Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a current teacher at Deal Middle School, I was around before Ms. Neal. when there were three student abuses covered up by the then-principal. He was eventually relieved of his post.

Many administrative personnel are only there to serve themselves. Then, when they get caught, the city doesn’t want the bad press, so they install a new regime and give the old principal, “early retirement”. Hence, why Ms. Neal is there now.

Yup. I remember this. I no longer work at Deal and have since retired. His name is James Albright. Ms. Neal sat on the committee to get this swept under the rug. She’s just as corrupt as he is.

Anonymous wrote:As a current teacher at Deal Middle School, I was around before Ms. Neal. when there were three student abuses covered up by the then-principal. He was eventually relieved of his post.

Many administrative personnel are only there to serve themselves. Then, when they get caught, the city doesn’t want the bad press, so they install a new regime and give the old principal, “early retirement”. Hence, why Ms. Neal is there now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the principal PP: why do you think there is a drastic uptick in mental health needs? Is it changes in the student demographic or a change happening to the usual cohort? Thanks

In my experience as a teacher, a lot of the anxiety and pressure that these kids are dealing with that leads to these mental health issues is because of the parents. It is really not hard to see when you read the school boards here. Parents are intense, never satisfied, always pushing. They don't value letting their kids try and fail so they can learn that not being perfect is okay. They storm in and want to control everything so the kids don't have resilience. They act like Radford is worse than a death sentence so the kids kill themselves to go somewhere better because god forbid they just settle for JMU and have a fun college experience. If a teacher has fun with kids and tries to build rapport to at least give them one safe, low pressure environment, the parents freak out about the teacher being "inappropriate" or "not a master teacher."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In short, Responsive Classroom (RC) is an approach to the social curriculum that teaches kids to be independent and caring members of a learning community through structures such as morning meeting. When kids misbehave, there are logical consequences. Teachers use language that promote kids taking responsibility. Teachers spend a lot of time getting to know their kids and their developmental needs. There are no “prize boxes” or sticker charts or “red-yellow-green card charts” or similar extrinsic reward systems.

PBIS stands for Positive Behavior Intervention System. A school sets up a way for staff to recognize positive behavior. The goal is to recognize 4 positive behaviors for every 1 negative behavior. The recognition might be a ticket or “school bucks.” It’s an extrinsic reward system. And there’s a system for recording misbehavior so that staff can look at the data frequently to make adjustments for the problem areas.

At my Title 1 school, we are fully implementing RC. AND we have a system for documenting “big deal” misbehavior. Kids are not sent to the office (unless it was something huge like a fight, which has not happened to my knowledge), but instead our admin works closely with teachers to come up with appropriate consequences. It works pretty well and i feel very supported by my admin when there are behavior issues.

I’ve been in a school that does PBIS with all the tickets and will never go back. Kids turn into “barking seals.” They do something positive for someone and then expect a reward ticket. With RC, we teach kids that we do positive things because we’re part of a community.

Exactly. I’ve seen kids spill something on the floor on purpose when they think no one is looking and then want a ticket for cleaning it up. I wish our school would move away from PBIS. It doesn’t truly change behavior and the perception from most kids is that the ones who usually aren’t making good choices get rewarded more often than the ones who regularly make good choices.

Anonymous wrote:Former LCPS teacher here who left public to teach at a private because of the Admins and those in power who were so out of touch.

I did 5 years at FCPS, 8 at LCPS, and have now been at a private for 4 and couldn’t be happier. The parents are no more demanding than public parents but the Admin is far, far better.

Anonymous wrote:The hardest part is that some of the admins barely had any classroom experience and were hired as administrators when they were still in their 20s. They are trying to put into practice theory from graduate classes. New perspective is always good but they do not value those of us that have been in classrooms for 20+ years. We are told we don’t like change. We are willing to change but they are not willing to listen to our experiences. We have seen the pendulum swing so many times.