Arrgh!!
I've been meaning to blog and gripe about students and all, and I likely will, but I've been busy and put it off. Today, however, I need to vent, and it has nothing to do with my dunderheads, except maybe that the object of my ire is the system that created them.
Alex got in trouble today at school.
Alex never gets in trouble in school.
I'm not one of those parents who says my kid is perfect and an angel. He's not, and I'm usually the first person to admit it. However, his behavior record is stellar.
Today, he gets off the bus and goes directly to his room. He usually does to work on his homework. So after about an hour he comes out crying and says he was written up at school. As I'm opening the envelope, he's crying, "I didn't know..."
Basically, what happened was he drew three pictures of The Punisher, who happened to be on a Spiderman cartoon last week. One with a bomb launcher, one with a bazooka, and one with a gun. The teacher send home a note stapled to the drawing, which I have to sign and send back, asking me to talk to him about it, how serious it was, and that he could face suspension. She says she didn't "write him up" because he's never drawn anything like that before.
At the risk of sounding like a gun-toting conservative...I'm pissed. The pictures are just of the guy. There are no people being shot in the picture. I dunno. I just find it so incredibly stupid. Alex is traumatized now because, in his mind, he did something "illegal." Nowhere in any handbook or notice (and I looked) is there a rule about drawing weapons. Of course, I do see where this might be a concern if it was a violent picture, but...well, I don't know. He's drawn pictures of tanks and bomber jets....no complaints. He's drawn knights and pirates with swords and cannons...no complaints. I wonder if she would have sent a note home if he'd drawn a soldier or a policeman with a gun. It just really upsets me. This was just a person in a black t-shirt (I even had to ask who it was; it could have been a mime for all I knew).
Firstly, I told him he was not in trouble. I told him drawing a picture like that was not illegal; it just wasn't allowed at school, and we talked about the difference. I said that it is okay that he didn't know because no one had ever told him, but that now he knows. Then we talked about violence and zero tolerance and, this is the part that really ticks me off, I had to explain why we have these rules at school (okay, so I know I didn't have to, but I felt that I needed to explain; the reason this pisses me off is that if they are going to raise the issue, they should explain why it is a problem). So I told him about Columbine and how people wanted to keep that from happening again. I told him that in order to keep it from happening, that teachers have to pay attention to what is going on, and that some people draw pictures of guns and knives because they are mad, sad, or upset, and that teachers needed to make sure that kids do not want to hurt themselves or other people.
All in all, I don't know that I handled it well. It all sounded stupid to me. He's learned his lesson, but at what cost? What a bunch of candy asses we have dealing with our kids.
The last time I was this angry at the school was when he was in Kindergarten and they sent a not home saying that the bus monitor feared for her safety because he pointed his fingers at her like they were guns and they were on "automatic." I basically wrote back that if their bus monitor was mortally afraid of that then they seriously needed to worry about her mental health.
Honestly though, where the hell is this world going to? Am I the only person who sees how utterly absurd this is?
Alex got in trouble today at school.
Alex never gets in trouble in school.
I'm not one of those parents who says my kid is perfect and an angel. He's not, and I'm usually the first person to admit it. However, his behavior record is stellar.
Today, he gets off the bus and goes directly to his room. He usually does to work on his homework. So after about an hour he comes out crying and says he was written up at school. As I'm opening the envelope, he's crying, "I didn't know..."
Basically, what happened was he drew three pictures of The Punisher, who happened to be on a Spiderman cartoon last week. One with a bomb launcher, one with a bazooka, and one with a gun. The teacher send home a note stapled to the drawing, which I have to sign and send back, asking me to talk to him about it, how serious it was, and that he could face suspension. She says she didn't "write him up" because he's never drawn anything like that before.
At the risk of sounding like a gun-toting conservative...I'm pissed. The pictures are just of the guy. There are no people being shot in the picture. I dunno. I just find it so incredibly stupid. Alex is traumatized now because, in his mind, he did something "illegal." Nowhere in any handbook or notice (and I looked) is there a rule about drawing weapons. Of course, I do see where this might be a concern if it was a violent picture, but...well, I don't know. He's drawn pictures of tanks and bomber jets....no complaints. He's drawn knights and pirates with swords and cannons...no complaints. I wonder if she would have sent a note home if he'd drawn a soldier or a policeman with a gun. It just really upsets me. This was just a person in a black t-shirt (I even had to ask who it was; it could have been a mime for all I knew).
Firstly, I told him he was not in trouble. I told him drawing a picture like that was not illegal; it just wasn't allowed at school, and we talked about the difference. I said that it is okay that he didn't know because no one had ever told him, but that now he knows. Then we talked about violence and zero tolerance and, this is the part that really ticks me off, I had to explain why we have these rules at school (okay, so I know I didn't have to, but I felt that I needed to explain; the reason this pisses me off is that if they are going to raise the issue, they should explain why it is a problem). So I told him about Columbine and how people wanted to keep that from happening again. I told him that in order to keep it from happening, that teachers have to pay attention to what is going on, and that some people draw pictures of guns and knives because they are mad, sad, or upset, and that teachers needed to make sure that kids do not want to hurt themselves or other people.
All in all, I don't know that I handled it well. It all sounded stupid to me. He's learned his lesson, but at what cost? What a bunch of candy asses we have dealing with our kids.
The last time I was this angry at the school was when he was in Kindergarten and they sent a not home saying that the bus monitor feared for her safety because he pointed his fingers at her like they were guns and they were on "automatic." I basically wrote back that if their bus monitor was mortally afraid of that then they seriously needed to worry about her mental health.
Honestly though, where the hell is this world going to? Am I the only person who sees how utterly absurd this is?