Does your school have fewer massively disregulated students?
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Anonymous
| Help. I’m a para at an MCPS elementary so I work with all grades, and I’ve just reached my limit dealing with totally disregulated kids. All day long I’m called on to deescalate children who are screaming, throwing, pushing, melting down. Even when they’re happy they’re screaming, roughhousing, running, wrestling. These are just regular mainstream classes, not SESES or autism or a special program. I am thinking of looking for a new school but wondering if others are any better? I’m just overwhelmed. I used to work in a preschool with toddlers and honestly I didn’t deal with this much tantrumming. |
Anonymous
| Can you imagine how those kids behave at home? There are no consequences at home or school so they run wild. |
Anonymous
| I switched schools this year from a focus elementary to a Title 1 elementary and it’s much calmer. We still have out of control kids but there is more staff to deal with the challenging kids. So if you are at a focus school, I recommend switching. |
Anonymous
Our school uses RJ, which works miracles with these kids. It's too bad they don't train everyone better in its practice. |
Anonymous
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Elementary is the difficult period when many kids who will go on to be diagnosed with ADHD and autism (among other things) are not yet diagnosed, since they are between that age where people say "oh it's normal to scream and run around" and "your kid throw chairs and hits the para every week, he needs an evaluation".
1. Parents need to come to the realization that their child actually has a problem. Sometimes they never do, and blame literally everyone and everything else, for years. 2. Then if they agree their kid might have a diagnosis, they have to get on waitlists for private evaluations that cost $5K, or wait for the issues to be severe enough that the public school wants to assess the kid themselves (a much more basic and simplified assessment, so it's best to pay for the full neurosych, but most can't afford it). The whole thing can take a year. 3. Then they have to be willing to medicate (for ADHD) and sometimes it takes a long time - at least a year - to find the right dose of the right med (did you know there's been an ongoing national shortage of ADHD stimulants?). For autism, there are no meds, so a whole behavioral mitigation plan needs to be put in place. Or maybe they don't want to medicate, because they've heard of side-effects, or they go back to 1. and denial. Or the kid tries meds and nothing works. I have a kid with inattentive ADHD (daydreaming type) and know many children with ADHD and/or autism. That's what their elementary years looked like. |
Anonymous
| This is the majority of schools now and you won't know the students until you are already in the job. It's because admin society the union and the students do not respect teachers or the rules and there are slzero consequences. There is just blame and punishment for the person working g double unpaid overtime the evil teacher. |
Anonymous
Restorative Justice does not work at the middle and high school level, for bullying (no one wants to be in a healing circle with their bully!), or behaviors that MCPS wants to keep out of the criminal justice system. Think the armed carjacking that BCC had before Christmas. Can you give examples of how it works in elementary? |
Anonymous
My last school was huge on restorative practices. The preventative side was great with community circles and building a community in your classroom. However, it did nothing to curb kids physically fighting, eloping, cursing out teachers, hitting staff, etc. I taught third grade at this school and it was exhausting. RJ isn't the cure-all that people try and make it out to be in MCPS. |
Anonymous
| Where is the school? The classes are large, staff numbers are low in the western part of the county. It must feel overwhelming. Kids are still adjusting post pandemic. It will be this whole generation. |
Anonymous
| I’m in a small MS and it’s similar. The way McPS has designed the school day is not developmentally appropriate given all the things we know about education, child development, and the effects of the pandemic years. I tell anyone who cares to send their kid to private school. |
Anonymous
According to their parents, they are fine. Lol. I bet they are when you hand them a phone/tablet and let them have it whenever they want. |
Anonymous
| I left public for this reason. I went to a fancy, expensive private school. It is every bit as bad. There is nowhere that is okay. |
Anonymous
| This is because many of the gentle parenting crowd don’t understand boundaries and real consequences. |
Anonymous
It doesn't work miracles. It victimizes the victim and the bullies get away with it with no consequences. |
Anonymous
MCPS should have parents of misbehaving students attend classes with the kids for a week if they behave so much better for the parents. |