Sweet and Sour

You’re a good teacher. I hear your frustrations. Don’t get me started. Thank God there are teachers like you!

Really? ‘Cause I sure remember it differently. When I was 11, 12, 13 people began to say “IF I grow up” instead of “WHEN I grow up.” We had nuclear attack drills at school. Our big brothers were *dying* in Vietnam, and they showed it on the news. Not that I disagree with you, but I think it’s connected in a different way. We weren’t angry – we weren’t sophisticated enough to be angry. We were just

plain scared. Now that OUR kids are the up-and-coming generation, I think we will see a lot more of the violence those of us who are in the schools notice already: Because due to our childhoods of wondering whether it was okay to go to sleep for one more night, we taught OUR kids to fight back, to protect themselves, to Stick It To The Man. Maybe THEIR kids will hit the happy medium?

You do it very well, Ms Wolf, and that’s about all that can be done about it.

Indeed, when I was 11,12,13 I was still outside playing and being a kid. And you are a very brave person to spend all that time on a bus with middle schoolers. Course I think you are a brave person to work with them every day.

My thoughts were different today but I think we came to the same conclusion. Just do the best you can, help as much as you can, protect and share and smile as much as you can. My childhood was not safe, as you describe. My family was deep into alcoholism and depression and I was the responsible party by 10, 11, 12.

It must be tough being a high school teacher. You’ve listed so many problems of the society of recent years. It’s always been tough being a teacher. I don’t know what is wrong with country. It would help to raise up the financial level of the poor and into middle class. These kids today need someone to do the parental supervision, be it a mom or dad. With so many families have both parents working, the kids don’t get their due. Certainly the governmental responsiblilty has fallen for the last 30 years. Given an ignorant buffoon in reagan and the criminal chenybush and all the others of their ilk have sent everything in a free-fall to the depths you speak of. You are a front-line warrior and I hope you can make some sense to the few students that you will teach and guide. I hope you can stick to it until a retirement age. Sorry I haven’t been here in ages. Don’t remember when. Too bad too, teachers are my favorite people. I came out of teachers college in Industrial Arts but didn’t do public education until my late years. Best.

i never really had the oppurtunity to be a child but i also didn’t live in an environment of anger or fear as children seem to do today. i def can’t think of any solutions but a very personal one, which is not to bring any children into the world from my womb. i know that doesn’t help the general population. you are a strong strong woman to deal with these things day in and day out. i admireyour heart full of compassion. i do.

When we were 11, 12, and 13, we didn’t have the shoot/kill/maim computer games to play on. we didn’t have the films that show people getting splatted in all manner of ways. I’m not saying this is the sole cause, but I am sure it hasn’t helped the situation. Keep on doing what ya doing, hon. You ARE making a difference to “your” kids. Hugz

I hope you have a wonderful visit with Young Stud, the coach, you know, and his lovely Star lady. Bear in mind that the coaches mom is quite amazing as well. 🙂

Vietnam and the riots in Bed Stuy and on the Columbia campus were daily exposures for me in Brooklyn. I remember reading a news article about a teacher in the Bronx who was raped. She ran to a cop on the street for help — and he raped her. My mother told stories of prostitutes in the teacher’s parking lot where she worked, sex in the bathrooms, syringes in the stairwells, &c.

On the other hand, the public schools I attended didn’t have the security checkpoints they have today….

I certainly don’t have any solutions to those problems. It’s a different world today, and I think that part of it is that it’s so much smaller. Communication is instant, so we hear every story about missing children and school shootings. TV news is merciless. “If it bleeds, it leads.” There have always been bad people out there, robbing and killing, but seeing so much of it on TV desensitizes us.Sex sells – think of those colognes pitched at adolescent boys, in which women throw themselves at them when they spray it on. Kids learn that having sex is important, and of course they’re going to experiment. As long as actors, advertisers, producers, etc. can get rich showing sex and violence, they’ll continue doing it. Money is the motivator.

I remember a pretty scary childhood, what with the cold war, air raid drills, it’s just gotten scarier, more complex and certainly a much less innocent world.. You are such an asset to society..

My mother had the childhood that you described where girls wore dresses and boys wore shirts and ties to school. Where only girls had to worry about going to far and boys only bragged about second base or kissing in the back seat. I think alot of what happen then is happening now except it was hidden then adults didn’t allow children in to adult settings. **shrugs** cont…

booked in a 15 year old boy last night for domestic assult he was ticked off because he did’t want to go to bed when he was told. So he put 15-20 holes in the walls of his home and hit his dad. I don’t blame video games I don’t blame make believe, I blame parents and lack of parental control. If society would stop all this touchy feely crap, and get tough again kids would be better behaved, cont..

It’s okay to discipline your children it’s okay to ground them it’s okay to say no to your kids. When will today’s parents stand up and start parenting some of these kids. Sunshine I know and understand your problems. I get to deal with these same kids when they don’t have a teacher like you trying so hard. When they don’t have someone to pull them back from the edge. Please keep doing what u do.

Who better to spell it out than you?? And spell it out you did! Hats off to you, as always.

I still can’t believe how much the generations have changed – and I’m not even “old enough” to be saying such things, if you know what I mean. I remember being baffled when a grade 6’er would mouth off to me when I was in grade 12…when we were in grade 6 we were too petrified to even LOOK at the grade 12’s!

You’re a good teacher. I hear your frustrations. Don’t get me started. Thank God there are teachers like you! I don’t think you can get enough of these notes. Falling Dog took the words right out of my head.

A lot of the problems started when physchologists told us we could not spank (not beat) our children. That we should only reason with them. When it became wrong to be parents but wer supposed to be more like friends. Also when our children have to authority figures or roll models anymore. Look at what is out there for them to copy. I could go on and on. I would also a lack of respect for God,and I don’t necessarily mean the Christian God. I mean the God of any religion. The do not believe in consequences. From what I see they do not believe in much of anything.

see me? i’m clapping real hard, standing up with you while you do your soap box thing. that was well said teacher lady. there isn’t a solution except do what all of us do as best we can. save all the kids you can. i think you do fine with your part. don’t stay away too long, we start to missing you and stuff.

I think you’ve got the right idea to teach the kids some love and discipline along with… what was it… “home and consumer arts”? But I remember childhood much differently. I had a greatly restricted childhood, smothered by a parent who couldn’t bear to let me feel, let alone live, like a child. It wasn’t an idyllic childhood by any means. I think that figured in my decision not to have children: I could never strike a balance between protecting them and allowing them to live their lives. I knew that I, not the school and not the state, and certainly not society, would have been responsible for their upbringing. You are very good in your chosen career – I’d have to say exceptional. I believe the kids look up to you for setting boundaries and being smarter than them. Our kids need more teachers like you.

You said it very well. Have fun in NC

Loud applause coming up to you from this point on our planet for both your words and your actions. No, I don’t know what the solution is, either – and down here we also have grown-up-before-their-time, angry kids. I wonder about that all-encompassing word “freedom” Do we put too much value in it, I wonder? We give even children freedom to know about the seamy things of life, freedom to watch television/play videogames that glorify it. Where is our responsibility to learrn what is best for them as they grow and to protect them from that which will damage them? I’d like to see more responsibililty to our fellows, world-wide, and much less freedom to do whatever to follow our impulses. But I don’t know how to accomplish this, either.

You are so wonderful at your job and I’m sure you make a huge difference in many young people’s lives. I also understand how frustrating it must be at times. You persevere though my friend, those young people are going to looking you up as adults and thanking you for being the incredible person that you are! I know~ I had a few teachers like that and I did look them up and express my gratitude forthe impact they made on my life. Go you!

I think you do a great deal to help. I didn’t have such a great childhood, but I wasn’t up to expressing my anger. I had to save it up and keep it with my grown up anger. I would have loved to have had a teacher like you to help. Some of them will one day appreciate you.

arg. As for: More boobage than the strippers show down at the “Pink Pony” HERe the pink pony is just a bar here on Gulf Shores, no nakedness other than the structure after ivan and katrina. Ribbit! how about uniforms. all our kids public and private wear em. 🙂

When I was 11-13, I was angry and frightened just like them, but the world felt like a safer place.

“There were no worries of terrorism in your back yard, babies snatched from hospital rooms or left in dumpsters to die, or parents stealing children from each other or killing their own children. There were blended families with step-mothers/fathers/siblings, but not families that had multiple sets of “steps” as the original birth parents merrily married/divorced/procreated/married/divorced/procreated over and over and over again.” And in the event they might miss the horror in their neighborhoods, it’s brought to their living rooms in the form of TV family entertainment. Elizabeth is safe in her home and community, but what she sees on TV troubles her. When I was a kid our TV entertainment was The Nelsons, Ed Sullivan Show, Leave it to Beaver. Now CSI and Law and Order are shown multiple times each week, sometimes twice in an evening.