Here’s some important Rules for Engagement news: Co-blogger Ross Brenneman now writes for Teaching Now. This leaves it to me to compile this week’s school climate blogging roundup. I have big shoes to fill.
As always, here’s a handful of internet content for those who are interested in child well-being. This week includes a fun new video from your favorite Kid President, an analysis of race and language from Gawker, and a frank discussion about frank discussions from The Atlantic.
“Our goal is not only to ‘predict’ the likelihood of the next bullying occurrence but see where it’s happening geographically, which begs the question: ‘Why it is more of an epidemic in some areas of the country over others?’”
—Viraj Puri, 13, quoted in a Vice article about his plans to use data from social networks to map instances of bullying across the United States
“Laughing’s the best. It’s especially great when you laugh and milk comes out of your nose, but only if you just had milk, otherwise it’s gross.”
—Kid President’s new inspirational video “A Letter to a Person on Their First Day Here,” which he recorded for his newborn nephew
“Multiple studies have found that out-of-school suspensions act as a primary predictor of whether a student will drop out before graduation. Researchers determined that suspensions lead students to be more absent, fail more courses, and become generally more disengaged from their academic careers.”
—Al Jazeera America examines the school-to-prison pipeline
“Even if they feel uncomfortable facilitating frank, sometimes emotionally charged discussions on more subjective topics, schools should provide to their students as much objective information as possible.”
—An anonymous 16-year-old girl shares her thoughts on sex education with The Atlantic
“‘Thug’ in its modern usage, as Sherman was saying, has come to mean a black person—generally a black man—who has committed any perceived infraction a white person can think of. ‘Thug’ might have once described people actually deserving of the term—Wall Street swindlers or cops who harass and kill citizens with impunity. But now it’s mostly deployed to attack the character of black Americans, many of whom have done nothing wrong but be offensive to a white person’s sensibilities.”
—Gawker’s Cord Jefferson on the heavy use of the word “thug” by commentators following Seattle Seahawks’ Richard Sherman’s bombastic sideline interview