School Safety
One of the many problems in most high schools is that there have been many fights and different forms of bullying from both adults and children. Parents are concerned about whether their kids will make it home or even if they are being watched over. In Chicago, a 14-year-old boy was assaulted by a staff member after being asked to leave the cafeteria. While the student grabbed his bookbag, he was slammed and pinned to the ground as if he were a criminal.
The student suffered minor cuts to his face and bruising while trying to free himself from the staff, and he was slammed onto the ground once again while being escorted from the building. This leaves many parents concerned about whether their kids are safe or not when they are at school.
What Are the Causes?
Bullying, drama, and poor mental and emotional states are the causes of fights in most cases. Students often are dealing with many issues from their lives at home, and they bring them to school and make others suffer. This is why mental health is so important. Fights have not been the only thing staff or schools have had to deal with. Most parents feel as if it has to do with the way they are raising them or the things they are used to seeing.
What’s Being Done?
Administrators usually attempt to intervene and stop the fighting from escalating. They are directed to call for assistance and escort students to the office. The parents are contacted as well, and students will have to face consequences. Moreover, educators are noticing that these behaviors are coming from the home. This can be observed by how the parents are behaving themselves around their children.
Police could possibly get involved if the school believes it is necessary. There have been reports of students bringing in guns and doing graffiti on the bathroom walls and outside school walls. Additionally, parents should be checking their child’s behavior and making sure they check in mentally more often. Parents are also working with the schools to make a plan and have additional mental health checks.
How Is This Affecting the Learning Environment?
These exact reasons are the reasons why some students are not able to learn. Some took surveys on this topic, and here is what they had to say:
- One in five high school students reported being bullied on school property in the last year.
- Eight percent of high school students had been in a physical fight on school property one or more times during the last year.
- More than seven percent of high school students had been threatened or injured with a weapon (a gun, knife, or club) on school property one or more times in the last year.
- Almost nine percent of high school students had not gone to school at least one day within the 30 days before the survey, because they felt they would be unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.
How Will We Fix This?
Schools must identify the students who are accused of committing in-house violence. They should have mental health staff (therapists) in place. Furthermore, they should provide emotional support to students when needed. Staff must create a nurturing and caring environment, then students can be less stressed and feel free of worrying about open communication and respect from staff and fellow students.
If youth feel cared for and valued, then they will be more engaged. This will have a more positive impact on the school. How parents can help this problem by talking to their kids and setting limits for their children. A couple of other things, if the parent is aware that their kids are having issues then they should intervene and stay involved in their children’s school and social life. They should also help the school solve and discuss issues within the facility.
Written by Ciara Robertson
Sources:
District Administration: How to prevent and respond to school fights Steven Blackburn
Psychology Today: Six Steps For Schools to End School Violence by Meri Wallace LCSW
PSUEDU: Violence in Schools: A Community Problem
Inset image courtesy of Lisa Syr’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Featured image courtesy of Nenad Stojkovic’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
