Preamble Then and Now…

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That was then…This is NOW:

We the people of the former United States, have torn apart our once perfect union, have no justice, encourage domestic turmoil, failed to provide a common defense, forgotten what general welfare is (and it includes EDUCATION), and allowed the blessings of our liberty to be misused to the point where almost no prosperity remains. 

We have torn apart our once perfect union by allowing ourselves to become bigoted against one another for one excuse or another. If it is not due to race, it is due to regional bias, religion, sexual preference (or the fact that some will never agree to mind their own business from both sides of any issue). Americans, let people be who they are, marry who they want and address the coming problem…Here it is…

We have failed to establish justice because we have allowed those who were considered to be on the lunatic fringe when we were children to come into positions of power.  In doing so we have seen not only THIS administration but many in law enforcement personnel ignore the 4th Amendment.

Defense? The people have no defense.  I will support no candidate who does not pledge to pull our troops from the Middle East.

The general welfare…NO I AM NOT talking about social security here or any aid to the elderly disabled. THESE are the ones who truly need it…Yes, some people have been on welfare too long.  Part of “welfare” includes educating the youth. When teachers are forced to be social engineers, children will not get educated. It is time to change this.  It is not the job of the educator to mold my child into a government mouthpiece.  Period.  We must look to other models of education (such as Belgium’s) and remove the government (and especially the NEA) from making decisions about the curriculum for each state, as well as making decisions on educational policies for each state. There is no need for “national certification” because this is a power that should remain with the states.

To try to nationalize the curriculum is the same is trying to eradicate each state’s individual culture under the guise of expanding education and making it equal for all, when no matter how much they put into place, it never can be so. There are many here who know what it means to  secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. However the government does not want a populace that knows what this means.  Hasn’t anyone else figured this out yet?

Oh I forgot…They aren’t taught the meaning of those precious words in the Constitution any longer. THAT would encourage critical thinking.  My god we have so squandered this great blessing of ours so much that nobody can see what is happening? It is time for citizens to take back the country. Run for local offices and move up from there. It is also time for the PEOPLE to lay differences aside.  Our freedom remaining in tact is what is important right now. PERIOD!

Santa Anna’s army was defeated at the Battle of San Jacinto in 18 minutes with an army that was tired, worn and determined.

All this country needs is one sweeping election to defeat anyone who is trying to usurp our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.   We KNOW who they are yet we keep putting them all back in office, on our school boards and on our city councils–not to mention every other city, state or county post known to man.  Hint: BOTH major parties are loaded with these people.

This lady has been bent but she is not fully broken yet. We can still work together to keep this country together, but we have to stop letting the government keep us divided. They feed off of that. We have to learn to mind our own business instead of telling our neighbor how to live his/her life and stop telling other countries how to conduct their business–and to further the end of the latter, we shouldn’t be providing monetary aid to any country that abuses others via forced marriages at young ages, mutilation, and denial of basic human rights.  We should also limit humanitarian aid to such countries.  The last thing we should do to further our own end is to ban travel to these areas and close our embassies there. Most countries like this do not want the U.S. or any European country there anyway and if we would all agree to give them what they want by leaving them behind, they would eventually learn who their real enemies are.

Then again, so would we…All we have to do at this point is look in the mirror because we did this to ourselves as a nation.

School Bullying Must Stop–A Proposal…

I have to phrase this in a way everyone will get it. School bullying and cyber-stalking are out of control. These web applications that generate fake phone numbers to enable a stalker to pull this MUST be shut down or tightly regulated. If ordered by a judge, they should have to surrender any information the requester for such numbers gave to the site in order to be able to access such programs. Any students caught using this for the purpose of bullying other students should be expelled and put on house arrest for the rest of the school year and forced to do their classwork at home. They should also be ordered to go into psychiatric counseling at the parents’ expense–not the states.

Schools should be required to report to the parents of the victim(s) any incidents (even if perceived) of bullying within two hours of becoming aware of the concurrence. ANY teacher or administrator taking it upon himself/herself who decides not to report the incident to the parents OR the police if severe, should face disciplinary action up to and including termination as well as fines up to $5000 and forfeiture of their certification(s). If the bullying is severe enough to call law enforcement, the police should immediately have to place the bully in restraints and arrest him/her/them. It should also be up to the parents of the VICTIM whether or not to file charges–not the police or the school district.

It is time to protect our children and to separate them from a culture that permits silence and the continued torment of other students. Many of the crimes (yes crimes!) they throw under the label of “bullying” include physical assault, psychological torment, and/or sexual assault or molestation. Often it also includes some sort of verbal sexual harassment and/or repeated incidents.  These are all things adults can either go to jail for and/or lose their jobs for.  When children commit these acts on other children they should be strictly dealt with. There should truly be “zero tolerance” for this behavior in the schools.

This is only part of what I’m proposing to stem the tide of this garbage. How many more students are going to kill themselves before the end of the school year? I am wondering because right now there is NOTHING firm and rigid in a legal approach that has been put  in place to protect them in most states at all.  What are your thoughts? Can you think of any ways to help stop this? I do realize that my proposal is modeled somewhat after the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but since most of what I have seen occur when working for the corrections industry tends to remind me of what I saw in public school yards, that is why I came up with this.

The PREA gave parents and family members of bullied and extorted offenders an avenue to seek remedy within the laws of the land should officers neglect to report possible rapes and take measures to prevent offender suicide. Since so many bullying victims either attempt suicide or actually do it, this must be addressed specifically also.  It is for that reason I strongly support sending bullying victims to a counselor to ensure their mental well-being.  This is especially true if the student is known to be homosexual. Many do get picked on for their sexual orientation and this must also be stopped. No child deserves this treatment.  As for measures like “lunch detention”, believe me, they are a joke. Those things do not work on a bully because a lot of the time to them, being in lunch detention or ISS is a “badge of honor” just like going to medium custody is an honor for an offender in prison when they bully others. In fact, a lot of the reason these measures do not work on many bullies is that some of them come from families that have family members which are incarcerated.

It is bad enough that many cannot even bring themselves to discuss this with their own parents out of fear, but school is the last place they should fear going to. We must make these institutions safer for ALL children and this is the only proposal I can think of to actually get the job done–or at least start the process of making a change for the better.

These suicides can be prevented if teachers and administrators are specifically trained in what to watch for, so I propose that training them to notice certain signs (unkempt appearance, giving away possessions, statements that could lead one to think they might harm themselves or others in retaliation, etc…).

A Day of Empowerment–Post High School

When I was grown, I married and ended up divorced.  I was raising my son Eric and one of the guys who bullied me in school asked me out saying, “I hear you’re divorced now and I was wondering if we–”

I responded by saying, “Stop right there!  I had nothing but crap from you in school. I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man alive either.”

He said, “Well we were just kids–you should be over that!”

I said, “Two years isn’t long enough. You’re in my past and you are staying there. Bye.”

I then shut the door in his face. Dad asked me what that was about.

My response was, “Getting the garbage out.”

He said, “Oh…Okay.”

Note:  If you were a bully as a kid, it really is not a good idea to go around trying to ask the victim out–especially when you were one of the ones that tormented him/her for the whole 12 years of school don’t ya think? Well at least he didn’t play the “selective memory card” as in saying “I don’t remember that. I’m sorry.”  I felt very empowered after that day in 1983.

 

A Passionate Hater of Bullying…That Would Be Me…

I want to make something clear to my friends and to my family. I loathe bullying whether it be school bullying or workplace bullying. I believe that stronger discipline must be used in public schools to stop school bullying because allowing it and/or enabling it and many school administrators and fake experts tend to do this, I fully believe that it leads to more devious and often violent criminal behaviors in adults.

I do not believe bullies fully change with time if they end up in positions of power. I believe this overloads their ego and makes them even worse. That being said, I am going to do all in my power to put a stop to this trend. Bullying is not the same as it was when I was in school. It’s not just the occasional fight or being shoved. In many cases it is assaults by multiple people, sexual assault, emotional abuse and some other things adults can go to jail for, like sharing inappropriate photos of a teenager on the net, cyber-bullying, etc…However, in some locales it is left up to the school district as to whether or not to press charges. Many won’t because if the criminal-in-the-making goes to juvenile hall, they’ll lose money for the school.  A school usually gets X amount of dollars for each student enrolled there from the government and state funding coffers.

Guess who pays for all this crap and such? We do…Carry on…In fact, RAGE on!

If you want crime rates reduced in adults, start taking care of the problems with America‘s schoolchildren who often learn these behaviors from their older relatives and stop letting these fake counselors give the bullying victim “resilience training” which only reinforces the idea that they must have done something to bring this on and need to change something about themselves. We should NEVER be penalizing a bullying victim–EVER and that is what resilience training is. It’s not the victim that needs to be worked on via therapy and/or disciplined, it’s the bully and/or the family thereof…PERIOD!

 

Yale’s War on Women…Part 2…

This post is only going to put forth some rather inflammatory questions. Why isn’t Yale facing the same scrutiny and penalty in the public eye  that Penn State had to face over that child sex abuse crap/Joe Paterno controversy?  Are the leaders at Yale saying it is quite alright to abuse women by only giving reprimands and downgrading rape on campus to a charge of “Non-Consensual Sex“?  Who are they to decide penalty for what IS still a crime in this country? Better yet, who came up with that policy? Whoever came up with it should be exposed publicly for being such an insensitive, uncaring excuse of a human being.

No campus, be it high school, college, technical institute or whatever has any right to re-write the laws of the state they were built in OR federal law. The last time I checked, rape was (and still is) a felony.  As far as I am concerned, they are aiding and abetting criminals with such policies. The Attorney General for that state should also be raising hell at this point! Why is there only silence?  If there is a rape, they should all be REQUIRED to call the police immediately as they are not qualified to investigate a crime on campus. I am not even going into how many missing women ended up dead because colleges don’t report them missing when they don’t show up for classes and their belongings are still in their dorm rooms either…Yes, this has happened. Read the news!

Get real people! No one is exempt from the law–ivy league or working Joe… They are certainly not above them. Any college campus be it Yale, Harvard, Columbia University or whatever should be REQUIRED to report these crimes against women to the police in order to keep their certification status as well. If they fail to do so, they should be put on probation and if this behavior continues, SHUT THEM DOWN.  Their female students deserve a lot more respect than what such policies afford.  I am sick of these people re-writing terms to “sweeten” them so that they are watered down to mean nothing.

Yet we watch and still do nothing.  NOTHING…What is wrong with us? Do we not see that these policies are designed to bully us and reduce us to chattel again?  Is this what we want for our future women in this country? I don’t think that for one minute, and I do not think that Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Susan B. Anthony would disagree on that point either. If one basic tenant of our rights as women gets eroded, they all will eventually be eroded.

This is where women’s rights groups (Hear that N.O.W.?) should be raising hell but they won’t. The women’s rights movement has been very fragmented and disjointed for many, many years and if the women cannot unite long enough to take care of this, that organization might as well call it a day in this country.  They keep complaining that it is the GOP trying to take all of our rights away, yet Yale has turned out a vast number of political leaders.  Many of those from bygone eras are doing somersaults in their graves right now, and I am very certain of that. Why complain about the GOP when our very complacency as a group has rendered our voices to be so ineffective?

We spend more time arguing over gay rights and abortion rights than anything–and that is what these clowns at YALE are counting on. Put it aside for now. This is a bigger battle in this war and it is much more important. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never faced a rapist.

How can we raise hell for our rights when we cannot even agree on what those rights are? Alice, are you listening?  It doesn’t matter if we are Democrat, Republican, gay or straight, pro-life or pro-choice–we have to stand toe to toe against such policies to protect our daughters and grand daughters. Doesn’t anyone hear what I am saying? Get off the PC bullshit AND off of the ultra-religious bandwagon so that we can actually get something done to benefit all of us for a change.  We need to show these so-called “leaders in education” what we think of such policies and let them know that we will not stand for them.

Nobody deserves to be raped or abused and any policy that runs contrary to that particular train of thought should and MUST be challenged both legally and via demonstrations. It is time to stop shining the seats with our butts and take action. This is the beginning of a huge threat to our very existence as women in a free country.  It starts with such idiotic policies at the educational level. They really think we don’t care and will say nothing. WE have to prove them wrong!  It is going to be up to us to keep our freedom because no one else is speaking for us. NO ONE. Not N.O.W…Not Concerned Women for America…NO ONE.  That fact in itself is tragic. Someone needs to take up the reigns and guide the chariot. Where is that person?  Come on, Alice…Wake up!  Think!

It starts at the educational level. It starts with raising hell at Yale…Can we not unite long enough to rein them in?  Here’s an oddity for you: Both Bushes, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, and William H Taft all graduated from Yale.  Being that Yale churned out 5 presidents, one would think their standards of behavior would be more strict–but HELL NO!  They went back to the Medieval Era long before the GOP had a chance to get that going full steam–which is something the Democrats accuse them of on a regular basis…Well, if we sit silently and do absolutely nothing, the ultra-right wing of the GOP won’t need our help now will they?

 

It Is Time to Criminalize Bullying at School…

Yes…I have been quiet as of late.  I have contemplated this school bullying issue again and again.  I will say this and you can find out for yourself.  Take the time to look through a high school rule book in Texas and compare it to the rules for offenders in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (which is in the offender rule book).  The similarities might shock you.

Why is it in schools they worry about the peach-fuzz Johnny is growing on his chin or the piercings Jenny has in her eyebrow but they say the bullying, which is actually either physical assaults or emotional abuse–not to mention cyber-bullying is a “phase”?  That, for lack of a better word, is bullshit.

The teachers are the “officers”–powerless to defend themselves and other students from bullies for fear of litigation or losing their job.  The Texas Youth Commission officers are not much different.  The administrators are like the prison wardens, only the prison warden has tools at his/her disposal to stop offenders from being bullied to the point of suicide and such.

Since the days of John Dewey, the school climate has drastically changed.  America has a growing population of gang kids and/or kids of hardened criminals rising up in the ranks of the students and they are creating problems on the campuses.  Family members often ignore or encourage the behavior, blaming everything on the teachers and admins or blaming the other kid (the victim).  When the hell did we start conditioning or students to be “good inmates”?  School should be a sanctuary for learning, not institutions for control and indoctrination.

The prisons have the Prison Rape Elimination Act in place to help protect offenders.  If society is so willing to protect them, why is it that we are failing in this nation to protect our children?  I think every parent who has a son or daughter being bullied should actually study the PREA.  The language in it is strong, but a new act can be drafted based on that to protect students from bullies.  Here are a few things I propose…

1.  Any time a student is found to have been bullied, the school must notify parents within 2 hours of becoming aware of it.

2. If a student has been physically assaulted, the bully is to be treated the same way as if he/she committed the crime of assault off-campus–meaning that being at school does NOT exempt students from obeying the law and does not give schools the option to NOT report crimes to the police department.  If they have to report child abuse when suspected in the home, then this should also be a requirement.

3. The school must report and prosecute all physical assaults and take measures to fully protect the victims of physical assaults of any nature, which includes sexual assaults.

4. Sexual assaults ON CAMPUS are to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and if it occurs on school property, administration should have to fill out incident packets to turn over to police officers for use in the prosecution of  the perpetrator within 2 hours of becoming aware of the assault(s).

5. Victims of bullying should never have to be moved to another school for protection. It is the bullies that should be split up and sent to other schools at their parents’ expense. Hit the parents in the pocket-book, they will learn to control their children.

6. Any school official not reporting bullying incidents to parents and/or taking proper action against what amounts to be criminal acts should face automatic disciplinary hearings and possible loss of licenses from the Texas Education Agency.  This will stop a lot of these administrators from enabling and becoming complacent.  They should also be able to face penal charges in severe cases and civil charges in the lower degree offenses if not reporting them.

7.  The way I see it, their rights end where the next victim commits suicide over the issue.  In cases where it is found that parents enabled their son/daughter to torment another student, they should be fined in successive amounts for their negligence in each offense. Money collected from fines can be used to pay for supplies for needy students and uniforms (if schools require those).

8. It should be expressly stated in the act that no teacher or school official will face penalties under the law for taking appropriate actions to protect themselves and other students from those who seek to harm them during an incident.  This way they can step in to break up altercations and such.  The staff should not be expected to take beatings any more than the bullied child.  This would give districts some teeth in dealing with bad situations.

9. All teachers and administration officials will be required to take PMAB classes to learn proper ways of restraining violent, out of control students.  Parents will sign an agreement that they know teachers are trained in this and that if their student gets out of control, they can be restrained, releasing the district from liability.

10. Students with severe behavior disorders that require psych meds will either take those meds or not attend school until they do so. Parents will make sure this happens or face child neglect charges.

11. Students prone to violent outbursts will not be educated in the regular classroom after 2 outbursts, but will be taught in a separate classroom provided and monitored closely.  After 2 outbursts this will be permanent.  This is only reserved for students with severe behavioral issues.

12. The profession of teaching in the State of Texas will become an “at will” position in order to effectively enforce bullying policies.  This means when educators aren’t doing their job with these bullies, they can be fired without all the union bullshit. If failing to report assaults and such to the police and to the victims’ parents, they should face the same penalties for that as for failing to report child abuse.

Anyway, these are just ideas I’m tossing around in my head. What do you think?

A Sad Turn in a Long Story…

As many know by now, the remains of missing teenager 13-year-old Hailey Dunn were found in Scurry County, TX on 3/16/13.  This was confirmed after weeks of testing on the remains.  I am at a loss for words here.  As a mother, I am torn because I know how I would feel had my child gone missing, and at the same time, I also hope that justice has her way quickly in this case.  This girl deserves that.  More than that, I only pray she didn’t suffer too much at the hand(s) of the person(s) who killed her.

Please continue to keep her family and friends in your thoughts and prayers.  Please keep this community of West Texas in your thought also. This entire community is heartbroken, to say the least.  This case resulted in a nationwide search. Thank God for all of those volunteers and those in law enforcement who never gave up on her also.

In their time of loss, let us remember the family of Hailey Dunn in our thoughts. Thank you.

The Escalation of School Bullying and Expanding the PREA to Stem the Tide…

Before I begin I am putting a link up here so that readers can see what the PREA is and what it does:   http://nicic.gov/prea

I want to begin  by saying that this act was put into place due to the suicides of offenders in the penal system because their pleas for help after being assaulted and/or raped were largely ignored.  In Texas, one high-ranking administrator was fired after an offender tried to report an incident to him said, “Well, nobody told you to come to prison.”   The young man had written detailed letters home to his family about the violence he endured and the last letter written detailed why he was killing himself.

Now let me tell you how the PREA is used to prevent suicides:

1.  When an assault (whether rape is involved or not), an offender is placed in protective custody and an investigation ensues. Often the offender will not talk about it for fear of retaliation regardless of housing.  News travels faster in prison than it does on a television network. Often offenders know when some riot is about to kick off LONG before anyone else does–on units OTHER than their own.

2.  Once in protective custody, the offender is offered counseling, alternative housing, and in extreme cases, unit to unit transfer. Some of these are offender “trade-offs” where two offenders can be switched out in different states to complete sentences.

3.  When an offender is suicidal, he/she is IMMEDIATELY taken into protective custody and placed in a cell with a suicide blanket only.  Nothing the offender can harm himself/herself with is placed in that cell.   Within 24-48 hours on most units, the offender is then sent to a hospital equipped with psychiatric facilities.  Not all offenders who threaten suicide have been raped or sexually assaulted. Many are bullied for commissary items, money, etc…They are given the same protections as an offender who is a sexual offender when this gets reported.

4.  It provides stiff penalties for staff members who either fail to report such incidents listed above, within 2 hours of the incident becoming known, OR face any number of disciplinary consequences.  It also provides that officers MUST count LIVING, BREATHING bodies–even at night when doing cell counts.  If someone looks like they are asleep, they must wake them–PERIOD.  If an offender is found dead on the next shift, the autopsy will reveal how long he/she was deceased and there is no excuse for failing to attempt waking an offender during count time at night.  They must also make sure that the OFFENDER is in the cell and hasn’t escaped by waking them up as well. Yes, offenders do stuff pillows and mattresses in their bunk and  try to break out.

Now let’s see how this can be applied to the school systems in this country, given the fact that many students now come from families with members who are locked up and/or are part of a gang affiliation.  In fact, children’s visits to a prison should be very limited. I would say no more than once a month for a child visitor.  There are too many sexual predators running around. Families would raise hell at first, but it is not the correctional officer’s job to baby-sit.

As far as school districts go, the barriers that prevent law enforcement from prosecuting these bullying cases need to be removed. Here is how this can be done while expanding the PREA to the public education system.

1.  With the growing number of children of gang affiliated families on campus, the school officials need to be aware of who these students are AND if they are involved in gang activity.  To that end, law enforcement officials, child protective services and the districts need to work together to reduce the impact such families have in the education system if they are known to be involved in illegal activities.   A true zero tolerance policy should always include automatic suspension and/or expulsion of students engaging in gang activity and/or illegal activity on campus.  In short, if they can face free world charges for what they pull at school, then the school district should be REQUIRED to report the activities within 2-4 hours of the details becoming known–unless it can endanger students and teachers–then it should be REQUIRED to bring in the authorities.

2.  If a student is suicidal or is suspected to be suffering from depression due to being bullied–either at school and/or online, the district should be required to immediately get these students to the school counselors so that they can make appropriate referrals to mental health services.  Parents should be notified IMMEDIATELY if this is the case–in a letter and/or in person via a conference.

3.  If a student is known to have been bullied, it is the bullies that should be punished and NEVER, EVER, EVER  the victim.  If the incident involves a sexual assault, then offer the victim a campus to campus transfer option–even if it means the student will go to school in another district.  Make the bullies be put in different schools rather than their target(s) when possible.  By breaking the social unit of these bullies up, the chances of the student being bullied again go down slightly.  Those who commit violent acts on campus should get an automatic jail sentence AFTER the time spent in juvenile facilities if applicable.

4.   Eliminate lunch detention (especially if not held in a classroom rather than the cafeteria) and mass movement at lunch.  Why?  To many gang kids, lunch detention is a badge of honor–much like when an offender gets sent to medium to high custody is.  They will continue to socialize anyway, throw gang signs and act up at lunch, so it does no good.  This is behavior mimicked in prisons too. The problem with mass movement is that things can get out of hand there too.  At the elementary level, have carts with DISPOSABLE trays and utensils  taken to the classrooms.  Using disposable trays will cut costs of excessive water usage.  After they finish eating, let them go to “reading circle” or go to the playground a bit if weather permits.  This will cut some of the garbage that goes on during movement–because it will be almost ELIMINATED.  To enforce a good lunch detention (if a district MUST have that) a separate classroom with cubicles needs to be used for this.

5.  At the upper grade levels (8-12) close campuses for lunch. That way stuff isn’t being brought in as much for them to “sell” and trade.

6.  Go to uniforms!!!! This is important!  That way gang students have a harder time locating each other. Crime rates on campuses with this policy in place have seen crime rates drop by as much as 85% in some districts!   This isn’t about a students’ rights or respecting individuals’ rights–it is about protecting others in a system that is greatly flawed. No wonder teachers burn out within 5 years in many states…

7.  Give teachers the authority to take the classroom back. Have them trained in self-defense if they want and/or make PMAB training mandatory so that they can restrain students who are out of control.  This training is used to teach others how to properly restrain people who are out of control so that they don’t get hurt and it does come in handy for students who are prone to getting out of control.

No solution is perfect but it has to begin somewhere and to me, that place lies within the PREA.  The links below are to other articles related to this issue.  Not all of them involve school bullying, but all the bullying in society needs to be brought to a halt! Many of these were reported on other networks as well.  Thank you for your time.

Related articles

• Bullying leaves lasting marks on victims, witnesses (utsandiego.com)
• Lindhurst student takes stand against bullying (appeal-democrat.com)
• Virginia bill tackles bullying for students, teachers (wtvr.com)
• Shocking News: Bullying on the Aging Population (belmarrahealth.com)
• Father of suicide victim speaks at anti-bullying assembly (fox13now.com)
• Judge dismisses Mentor HS bullying suit (newsnet5.com)
• OK school says ‘zero tolerance’ for bullying after teen shoots self in bathroom (rawstory.com)
• Why Bullying Needs to Stop (lorensworld.com)

Texspearean Experience–“Merchant of Venice”….Nana’s version…Well, a Snippet Anyway! ;-)

I am working on a contemporary version of the Merchant of Venice–by William Shakespeare. However, this version is going to be written in the Texspearean language for those who have trouble with reading the great bard’s work.  It is my hope that he has a sense of humor because if he doesn’t, and reincarnation is real (which I don’t think it is-sorry), then with my luck he’d come back as the person who stomps me into the ground–because, I’d return as a  friggin’ cockroach!

Seriously this thing is playing out in my mind…That can be very dangerous.  Be afraid…Be VERY afraid.  What you are about to read is not something you will find in the world which you now know, but you will find it only in, “The Tina Zone” when she’s sleepy…This is part of my journal, folks. DISCLAIMER: I do not take XANAX or PROZAC!

The woman dozed off for a bit…She was exhausted from her long workday, but was thinking heavily about “The Merchant of Venice” before turning off the light and closing her eyes for the night…For some strange reason she saw a contemporary scene played out at the end of this short little dream where someone uttered the line, “No s***, Shylock!”, at which point she woke up for a bit, but as she dozed off, this scenario crossed her mind:

“…NERISSA How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony‘s nephew?

PORTIA Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, and
most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk: when
he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and
when he is worst, he is little better than a beast:
and the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall
make shift to go without him….”

In contemporary language in today’s world, she knows how Portia’s answering line would open in such a version…It would start with two words: “…Bitch, please!” and then go on to “…I can’t stand the dude!…” among other things.  Then she would explain the reasons for hoping she could just be left to her own devices or run off to join the French Foreign Legion…”  

Then again, that is the world of Tina when she’s tired and dozing off.  Have a great week! I know I will! I at least hope it makes someone laugh. I love reading Shakespeare, but when it comes to talking about it, my wires ALWAYS end up crossed and I end up creating this stuff one beast at a time!  I do love comedy, so that’s probably part of  it.

 

When Educators are the Bullies–Part II

As previously stated in this blog, there is a trend among some teachers to either allow student bullying under the guise of “teacher-induced peer pressure“, which is what I’m going to label that, or direct cursing and name-calling.  I saw and addressed this issue in the prisons. Either offense should result in severe consequences when it is just another form of child abuse. However the problem lies in that the district often protects the teacher rather than addresses the parents‘ concerns–at least that is the case where I live.

It got so bad that a parent had her son take HER cell phone into the classroom to film the abusive behavior. When she then brought it to the attention of the principal, instead of focusing on what was done to her child, they were more concerned that the rule in the school handbook about the cell phone was violated and threatened severe consequences for her son, banned her from coming onto campus over it, etc.  Listen up, people…Schools are not prisons and nor should the districts be allowed to run them as such.  As long as a parent is not creating a disturbance, there is no reason why the person cannot visit the classroom.  This district is trying to cover up the real problem here and that is more teachers manipulating students into bullying one another–OR they are directly bullying themselves under the sanction of the district.

This cannot be tolerated. Parents MUST speak up and start making their voices heard in the district. These people do not OWN your children!  These children are not inmates and it is time to return our classrooms in this country into sanctuaries of learning. Children must be taught BY parents to report this.  Parents need to sit down with their children and explain to them that teachers are NOT ALLOWED to act in a certain way.

It is time to put a stop to this and rid our districts of people who are behind it.  Parents, this is the usual “chain of command” when faced with any issue requiring state involvement in TX.  1. Principal   2. Superintendent   3. School board meeting (get scheduled to speak if necessary prior to the meeting)  4. Texas Education Agency.

I promise you if TEA gets it, they won’t take the case lightly. They will investigate it thoroughly so keep recordings, journals, etc…but it is imperative that you go through the chain of command PRIOR to going to TEA.  The reason many teachers still get away with this is because parents are often too afraid of being harassed by local authorities and/or administrators in their district.  IT is time to fight back for the sake our the children, people. Do no tolerate it! It is the taxpayers (meaning us) that sign their paychecks with the taxes taken out every year so these issues MUST be effectively handled.

Also, someone put forth a proposal in this district to allow teachers to conceal/carry on campus this week. This is ludicrous.  Until the last teacher who is bullying is gone, they are the last persons I want to see with a gun.

I am not sure what the chain of command is in other states, but it is best to follow this to avoid state boards from asking, “Why didn’t you go to (the principal, board, etc…)?” As long as you have taken proper steps prior, there should be no problem with getting this issue addressed.