School Violence: Students' Perspective

There is a fabulous story on the West Seattle Blog today that tells the story of a school violence incident from the perspective of the students.

Classroom interview: SWYFS students’ side of the stabbing story

Comments

Charlie Mas said…
This is a great piece of journalism. I'm delighted to have read it.
11/16/09, 11:34 AM
Melissa Westbrook said…
It was interesting. It likely could have happened at any high school. SPS does have different kinds of high school programs for students who don't fit in a regular high school. There is South Lake, Middle College, Interagency plus Nova and Center so we do have some options here.

I did like the line "“Here, there’s no drama,” while they are describing a stabbing.
11/16/09, 12:01 PM
dan dempsey said…
Consider this:

S has something to say on this too: “We’re here because we need more help, good support systems. Maybe the school we went to wasn’t the best for us … We’re not here because we’re bad kids and we need help. We’re here because we want help.”

Another: “We want a second chance. Everybody’s here mostly for the same reason - this school’s here because (regular) high school didn’t work out.”

k-8 Where are the effective interventions? Little wonder HS does not work out for many students.

SPS practices produce an over abundance of kids needing options that Team MGJ fails to provide.

Consider the following from Hattie's "Visible Learning" effect sizes:

Average of effects with Teacher
as Activator 0.60

Average with Teacher
as Facilitator 0.17

Perhaps more teaching of content and less Discovering is in order.
11/16/09, 12:53 PM
WS said…
Thank you all for cross-linking to our story. To Dan's point, on a personal note, I do wonder about K-8 intervention. We had to pull our son from an SPS middle school (not in West Seattle) in 6th grade because he had been verbally bullied and physically attacked, and the administration was not doing anything to protect him from greater harm. It seems like an even more turbulent time than high school, as some kids start to grapple with the transition from childhood to teenagehood and beyond... Anyway, the SWYFS kids really were impressive. -- TR from WSB
11/16/09, 5:27 PM
Jet City mom said…
That is a great story.
I attended a reentry school in the Lake Washington school district,in the mid 70's. It was a shame that I had to be kicked out of my assigned high school to attend, but now LWSD has several alternative options.



In Seattle of course alt schools are hanging on by the skin of their teeth .
11/16/09, 10:18 PM
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