Expelled for diary

[kesolei]

Originally posted by eskimo2
Kesolei,

Imagine that it’s 1999.  
You’re child is a classmate of the Columbine killer kids.  The killers are not fond of her/him.  One of the killers is reading from his diary of his plans to murder his classmates and teachers.  A teacher overhears him reading it out-loud.

Now, what is it that you would like for that teacher to do?

eskimo

Completely different situation. The child has already read out loud, and been overheard. If the teacher takes the diary at that point, its only to provide positive proof for what was already heard. The privacy of the journal has already been invaded, but the invasion of privacy was not instigated by the teacher.

If he had been just showing it to someone; how could the teacher justify taking it then reading it? "He looked like he was planning something and I'm positive it was in his journal, so I took it to read it."

All I'm saying here is that the teacher was within his or her rights to take the book, but sitting down with it after school hours to read with no provocation was unjustified.

Does that make sense? If she had actually been plotting to kill all her teachers and classmates, I might be relieved that the teacher did something less than morale; but I wouldn't be suprised if when she were on trial (assuming it went there) they would aruge that the evidence was gathered through invalid means. Y'know?

[Sundiver]

Eskimo, you've got some incredibly valid arguements that I considered a great deal before choosing to send my children to private school.

Like I said, I wish I had the answers. I hate seeing or thinking of any child hurt, especially through bad parenting or lack of parenting. But, I just feel in my gut that getting the school systems/goverenment more involved in the parenting process is not the answer.

[Mathman]

Originally posted by Sundiver
Yeah, I'm a Libertarian and a true zealot when it comes to personal liberties so I'm probably biased but this just strikes me as insane.

 Is it just me or did the school have any right reading her personal diary to begin with? Seems to me they should of maybe confiscated it since she shouldn't of been showing it in class but reading it? No. Should of been returned to her at the end of the day.

I guess you have never worked in education then.  There are strict guidelines and policies created by the school, district and state that govern the course of action taken in an incident such as this.  Often, there is a cut and dried action spelled out that must be taken for just about every incident.

Take my school for instance.  I am a dean (I deal with the discipline problems at my school) and we have a handbook (given to all parents) that describes disciplinary actions taken for various infractions of school rules.  I am sure there is something similar at this school (or the district).

Also, there is quite a bit of information that is not given in that article that may be contributing factors to this girl's dismissal.  Was a specific teacher named?  Was there a continuing problem between the girl and her math teacher?  What was the past disciplinary history of this girl?  What is the exact policy of the school for an incident like this?  Has this girl ever threatened a teacher before?

Until you know that information, you can't be sure that the school is overreacting.  Oh, and by my experience, parents are not the best source of information concerning a kid's behavior (ask me about the kid we caught with the joint in his mouth in the bathroom whose mother adamantly said "my son does NOT do drugs").

[kesolei]

Mrmph, I get the feeling that you're prolly feeling gang-banged, Eskimo.

I DO understand what you're saying. You can't let one child do something because she's an honor-student. Once you start doing that, the parents of the 'scary' kids are going to start raising heck because their child is being discriminated against. They'll point at Ms. Honor Roll and say, "But she did it, and no one said anything." and the school will be put in a bad place.

I also agree that if a teacher suspects a student to be dangerous, they need to report it. A few bad things were stopped at my highschool because a teacher took something seriously; but at the same time a few kids were put into bad light because a teacher took a jest seriously. The good outweighs the bad though, for the most part. Its unfortunate that those good kids got into trouble they weren't expecting, but in part it was their fault for joking like that when tensions were so high.

Just what bothers me about this is how the teacher had no indication that the child was going to do anything dangerous to herself or others, took the journal.. read it and then turned the girl in. Taking the journal in the first place was probably fine; I can't tell you how many times a teacher took a book away from me during classes because I wasn't paying attention or because I was distracting people with it. But reading it later was just uncalled for imho. Human nature is to be curious; she probably wanted to know what the girls were reading in class. Can't blame that; but at the same time, she /shouldn't/ have acted on the impulse to go read it.

Anyway, gonna hush up.

[kesolei]

Sundiver, you get out of my head dangnabit!

[Sundiver]

Mathman, I'm basing my arguements upon the information provided and personal opinion. I can hardly base them upon things I don't know. Those are all possible then again none of your questions may apply at all.

 As for having never worked in education, I have a few times actually. Currently I'm president of my PTA which means nothing one way or another really except that I am very involved in the activities and welfare of the school. I've fought hard against zero-tolerance policies. I do not believe in them, I do believe they teach our young people just that, zero tolerance. It doesn't encourage them to act to a situation as rational people rather to react absolutely to every situation.

[Sundiver]

We had an incident here in D/Fw in the past few years were a young man, high school senior and honor student drove his dad's pickup to school. Well it was randomly searched and a 12gauge shotgun was found behind the seat, in the case, unloaded but with a box of shells next to it.

The young man was arrested for bringing a firearm on school property. I admit that was a understandable response. However, he was also suspended for a semester even though his testimoney all along was that he had no idea it was in there. His father corrabated his story saying that he had been doving hunting the day before and forgotten about the shotgun.

The school cited it's zero-tolerance policy for the expulsion and stood by it even the evidence against any wrongdoing or any criminal intent were purely inferred. I think this one really galvanized my opinion against zero-tolerance.

[Mathman]

Zero tolerance policies are necessary in the society we live in.  Why?  ecause of the litigious nature of our society, a zero tolerance policy is required to keep the school from being successfully sued for expulsion of a student.

Think about it this way:

The boy who took his dad's shotgun to school by "mistake."  What if he was taking it there to shoot some kids making fun of him?  What if his father is covering for him because he doesn't want his son's or his own reputation to be damaged by any possible link to a Columbine-type scenario?  Keep in mind, this is only a hypothetical modification of the story you told, and I am in no way saying this was the real reason the kid brought the gun to school.

What a zero tolerance policy does is give the school the power to help ensure the safety of all of its students and faculty.  My duty is to the school (and by that, I mean all of the students and its faculty and staff).  What a zero tolerance policy does is keep me from getting sued when I rid the school of a threat to that safety.  If I boot a kid that doesn't deserve it (such as in a case where a mistake was made to cause the zero tolerance infraction as in the case you mentioned), then I feel bad, but at the same time, I would rather make an error on the side of caution.  In addition, it keeps me from making a wrong decision in the other way.  Lets say there is no zero tolerance policy in the case you mentioned and the school believes the kid's story.  What happens if the kid is lying and brings the gun back and shoots someone on campus?  Would you be so quick to defend me for letting the kid back on campus?

[Mathman]

Also, it has been my experience with zero tolerance that it is not a single person who makes the decision.  Once an incident occurs, the policies at my school and down in San Diego (my mother is a recently retired principal from down there) are for the student to be suspended pending a type of investigation.  This involves the student's past disciplinary history, any possible causal learning disabilities for special ed students, review boards, hearings, etc. before the student is actually expelled.  Due process is followed.  I would be surprised if the district where this occured doesn't have a similar process.

[eskimo2]

I think the major difference of opinions expressed in this thread revolves around how you interpret;
“Rachel wrote the story in her personal journal and was showing it to a classmate. Her art teacher noticed, confiscated it and turned it over to school officials the next day.”
Especially:  “…and was showing it to a classmate. Her art teacher noticed, confiscated it …”
Teachers should look at what their students are doing to find out if they are on track, goofing around, reading porn, etc.  I spend about four hours a day looking over students’ shoulders, checking their work, answering questions, etc.  If I saw text that read, “… and then she killed her math teacher…” I think it would get my attention.  I assumed that the art teacher “noticed” the diary text in this manner.  Perhaps the text was even being read out loud.
It looks as if many people in this thread have assumed that the teacher basically swiped the diary from the student without having any reason to believe that it had questionable text beforehand.
The term “noticed” to me implies; “noticed the threatening text, not; “noticed that the student had a personal diary and wanted to read her secrets”.
eskimo

[Sundiver]

Yeah Eskimo, I actually saw the article on CNN cable before looking it up online. I was left with the impression from the cable report that it was actually the administration and not the teacher that read it. However, I could be very mistaken.

[Sundiver]

I'll get back to ya Mathman, trying to think of how to best phrase my response.

[vorticon]

Originally posted by eskimo2
The term “noticed” to me implies; “noticed the threatening text, not; “noticed that the student had a personal diary and wanted to read her secrets”.
eskimo [/B]

as a student the the term noticed implies "she noticed the student was goofing off by showing her freind the diary" then took it away (as a good teacher should)

It looks as if many people in this thread have assumed that the teacher basically swiped the diary from the student without having any reason to believe that it had questionable text beforehand.

looks to me like they assumed that the teacher took it from ythe student for disrupting the class...THEN decided to see what was so important and read it...what were all against is that she DID read it...

as far as im concerned the reaction given to the story was as idiotic and overblown as it would be if a teacher overheard a grade 4 kid singing "joy to the world the teachers dead"

[Fishu]

Geez.. good thing I didn't have a diary to write on my daily thoughts.
During the years at school, I'm sure there'd been couple occasions with thoughts of killin' certain fellas... albeit very far from actual action.