Friday, September 22, 2006

When Middle Schoolers Lose Their Minds

We have had the most interesting few days at school.

The Guidance Goddess sent out an email letting us know that Discipline Referrals are DOUBLE - that's DOUBLE - what they were at this same time last year. Her fingers are getting cramps from entering all the referrals into the computer. (I must buy her more chocolate.)

This is not a good thing. We've pretty much had a focus for the past few years on working with the kids and being proactive and solving problems before they reach the discipline referral stage, but apparently our kids are just going nuts. They suspended something like 14 kids in the past two days. I don't think I've ever seen that many suspended at any one time before.

The sixth grade teachers have reported that the group they got this year apparently have no social skills. All it takes is a bump in the hallway and the next thing they know they've got sixth graders throwing punches and tearing into each other. As one teacher said, "it's like watching a pack of wild dogs."

The eighth graders are throwing punches as well. But they're also getting more creative when it comes to getting into trouble. Apparently a number of boys (interestingly enough, all former students from Mrs. Eagle's Team From Hell last year) were having some fun enticing some of the girls in their Language Arts class to expose their breasts. Mrs. Chicken would turn to the white board and write something on it and the girls would lift their shirts up over their heads, or in the case of one young lady with a bit of a low-cut top (who probably should have been sent home with a dress code violation in the first place), we had one who was leaning over, squeezing her breasts together to make cleavage and then jiggling. Seven kids got suspended for that one, including the ring leader who got five days for "lewd and lacivious" conduct.

And then some of the girls wonder why boys don't respect them? And their parents wonder why they're grandparents and their daughter is only 13. And other parents wonder why their son is a convicted sexual predator at 18.

Apparently no one is raising this kids. Outside of MTV, that is.

3 comments:

HappyChyck said...

Sounds like the Jerry Springer Middle School. Yikes!

Mrs. Bluebird said...

No kidding. Mr. Social Studies' comment was "I'm glad they didn't think of that until they waited until 8th grade."

Wonder if it has dawned on them that we have lots of new cameras installed in the building this year?

Mrs. T said...

I like to think of myself as fairly un-shockable, but, man! Color me shocked!