a finger at a classmate's head should not be grounds for suspension when the kids are already surrounded by violence in the movies, tv, rap music and very violent video games and probably in their own neighborhoods......

What kind of mixed up, screwy message are the kids getting by being exposed to violence on a daily basis, but in their own kiddy play of cops and robbers or even chewing a poptart into a 'gun', they are punished for emulating what they see all the time?

Why can't these teachersTALK to the kids who are doing this 'shooting' w/a finger during school hours? By sitting a kid down and explaining things to them will get better results than punishing them for doing something that they didn't know was supposed to be wrong when it's something they see all the time and it's accepted.......

This is what those stupid, ignorant, hysterical liberal teachers can't seem to get a grip on.....

The one thing that the schools should have an absolute zero tolerance policy on is the bullying. It's so cruel and often dangerous for the victims, but they don't...... to much work to enforce, I guess. It's just so much easier to suspend a little 7-8 yr old girl who wasn't aware she had her grandfather's drawing of a gun in her papers and the fact she was going to throw it away wasn't important either.......

Raising my own 3, I found by talking to my kid, explaining what I expected and wouldn't accept, what they did was wrong and why, etc etc, and letting them explain their tho'ts worked more often than some punishment....

Anyway, it is what it is.... a screwed up society of violence, 'entertainment' that's full of violence, people can't get thru their day w/o their fix of heroin, meth or whatever their favorite drug is, to many parents who don't know what their kids are doing or where they are.... and hysterical, paranoid teachers who love to suspend grade school kids just b/c they act like kids.......

I hear what you're saying about the cities. That's why my husband and I moved away from a huge Midwest city - altho we lived way out in the suburbs - when our kids were little. City life always manages to find it's ugly way into the suburbs. Moved to a small community that had a country environment and my kids went to the neighborhood school instead of being bussed into that city we left far behind.

I hate that bussing (*)(*)(*)(*). It's taking away the rights of the parents when they buy a home in the neighborhood close to the school they want their kids to go to........

Ok, I'm thru w/my rant........

 

The problem lies in the fact that this culture creates lots of crazy people , with or without guns makes a little difference.
Blaming inanimate objects is a form of denial .

 

It' a combination of things. Their culture, language, mobbing and bullism in schools create an environment where people could hold very deep grudges towards their society. I rememeber no other country in the world were innocent kids sometimes go wild and shoot down their school mates and teachers in a bloody frenzy. If people were responsible and equilibrated ( all of them ) there would be no things such as bullism, discrimination, deep poverty and therefore no mad killers. But since the world is no utopy it's better for now to take away guns from people, unless they need them for their jobs, imho. The only problem in this is when you really need a gun because bad people got in your house and could shoot you down. That's the only sitation where having a gun could be useful ( if you're good at it ).

 

and herein lies part of the problem.... "to be fair" if one school has a zero tolerance to finger guns like in your above scenario, because it is a huge problem at that school, schoolboards always pass it across the board... meaning, even the suburban school where there is no gang issues have the same zero tolerance laws.


but don't you dare pass a law just for inner city schools lest you want to be called a racist.

Meanwhile, suburban teacher now has to write a kid up for a finger gun because De'Meatrius is a gang-banger in central high school in St. Louis type of thing

 

I saw a rape on TV too, should I allow a kid to dry-hump a girl who stopped to tie her shoe because violence is everywhere?

I don't agree with the rule either.... and I'm a teacher. However, with that said... if my school had that rule, and a kid did that... I am bound to not ignore it or else MY certificate is in jeopardy for "willful neglect of duties" (or whatever your state calls it)

Zero tolerance does not allow a teacher to do that. You seem to be trying to put this on the teacher when they had zero say in how they handled it.

your ignorance is showing. Do you think teachers make up zero tolerance rules? I'd lol if it weren't such a sad commentary on society.

School districts make up these rules. School board members vote on them, admin charges teachers to enforce. You really have zero clue on how education system works, who to blame when things go wrong.

that's the one thing they SHOULDN'T have zero tolerance on as there is not a clear definition of bullying. It sounds all noble to say "stop bullying" but when every kid, when asked, says they are bullied, and the bully themselves are bullied, what are we to do? expell everyone.

Sorry your kid picks his nose in class and eats them. Other kids are going to ostracize him for that behavior. Instead of the onus being put on nose-picker to change an anti-social behavior..... he just calls everyone else a bully and is allowed to pick his nose and eat boogers at lunch time.

and that's fine.... what about the kids whose parents aren't involved....

again, not the teacher's call. It would help if you actually could grasp what zero tolerance is.... who actually makes such rules, and why teachers themselves don't like them. you are a glaring example of one reason we don't like them.... since you just seem to classify everyone school related as "teacher" and then blame them.

excellent, now please educate yourself a little about what zero tolerance is.

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what about during recess?

 

this was not during recess, it was in the classroom

 

I was in class to learn, not to goof off

 

I iknow.... I'm asking... would you also support expulsion if this is during recess, not during learning time.


As a teacher myself, I have given times where class disruptions can be so severe, using zero tolerance is a tool so we can remove the disruption, But I'm still not a zero tolerance supporter.


Bringing a butterknife to lunch isn't during learning time, yet resulted in a girl getting expelled one time.

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I'm sure you were perfect....

 

I also do not support "zero tolerance" as I think it throws common sense out the door - such as someone playing cops and robbers on the play ground during recess

.

 

In Texas we passed a law authorizing kids to pretend to have a gun , draw pictures of guns, say bang, etc.

 

oh.the.humanity...... lol

 

Nope. Reason being there were people on our streets that were shooting real guns every night. Why glorify that?

 

That culture sure loves glorifying drive-bys according to rap songs I've heard

 

Oh. Ok.

 

cops and robbers

drug dealers and druggies



either game... same concept

 

Enlightening.

 

The only way those neighborhoods are going to get cleaned up is for decent folks to stand up and stop it. There are bad people in the world, and they don't play fair, learning to stand up for right over wrong is not glorifying the wrong.

 

Wow.... I read your ugly, snarly words and tho't 'I had tho't this fella was a pretty nice guy'..... ok, you changed my mind.

Where did I ever say it was the teachers, themselves, who made the call on discipline and the rules? I didn't. I was talking about liberalism in general, it's lack of common sense, from the top on down and how it's effecting the kids....

Personally, I see nothing confusing about the definition of 'bullying' but if you do and can't see the clear-cut cases of it.... oh well.

And this..."sorry if your kid picks his nose in class and eats them..." Where the hell does THIS come from? You come up w/out of the blue, weird comments like this for an 'answer' or voicing your opinion about something and you're a TEACHER? Wow.....

Just for the record.... my adoptive mother was a teacher and I saw how hard she worked, spending her evenings grading papers, setting up assignments, etc - getting prepared for the next day. Most summers, instead of taking a vacation, she took summer college courses to earn more credits.....

I have a lot of respect for the good teachers, who really try to make a difference in a child's life..... well, anyway this is a waste of my time replying to someone who makes a stupid, juvenile comment about my kid as part of his 'debate'..... in a way, it's kind of funny. Try to have a good day......

 

Sure it is. Pretending is pretending.

Suspending a kid for making a gun-like shape with his hand is utterly retarded.

 

Well, good for you! I bet when the teacher had you in the classroom, you really were a breath of 'fresh air'....

I was perfect also.... the only thing I did was in my senior yr, a friend and I had hand signals and when he was hungry - he sat on the opposite side of the room - he'd send me a signal and when the teacher wasn't looking, I'd sail a candy bar across the room to him. It was silent 'misbehavior', so no problem........

 

No, it's not - far from it.

Cops and robbers is a childhood game, played by little boys using their imagination w/imaginary guns, which they outgrow as they mature....

Drug dealers and druggies is not a 'game' in any way, shape or form. it's the real thing in the real world that can destroy families and can cause heartache and death.......

 

I don't think its that simple or clearcut. A suburban kid running with other kids and playing in a healthy manner aren't going to be targeted by a teacher supervising the playground scanning for problems. Anybody in midst of a mess of kids knows....that the trick is to look for problems not find them where they aren't there.. But you are right.....schools that are beset with problems--which are often black majority schools---will need more tools like suspension to encourage a learning environment. They would use the no tolerance policies as it is actually designed for. But then they are told to stop using that resource even if its at the expense of the children.

What I find interesting is that in this case---the child suspended from school was white. I checked the demographics of that school and its 56% black and 22% white. Who else has been suspended but their parents are not making a media thing out of it. Perhaps its a legit policy for that school with its own set of problems to deal with. Or was the kid targeted to show white kids can be suspended too? Heck---this is a situation where you can't just buy into the media hype either way.

 

One the surface it seems ridiculous... which makes me think the story was sensationalized to get people fired up.

My money is on there is a lot more going on with this suspension than the kid just pretending his hand was a gun.

 

Well, there wasn't 'a lot more going on' w/the other cases like chew the poptart into a gun kid, the kindergarten girl and her remark about the Hello Killy bubble gun, the 6 yr old Boy Scout and his BS utensil, which the school classified as a 'weapon' and all the other dozens of cases.......

We're talking about kids, very young kids, 5, 6+ yrs old and in their innocence, they point a finger at another kid and says 'Bang!', a Boy Scout so proud of his earned utensil, he takes it to school to eat his lunch with......

These brain-dead, paranoid 'educators' have totally forgotten what it's like to be a kid and if this stupid, ignorant (*)(*)(*)(*) keeps up, as time goes by, these 'educators' are going to fix it where kids are going to start hating to go to school.......