Student Behavior - Starting to Fall Apart?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Freshmen are starting to vandalize bathrooms again. Things like stealing toilet paper dispensers and pulling out all of paper towels.

My upper classman caught a bunch of them in the act and read them the riot act.

Any juniors or seniors who lived through the freshmen destroying the school last year in the name of tiktok have zero patience for this crap again this year. I have spoken with several other parents whose kids have yelled at freshmen the past two weeks trying to start this stuff again. The high school has started locking all or most of the bathrooms again this week.

It is like the walk out last week unleashed all of the bad behavior.

Before the walk out, the freshmen did not seem to be aware of all the freedom they have at high school.

Which school was this?

Not outing the school, but it is one where most of the bathrooms are locked. Which really could be any high school in fcps. At least one of the fcps high schools (not ours) is requiring the kids to download a tracking app onto their phones in order to use the bathrooms during the school day. In my opinion, that is a huge invasion of privacy. My kid would not be allowed to put a school tracking app on our personal devices.

The bathrooms were all unlocked before the stupid tiktok destruction last fall. Some of our school bathrooms still have not replaced the missing stall doors, paper towel dispensers and toilet paper holders that were destroyed last year. Combined with all the vaping, I doubt the bathrooms are ever going to open like they were prior to pandemic. I think the school keeps a handful of bathrooms open near the cafeteria and offices, and patrols them frequently.

My kid and other upperclassmen were hoping that the bathrooms were going to get back to normal soon. Then, the week of the walkout, the freshmen started the vandalism again. I think that is why upperclassmen are stepping in. They want their bathrooms back. I hope that the older kids telling freshmen to knock it off will nip this in the bud soon.

This is very encouraging to hear. Older teens are taking responsibility for their community, their "job", and younger teens can learn from them.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately this is exactly what we see happening at our private. We are former public school parents but it’s honestly all the same, just smaller class sizes in private so the teachers can rain it in a little bit easier. I find the teachers in private tiptoe around the parents a lot more than they do in public.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Agree....we try to fit way too much into a day.

+1 I think 5 hours is the perfect amount of time. Kindergarten also needs some rest time built in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Funny. I'm not in disagreement, but have you read any of the thread about schools' no-homework policies? There are plenty of parents who are not happy that their children aren't bringing home work after spending over 6.5 hours in school each day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Funny. I'm not in disagreement, but have you read any of the thread about schools' no-homework policies? There are plenty of parents who are not happy that their children aren't bringing home work after spending over 6.5 hours in school each day.

And that’s why you can buy about 1 million different work books on Amazon

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Funny. I'm not in disagreement, but have you read any of the thread about schools' no-homework policies? There are plenty of parents who are not happy that their children aren't bringing home work after spending over 6.5 hours in school each day.

DP. I think the school day is too long and that kids should actually get homework. I also think that block scheduling is detrimental to learning, especially long term learning.

[Anonymous]

The high schools are locking the bathrooms during the day? Unacceptable.
I can't believe people
Just shrug and accept that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Funny. I'm not in disagreement, but have you read any of the thread about schools' no-homework policies? There are plenty of parents who are not happy that their children aren't bringing home work after spending over 6.5 hours in school each day.

DP. I think the school day is too long and that kids should actually get homework. I also think that block scheduling is detrimental to learning, especially long term learning.

Well colleges in a sense do block learning. You either have classes M, W, F or Tues, Th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Funny. I'm not in disagreement, but have you read any of the thread about schools' no-homework policies? There are plenty of parents who are not happy that their children aren't bringing home work after spending over 6.5 hours in school each day.

DP. I think the school day is too long and that kids should actually get homework. I also think that block scheduling is detrimental to learning, especially long term learning.

Block scheduling is pretty awful. When I was in high school we had 9 periods and for science/math every other day we had an extra block.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Funny. I'm not in disagreement, but have you read any of the thread about schools' no-homework policies? There are plenty of parents who are not happy that their children aren't bringing home work after spending over 6.5 hours in school each day.

DP. I think the school day is too long and that kids should actually get homework. I also think that block scheduling is detrimental to learning, especially long term learning.

Well colleges in a sense do block learning. You either have classes M, W, F or Tues, Th.

Middle school and high school students are not high school students. Middle school and high school is not college.

For some reason, some people think they should be.

[Anonymous]

For ES, I think that there needs to be more movement breaks and two real recesses, not just 30 minutes. Or a 30 minute recess and 30 minute PE class where the kids are moving each day.

But I don’t think the school day is too long. There is not enough time for a real social studies or science component in the ES each year. Kids need to more time to move and release their energy but they still should be learning in the core subjects and they just are not.

I think we need to go back to tracked classes so that there are fewer groups to teach in a class so it is easier for Teachers to prepare classes. I think changing classrooms for classes should be allowed in ES so a kid who is struggling a bit in LA but is strong in math can be in the appropriate class for each subject. Changing classes would even allow for the Teachers to have a group of Advanced learners in one subject but the struggling kids in another group, spreading that work load more evenly across the Teaching staff and decreasing burn out.

I think that we need to revisit how we provide services for kids with IEPs. We need more seats in specialized programs and a shorter window for moving kids who are struggling in the mainstream class into the specialized classes and a better approach for moving those kids back into the mainstream when they are ready. We need the Federal Government to actually fun its mandates so that there is money to hire the right Teachers with strong credentials and more of them to work with the kids who need the most specialized help.

But a 5 hour school day is not going to work. There is no way that most families in the US could pull off the child care requirements for that and many families would not be able to afford after care or before care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Funny. I'm not in disagreement, but have you read any of the thread about schools' no-homework policies? There are plenty of parents who are not happy that their children aren't bringing home work after spending over 6.5 hours in school each day.

DP. I think the school day is too long and that kids should actually get homework. I also think that block scheduling is detrimental to learning, especially long term learning.

Why?

ES Teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For ES, I think that there needs to be more movement breaks and two real recesses, not just 30 minutes. Or a 30 minute recess and 30 minute PE class where the kids are moving each day.

But I don’t think the school day is too long. There is not enough time for a real social studies or science component in the ES each year. Kids need to more time to move and release their energy but they still should be learning in the core subjects and they just are not.

I think we need to go back to tracked classes so that there are fewer groups to teach in a class so it is easier for Teachers to prepare classes. I think changing classrooms for classes should be allowed in ES so a kid who is struggling a bit in LA but is strong in math can be in the appropriate class for each subject. Changing classes would even allow for the Teachers to have a group of Advanced learners in one subject but the struggling kids in another group, spreading that work load more evenly across the Teaching staff and decreasing burn out.

I think that we need to revisit how we provide services for kids with IEPs. We need more seats in specialized programs and a shorter window for moving kids who are struggling in the mainstream class into the specialized classes and a better approach for moving those kids back into the mainstream when they are ready. We need the Federal Government to actually fun its mandates so that there is money to hire the right Teachers with strong credentials and more of them to work with the kids who need the most specialized help.

But a 5 hour school day is not going to work. There is no way that most families in the US could pull off the child care requirements for that and many families would not be able to afford after care or before care.

My DW teaches only math in an upper ES grade. She has three math classes, one of which is the advanced math class. I teach at a lower ES grade level. She admits that her workload and stress level is lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school day, and the school year, is too long. School should run end of September through early May. The school day for k-12 should be five hours long.

Quality of time over quantity of time. Saying you sat there for 7 hours just to sit there for 7 hours means nothing. Make the time count. I am not surprised students are burning out in October.

Funny. I'm not in disagreement, but have you read any of the thread about schools' no-homework policies? There are plenty of parents who are not happy that their children aren't bringing home work after spending over 6.5 hours in school each day.

DP. I think the school day is too long and that kids should actually get homework. I also think that block scheduling is detrimental to learning, especially long term learning.

Why?

ES Teacher

Homework teaches two things - how to do the lesson, such as math problems, vocabulary, etc. and also how to organize, how to organize the afternoon or evening schedule to do homework, how to organize the page, how to remember the homework assignment and turn it in, etc. How to be responsible and independent. With no homework, kids don't learn these skills as well.

[Anonymous]

There is a select population at our suburban school that display immature, self-defeating behaviors like fighting, but everyone else seems to be doing great. School spirit is high, kids are working hard, etc.