The Bullying of Gay Students, the new ESL, and the It Gets Better Project

(Sorry for the wonky formatting!)

I'm sure that most media savvy people have at least heard about the latest public discussion surrounding bullying in schools, specifically against gay students. As is typical of the news media cycle, it needed something sensational to focus it's lens on. Unfortunately, it took several recent suicides as a result from bullying to bring focus to this problem. It's a huge issue in America and there has been a lot of reporting done on it. Although we didn't touch on this topic in depth it came up in a class discussion this morning about the new ESL students: Early School Leavers.

We were told by our prof that they have been trying since the Harris years ('95-'02) to reduce the drop out rate but that it actually keeps rising. I tried to check out the stats that she cited (by Dr. Bruce Ferguson) but I wasn't sure which publication it came from. I'll have to ask her about it. What I did find was that "in Ontario, the drop-out rate over the 2001-2002 to 2004-2005 period was 9.1%, about half of what it was at the start of the 1990s"(Stats Can).  I'll obviously have to do more study on this subject when I'm not swamped with work.

Now, in class, I made the point that if they've been trying to change the schools for so long with little effect, then maybe they need to look much more closely at outside factors. Obviously this is quite difficult since there is such a vast array of things that are out of politicians and educator's hands. While the challenges may seem daunting, we certainly should do everything we can and one of those things is to make sure that senseless suicides don't occur.

In our tech class, there was a bit of a debate on the second day where a student who is also a mother ranted a bit about how she would never, ever, under any circumstances allow her child to use a blog, at school or otherwise. If the teacher tried to do something so irresponsible, why, she would "march right down there and yank my kid out of that school.". My prof tried to gently warn her that these technologies are going to be a part of our future world and that we have to make a choice between being knowledgeable about them or sticking our heads in the sand. Alas, this person promptly went and dropped the course that very week. While I personally applaud her zeal in wanting the best protection for her child, I don't really think that this was the best response.

In that regard, I was reading a wonderful article tonight on the NPR Website, called
Schools Urged To Teach Youth Digital Citizenship

A quote:

Like many students at Rutgers, senior Hina Khaliq was dismayed by Clementi's suicide. But, she says, the problem is that the rules of the Internet are unclear.

"Nobody has come out and said, 'This is how it's supposed to be.' There's no guideline set down for us when we start using the Internet at an early age — or any age — so I think it's a free-for-all," she says.

It doesn't have to be. Researchers say social workers, teachers and parents need to reach out to troubled kids online. And by that, they don't mean monitoring or limiting access, but providing the kind of brick-and-mortar services available at community centers, schools and health centers in the virtual world as well.

I think this is an excellent article and the ideas about teaching students online stewardship certainly mirror one of my primary motivations in taking my extra course at Brock which is focused on learning to use online tech in the Intermediate/Senior stream of teaching.Check the article out!

Furthermore, I wanted to highlight the It Gets Better Project created by Dan Savage, a hugely syndicated sex advice columnist, author, media pundit and journalist. It started with the suicide of Billy Lucas, a student who was bullied and tortured by fellow students because he was perceived as being gay.  Savage wished that he could have talked to him for just five minutes, to let him know that things really do get better, especially as soon as you leave high school. However, since gay adults are often not allowed to talk to teens who are gay, this doesn't happen very often. So he started this collaborative effort where he and his partner of 16 years asked people to record their own videos about being gay as a young person, with a focus on how things can and will be alright.

I think it's an extremely powerful use of online social media and it's certainly something to see and bear witness to. I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't always the most open minded of people when it came to sexuality but we all grow up and hopefully learn more. That's part of the reason many of us went into education, right?

Procrastination and Facebooking Hamlet

I have a lesson plan due for my English class and, like all good procrastinators, I am writing it pretty close to the deadline. My friend and I had a discussion tonight about study habits and he was expounding on his method of getting up every day at the same time and heading to the library to start studying in the morning. He combined this with studying between classes and, thus, he was able to just relax when he went home, content in the knowledge that he'd put in a good day of study.

Well, I'm not like that. In fact, I never have been. And yet, when I teach students about writing, how it's a step-by-step process, best approached methodically and in pieces, with careful review every step of the way, I can't help but feel a litttttttttle bit hypocritical. Not that I let my conscience bother me in that regard or anything. If there's anything that I've learnt from teachers college, it's that different people learn and work in different ways. Now let's just hope that my future students find this and bring it up in class. What an interesting discussion that could turn out to be!!

As you might've guessed from the title of this post, the lesson plan is supposed to be about that old standby, Hamlet. And, lurching around the internet as I have been, I accidentally came across this new article on an  "online classic, Sarah Schmelling's "Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition)," a retelling of the Shakespeare play that was published in McSweeney's in 2008". I found it pretty hilarious and I think it could be an interesting exercise to do with students after some modified formatting.

Then again, I was reminded of an online course I took once where one of my advisors cautioned us about using modern styles to "update" classic texts. He cautioned that refashioning the classics like Shakespeare into, for example, a hip-hop cadence, could quickly devolve into hokiness if not done with tact.  The last thing you want to do is appear contrived in front of your students. As my History professor, Dave Hamilton, said: "What are high school kids but masters at telling who or what is and what isn't cool? If you're not totally yourself and you try to fake it or phone it in, they will see through you in a second. And then you're toast.". Food for thought and another hour of my time spent off task!!