Students of Color are More Likely to Be Arrested in School (in NYC). That May Change.

My son was lured to a "marine biology magnet school" in San Diego. To attend, he waited for a bus pickup at 6:30 AM and wasn't home until after 5 PM. It was operated at a predominantly hispanic elementary school in San Diego.

Reality check: Scripps showed up for 30 minutes of content free BS every other Thursday afternoon. Otherwise, it was a babysitting service with breakfast and lunch served daily. Poor academics. My son was the top fly on the manure pile...a mistake that earned him frequent beatings during recess.

Corrective action: we pulled him out of that worthless pest hole. It took 5 weeks of intensive work to catch up to the classroom progress at our local neighborhood school. In the process, I was doing "second checks" of the grading on math and English. It was deplorable, but much better than the "magnet" school. I pushed him harder at home to compensate for the crappy public school.

Results: my son graduated with a 4.33 GPA. He took 5 AP courses and scored the best possible "5 of 5" on each one. Part of the reason is he studied so hard that he was often teaching the course while the paid seat warmer (teacher) looked on. He conducted evening review sessions for his fellow students.

These kids will do nothing: late to class, loud, won’t sit where they belong, will wonder around classroom. When they eventually sit they will open their backpacks and unload; chips, candy, 2 liters of pop, etc. and commence eating a full meal. All the while they act as if they are in a park or shopping mall, not a classroom. Phones come out and they play their music or watch videos of god knows what and laugh or dance. If I attempt to redirect, discipline, they totally ignore me, act like I’m not there, or mock me. They refuse to stop or leave. Eventually I call security to remove the worst one or two.

I've been reading over your old posts and it sounds like our situations are pretty much the same: mid 50s, 2 years or so from retirement, teaching inner city. I'm in Los Angeles and my school is a bit better (99% Latino, suburbs, pretty stable) but I see some of that behavior too. I saw it a LOT my first 11 years, because I was teaching in middle school, truly inner-city. Again, most of my kids were Latino, but "feral" was exactly the word I used. And, like you, I always noted that it was really a small percentage who acted that way, but they were so over-powering, and we get so little support... I, too, learned early on: don't bother sending them to the guidance counselor. She hated White people and her attitude was always that I had somehow provoked the poor child.

I'm in a better school now, though, and am grateful. Most of the kids are quite nice. And about 20% are actually intelligent.

When I referred to fatherless, I’m talking about out of wedlock where no father is involved. Here’s an article and the statistics look bleak.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/trends-in-unmarried-childbearing-point-to-a-coming-apart

I think children come out better when parents married and there was an attempt to be an intact family even if the marriage ends in divorce. Divorce parents are still usually involved in raising and disciplining the children.

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