Bully victim fights back, stabs and kills attacker

[NeoGoomba]

Class teachers.
That is, teachers who stick with a single class for most of that classes time. Who are responsible for the social cohesion, issues and general well-being of that class.
In Germany we do that in a half-decent way for the first four years of school, where a single teacher can handle most classes. Once we need specialized teachers for more difficult subjects, the position still technically exists but is just a single teacher with extra responsibilities and no real extra time with the class except on school excursions and such.

A proposition i have heard a few times and could get really behind would be to simply have "class teachers" as a separate specialty and have them accompany the class to their periods. They could act as an assistant teacher to the teacher of whatever subject you have during that period, but also take over the social duties - prevent the classroom from erupting into chaos, keep an eye out for struggling students etc.
This would help compensate for growing class sizes, but also have the added benefit of having a teacher who is more in touch with their students than just seeing them for an hour a day and can thus actually tell whether an incident is part of a repeating pattern of bullying or an isolated case.

I've had para-professionals and special education teachers in my class at times to aid in my larger "integrated" (Regular Ed and Special Ed combined) classes, and it really helped. But they usually only focus on specific needs students as opposed to aiding the class as a whole.

I do like the idea of the "class teacher", which as far as I know is how most elementary schools operate here in the US, but not so much at the middle or high school level where it is broken down into disciplines that are at the mercy of the ever changing student schedules.

I bet they don't make active efforts to defund public schools in Germany and give teachers more students than they can reasonably deal with.

Fun fact: at my first teaching gig I had a class with 33 students. And only 28 desks were provided. Doh?

[Highlord Laan]

Fun fact: at my first teaching gig I had a class with 33 students. And only 28 desks were provided. Doh?

Than obviously your school system is vastly overfunded, your teachers are unionized scum unwilling to do their jobs, and your whole education system exists to turn your children into hippie, muslim-loving, communist nazis that hate god.

[General Zod]

So it looks like he won't be getting charged as an adult, and the charges have been reduced from 2nd degree murder to manslaughter.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... smate.html

[Alyrium Denryle]

One day, I need to sit down and write a Froissartesque chronicle of being bullied, including all the administrative incompetence/malevolence that went into Jr. High for me.

I have been over it before. No need to go into that again here. The salient point however is that when bullying severe enough to cause a suicide attempt is occurring, the administration knows. My God, it knows. That is not the first time this bullied student was physically attacked.

The teachers, counselors, everyone else can do their jobs, even go above and beyond the call of their profession like some of my teachers did. If the administrators are unwilling to act, or heaven forbid, actively violate numerous laws such as reporting requirements, you wont fix anything. Even if you DO have cadres of people responsible for monitoring student behavior etc.

I experienced actual prosecutable criminal offenses. This kid who stabbed a classmate did too. Not just "getting into fights" but felony assault and battery. Sometimes aggravated. And the administrators, those who are employed to dole out punishment and in some cases refer cases to police, did nothing. And this is not restricted to the K-12 education system. It goes right the fuck up into the university system as well. I would posit that there is some quality of Administratorness in education that causes this to happen, for it to be so consistent across the tiers of the educational system. No idea what that is or where it comes from though.

[Eleas]

Agreed. And I understand why teachers may feel as Simon described. But willful obliviousness in the face of sustained bullying is an issue, and in my case they were not unaware, because my mother had made a sustained effort at alerting the administration and had had several talks with an administration who hemmed and hawed about hands being tied. There were incidents where I was being quite physically humiliated, sat on, smeared with foodstuffs etc, and a large part of the school looked on and laughed. Teachers breaking this up would not have been able to enter "the ring" as it were without the dynamics being obvious, and they were already primed by previous talks. Yet their focus was on why I was "provoking" the bullying, since obviously I was "being a weird kid."

This is what happens when the focus is not on students but on maintaining a status quo: the staff adopts a perverted view of cause and effect where some kids are treated as faulty components. If they're repeatedly bullied, why, the reason must be that they're inviting the bullying and then they're the problem. After all, the bullying only happens when they're around.

That, or (and this is probably just residual anger talking) the administration had a much easier time identifying with the bullies than the victims and felt they should be able to put weirdos like me in my place.