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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To the PP, there is nothing more schools can do or that I think should be on schools to handle this. We are doing absolutely everything we can including obtaining narcan ourselves, as I did this weekend, and bringing it to school to have on hand if it’s needed. We are sitting outside the bathrooms check student passes so we know a) who is in which bathroom and b) for how long.

Your question is well intentioned but honestly a bit frustrating for me to read because why do you think it’s on us as TEACHERS to do more to address narcotic abuse? Do you not think already that having to watch kids for signs of respiratory distress or dilated pupils while also trying to teach is too much? I was helping a teacher locate one of her students in the hall last week because he hadn’t returned to class and she strongly suspected he was on something and was panicked. We routinely see ambulances pull up right outside our classroom windows to wheel out a kid having an emergency. I am talking weekly. One day recently, it happened  twice in 30 minutes. Thank god both lived. I heard my AP panicked and yelling at the locked single stall restroom the other day for a kid to come out because when he didn’t answer she feared he was in distress or dead.  It is our daily fear we will find a child dead in a bathroom, we have to teach around that, and you’re asking me what more do I want schools to do??

I want SOCIETY to do something. [b]I want this country to not be such a depressing hellscape that teenagers don’t feel this desperate need for escapism at any cost. [/b]I want parents educating themselves on this, checking their kids’ rooms and bags, enforcing boundaries and structure. I want better for these children but it is not on schools to somehow manage this crisis. [/quote]

Is this really what's going on?  Or teens experiment with drugs as they've always done and now the risks are astronomically higher than they've ever been?

This country has more than it's fair share of problems but calling it a depressing hellscape seems a bit hyperbolic, particularly given how much of the world's population lives.

I've really started to believe the lack of accountability and expectations for these kids is also part of the problem.  Time to face reality.  Caught even once in the bathroom doing this?  Suspended.  Next time?  Expelled.  Get some undercover police officers in the schools to figure out who is dealing and bringing it in.  And then bye.  One strike and you're out.  And just generally zero tolerance for kids who regularly show up in a way where they are not there to participate in learning.  Clear and swift progressive discipline and then expel them.

Kids need boundaries and they need to know there are boundaries that will be enforced.[/quote]

You may think it is hyperbole but it’s important you realize that that IS the mindset of most teenagers. They don’t see a very bright future. They see unaffordable college or college followed by a job with stagnant wages that will never allow them to buy a house . They see climate change. They see a future where they are guaranteed to have fewer opportunities for success than any generation before them. Yes experimentation is normal but there is a generational ennui and disaffection, compounded by of course the last 3 years of seeing every institution fail, that has profoundly altered their worldview. You ignore this or deny it at the risk of completely minimizing a huge driver of their behaviors and choices.  [/quote]

Most teenagers?  I have two and don't see this as accurate.  I don't think a whole lot of teenagers are actively thinking about how they won't be able to buy their first house or climate change down the road.  Maybe they should be.  But that's not how the teen brain works.

Teens very much live in the present.  Social media is a big problem for many of them.  Potential isolation from real-world interactions due to too much screen time, severely compounded by how our schools handled covid which broke the already tenuous thread many of them had to real-life relationships which then had to be rebuilt but many were not.  Kids of a certain group, huge pressure to get into college.

I don't disagree with you that we need to look at more systemic issues, but the level of all consuming gloom and hysteria you're referencing isn't helping you make a case.  Every institution failed?  You don't want to see what life is like if every institution in our lives has legitimately failed.[/quote]

Respectfully, your sample is 2. Your two. Their friends are probably a lot like them. I teach hundreds every year and interact with hundreds more day to day. I am face to face all day long in ways wonderful and terrible with teenagers and what they’re dealing with. The patterns and trends are much easier for someone in my position to discern. Again, you don’t have to like this or even agree but your experience is simply not comparable to mine in this area. [/quote]

And in your interactions with them, they all talk to you about how they worry they won't be able to buy a home, stagnant wages, the planet is heating up, and all the institutions have failed?   If they are this thoughtful and profound then I actually have hope for the next generation.    I probably sound snarky but I am serious.  [/quote]

They talk about all that and even more. They’re not idiots, they see how things are. You think they look at all this and see their parents debating whether stuff like eggs or the preferred brand of bread is affordable anymore and don’t notice it seems pretty bad? Their outlook is overall bleak - about adults, about systems, about anything truly getting better. Obviously this isn’t all. Some are pretty blissfully ignorant or still have that kind of optimism you really only have at 15. But on the whole, Gen Z and Alpha are (rightfully) quite cynical and lack real expectations they’re headed for a future where you work hard and just have a nice life. [/quote]

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