Violence in Kindergarten- Sligo Creek Elementary

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two years ago we had a kindergarten teacher, upcounty, who got hit by a student, and suffered permanent brain damage. She went on long-term disability but then left the school system soon after. It happens.

What the heck? How are five year olds that strong?

There are plenty of five year olds who could pick up a metal chair and swing it around so it goes flying into a teacher's head. Most would never ever think of doing that but unfortunately there are some who do.

I don't understand who are these posters who are denying this is happening. Teachers are absolutely getting attacked and sent to the hospital or to urgent care for their injuries. Here is one recent example:
A Florida teacher was attacked by a 5 year old and was left dazed and unresponsive when medical help arrived. "The way he pounced on her and the way she fell backwards and smacked her head, it was a severe concussion,"... "She's got some other bodily injuries from him jumping on her, attacking her, kicking, punching, biting that's going to lead to surgery."
"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-teacher-beaten-hospitalized-attack-5-year-old-student-police-s-rcna18961

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Call the police and press charges.

You can’t! They cannot charge anybody under 13 with a crime

[Anonymous]

In the upcounty case she was hit by a flying object that the student had thrown. (Apologies if I had implied that the student had done it themselves, physically.) We get a lot of that.

[Anonymous]

You can't just transfer a student to an emotional disabilities program. It's for kids with IEP's. If the student doesn't have an IEP, it takes months to get one - there are laws in place to prevent someone from "labeling" a child. Literally takes months even if you fast track it. My daughter had a child removed from her classroom and placed in a specialized program pretty quickly but that child already had an IEP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don’t care if the parents of the violent child agree or not. MCPS has programs for children with emotional disabilities. They have great teacher-student ratios and the staff know what they’ve signed up for. The child will get an education. The school should transfer him tomorrow.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]Our lovely elementary school has seen an uptick in violence by kids in kindergarten. A small number of students are doing most of it, but there seems to be a generally high level of violent amongst many of the kids.

Yes I know- these are 5/6 year olds but things are getting crazy and the principal seems to do nothing about it.

So far we have had kids knocked out cold, kids getting punched in the face/ hurt regularly. One kindergarten teacher (1st year teacher) quit suddenly and today another teacher was hurt so badly when a kindergartener throw a water bottle at her she had to go to hospital with a bleeding wound.

The violence is traumatizing our kids. I am worried more teachers will quit. All kids are behind in reading and math!!

Is anything we can do to pressure the principal to get help for the violent kids? At what point do they get excluded or sent to another school which can handle them?

[/quote]

This is 100% accurate and it is not the principal that needs to be pressured it’s central office. The principal is doing what she can but students with these kind of needs are being kept in what is absolutely the wrong placement and school staff are powerless to move them where they need to go. My daughter’s K class has a child of a similar level of need/violence and the staff is doing everything they can to get them moved. MCPS needs to have a way to expedite children with extreme needs instead of waiting through the standard lengthy process while everyone endures trauma. They also need more discrete programs again in the county so that these students have somewhere to go where their needs can be addressed.[color=darkblue] [/color]

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our lovely elementary school has seen an uptick in violence by kids in kindergarten. A small number of students are doing most of it, but there seems to be a generally high level of violent amongst many of the kids.

Yes I know- these are 5/6 year olds but things are getting crazy and the principal seems to do nothing about it.

So far we have had kids knocked out cold, kids getting punched in the face/ hurt regularly. One kindergarten teacher (1st year teacher) quit suddenly and today another teacher was hurt so badly when a kindergartener throw a water bottle at her she had to go to hospital with a bleeding wound.

The violence is traumatizing our kids. I am worried more teachers will quit. All kids are behind in reading and math!!

Is anything we can do to pressure the principal to get help for the violent kids? At what point do they get excluded or sent to another school which can handle them?

[/quote]

This is 100% accurate and it is not the principal that needs to be pressured it’s central office. The principal is doing what she can but students with these kind of needs are being kept in what is absolutely the wrong placement and school staff are powerless to move them where they need to go. My daughter’s K class has a child of a similar level of need/violence and the staff is doing everything they can to get them moved. MCPS needs to have a way to expedite children with extreme needs instead of waiting through the standard lengthy process while everyone endures trauma. They also need more discrete programs again in the county so that these students have somewhere to go where their needs can be addressed.[color=darkblue] [/color][/quote]

People need to stop letting principals off the hook. It's their school. Ultimately they are responsible and they need to get the ball rolling to get these kids more help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't just transfer a student to an emotional disabilities program. It's for kids with IEP's. If the student doesn't have an IEP, it takes months to get one - there are laws in place to prevent someone from "labeling" a child. Literally takes months even if you fast track it. My daughter had a child removed from her classroom and placed in a specialized program pretty quickly but that child already had an IEP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don’t care if the parents of the violent child agree or not. MCPS has programs for children with emotional disabilities. They have great teacher-student ratios and the staff know what they’ve signed up for. The child will get an education. The school should transfer him tomorrow.

They can make an IEP happen pretty quickly IF they want to. It's March already. They should have had one in place by now.

[Anonymous]

This is sad.

So many factors cause this. Five year-olds are generally too young to sit in a classroom all day. How much recess time do these kids get?

I am 41 and when I was growing up, public kindergarten was a half day. You got AM or PM along lots of free time and recess. School is too long for the children and for these hardworking teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Violence is not the correct word. These children are having extremely physical/emotional/violent tantrums. I still think a child like this needs to be pulled from their school asap. OP is making it sound like a war zone and it’s not.

They are having violent tantrums; ergo, they are violent.

Can't they suspend the kid? Just because he's 5 or 6 doesn't mean he can't be suspended. Let the parent deal with the violent kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Call the police and press charges.

Yes. Every time. You stand in the main office or the principal’s office and you call 911 and wait for an officer to respond. The school has zero incentive or ability to deal with violence in elementary school. But the parent of the kid having a police report written about them does have some incentive and ability. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

-a teacher

This is the problem. Teachers, admin, parents hands are all tied.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No dog in this fight, but what do you want the school to actually do? If the parents don't agree their child is special ed/or has mental health issues, the school has to legally give that child an education, and can't just yank them out of class.

And, I agree it's a huge problem. I just don't know what the solution is

I don’t care if the parents of the violent child agree or not. MCPS has programs for children with emotional disabilities. They have great teacher-student ratios and the staff know what they’ve signed up for. The child will get an education. The school should transfer him tomorrow.

The problem is kids come into Kindergarten with no prior experience in MCPS, and it takes time to move them. Things have to be documented, etc. It is a process. Combine this with parents who are reluctant to address the issues, and it can be a real problem. My kids are old (youngest in HS), and they each had at least one violent kid in their grade when they entered Kindergarten. In my younger son's class they could not leave out pencils, scissors, etc. (basically anything you could use to poke or stab someone). We had a lot of paras in that school (large ESOL and learning center programs) so, the school was able to put another adult in the room for some of the day, but now with staffing issues, I can imagine it is brutal in those Kindergarten classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Is one short-term idea to get some parent volunteers into the class? We attended SCES and parents were welcome to volunteer in the classrooms, and at lunch and recess. I know that’s a burden on parents but giving this teacher some help while waiting out the MCPS process might make a huge difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is sad.

So many factors cause this. Five year-olds are generally too young to sit in a classroom all day. How much recess time do these kids get?

I am 41 and when I was growing up, public kindergarten was a half day. You got AM or PM along lots of free time and recess. School is too long for the children and for these hardworking teachers.

We've never had issues of significance OP is describing, but the issues we have had are all worse at recess. The staffing issues are so bad for recess monitors, and the ones they can get are mostly checked out. We've been playing a bit of a whack-a-mole with bullying this year for our second grader, and it's all been at recess. To its credit the school has been good at responding and we've been able to get them all under control, but we'd need to overhaul recess significantly to make more recess a solution, in my eyes.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately the students ignore the parent volunteers. They might as well not be there, though having an extra warm body is always welcome. But the problem is are you willing to get hurt on a volunteer basis?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is sad.

So many factors cause this. Five year-olds are generally too young to sit in a classroom all day. How much recess time do these kids get?

I am 41 and when I was growing up, public kindergarten was a half day. You got AM or PM along lots of free time and recess. School is too long for the children and for these hardworking teachers.

We've never had issues of significance OP is describing, but the issues we have had are all worse at recess. The staffing issues are so bad for recess monitors, and the ones they can get are mostly checked out. We've been playing a bit of a whack-a-mole with bullying this year for our second grader, and it's all been at recess. To its credit the school has been good at responding and we've been able to get them all under control, but we'd need to overhaul recess significantly to make more recess a solution, in my eyes.

+1. I have heard so many complaints about recess and lunch monitoring. These issues are not ones that schools are going to be able to fix without significant influxes of cash to be able to offer greater salaries to people. The is the realization of the U.S. relying on volunteer support instead of making the necessary dramatics changes to our social structure to allow for meaningful action and support for families.