Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Violence? What violence?! OR, As if my school needed more bad press

My school - not my district, but my school, was recently placed on "The Watch List" for being a school with "persistent violence." My understanding is that we've achieved this level of infamy due to 9 expulsions for weapons posession last year, which was part of a 3 year trend.

Now, I have experienced many emotions tied to my job. Joy, exhaustion, silliness (is that an emotion?) anger, skepticism, irritation, sublimity, and frustration are all in my emotional repertoire. But never, ever have I felt fear at work.

My school is not an unsafe place to be. My students, while not always the best behaved, are kind people. I enjoy them immensely. They make mistakes, they do stupid things. They come from places that require them to constantly be on their guard. They sometimes forget to switch from street rules, the rules they use to survive in the real world, to school rules. For my kids, school rules are completely different from home life rules. But they try, they really do.

We are one of 11 schools in the state to have earned this label. I wonder how hard it will be to undo the damage of being labeled a violent school.

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