AH... the day before Christmas (or whatever the heck we are calling it now) Break. My very "thoughtful" boss continued the holiday tradition of the Administrative Team cooking breakfast for the faculty. Now this sounds like fun... but it involved getting up at 5am, and ACTUALLY cooking the breakfast. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I don't wake up until 10am. And, it was quite ironic that yesterday I opened a white elephant gift of coffee ... all my so-called buddies thought it was quite funny and made snide remarks too!! Anyway, we served a nice helping of egg casserole, biscuits and gravy, and an assortment of sweet rolls and fruit. Everyone was in a joyful mood and had full tummies UNTIL... the 1st period bell sounded.
I was opening several nice presents, when I received a phone call, "Fun time is over"! Yep, it was over! We had gotten a nasty email from a parent who was upset because the teacher had kicked his child's chair to get him to be quite during a guest presentation. Now am I the only one to see the humor in this? This parent insisted that this teacher be fired, despite the fact that she runs a nationally awarded program, because she had to correct his son, who was being rude during an assembly. We spent most of the morning disproving the claim that this poor rude mannered lad actually fell out of his chair and hurt his back because this "hateful" teacher kicked his chair. Come on folks!
This incident was followed by an unwarranted game of tackle football in the school library. According to the guys involved the "tackler" was harassing a girl "friend" of the "tacklee" so he told him to leave her alone. This was followed by a string of F-bombs (why do our children insist upon using this vulgar word?) and then the young man knocked him out of the chair and began choking him. What ever happened to "Shhh, you're in the Library"??? Of course going to theoffice to report a problem is very different for this generation. Not only did I have eight students demanding to fill out Witness Statements, but one of them had taped the incident on his phone. In the infamous words of Charlie Brown... "Good Grief"!
My afternoon ended at the police station... despite my pleas to be locked up in a nice peaceful cell, they made me attend FULL SARB (student attendance review board) meeting with several agencies and the District Attorney. Although it is nice to "share" with other agencies, it is very sad to watch students and their parents get arrested because the kid took over the household and is now refusing to go to school. Watching these disheartened parents pay penalties because somewhere along the way they lost control is emotionally taxing. I want to (and often do) lecture these parents reminding them that everything in their household belongs to them. Defiant children should not have the latest baggy fashions, I-Pods, cell phones, X-boxes, or for that matter make up and studs in their ears (or noses.) Parents should not come to these meetings and plea for help when they are catering to their child's every whelm.
How do we break this sense of entitlement of our children? Think about it, if kids are not doing what they are suppose to do, all of Santa's toys should be returned or given to Good Will. How funny would it be if some bratty kid actually did find coal in his/her stocking? And yes, I've heard those parent stories about walking five miles to school ...uphill all the way... with a hole in their shoes too. I am not advocating that we turn the clock back and literally beat the humility into kids. But this generation has seemed to lose the notion of "earning" anything. And... we have created the little monsters. Perhaps this holiday season we can take a few minutes and teach our children the value of gratitude and the necessity of responsibility.
