By Mark

The Associated Press recently posted a story about a string of deaths at Mentor High School in Ohio. These deaths were of teenagers: three suicides and one overdose. Families of all four attribute these deaths to the devastating impact of bullying in the schools and what was coined as a "culture of mean" at Mentor High. 

Parents and critics were quick to admonish the kids who committed the bullying–and were as quick to attack the teachers and administration. Is that justified? I don't know the situation, so despite my gut reaction, I cannot say that teachers or administration did their damnedest to prevent bullying and I cannot say that they were in fact incompetent and unresponsive.

What I can say, though, is that the "culture of mean" is not just a Mentor High issue. Ironically, all you have to do is peruse the reader comments after any of the articles about Mentor High to see that the "culture of mean" doesn't need a high school hallway or cafeteria to rear its head.

What, then, is the role of a school in a case like this? The culture of mean is all but endorsed by how "freedom of speech" is exercised. One poster under an article played devil's advocate: if it is protected speech for the Westboro Baptist Church to stand at the funeral of a soldier and shout ephithets at his grieving family, then why isn't the bully's right to bully in the halls of a high school likewise protected? 

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By Kristin

Remember the Pushmepullyou in Dr. Doolittle?  It's an animal with two heads.  I was always impressed it got around as well as it did.

Unfortunately, the graduation requirements in Washington State are like a Pushmepullyou that hasn't figured out which direction it's going.  The requirements for earning a diploma are at odds with what teachers are expected to accomplish, and I think they need to change.

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By Tom

 I taught a pretty good lesson the other day, while trying to get my third graders to revise the rough drafts of their paragraphs.

I started by asking Audrey about her hair. Audrey has beautiful hair which is always combed into complicated arrangements. I asked her whether she used a mirror when she combed her hair each morning. She explained how she and her mom stand before the mirror, constantly making adjustments until it looks perfect. Like Audrey, most of my students are careful about their hair, and they could relate to our conversation.

I shifted the discussion to writing: Like hair, writing needs to be adjusted and revised until it looks perfect. I showed them what I was talking about. I projected a paragraph that they had watched me write the day before. I modeled adding details to my piece, switching words around, dividing sentences and combining ideas.

Then we put Taylor’s work up on the screen. I picked her paper because it was fairly well-written, yet presented several opportunities for revision. After we made a few changes to Taylor’s paper, I released the class to work on their own. They had seen me revise, they had practiced revising together and they were ready to work independently.

Most of them, anyway.  There were a few that I still had some concerns about, and I went to their desks first to help them clean things up.

After about ten minutes I told the class that as soon as their paragraphs were fully revised they could walk around and read other finished papers and write comments on the back to the authors.  After that we reviewed the main points about revising, put our work away and got ready for recess.

It was a good lesson. I took the class from one place to another. My students didn’t know how to revise their writing, and now they do. There was nothing particularly fancy about this lesson, nor was there anything seriously wrong with it. It was the kind of solid, meat-and-potatoes lesson that I’m expected to chunk out several times a day for the length of the school year. The kind of lesson that I love to teach.

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