Challenging Changes...

We are well into the school year and the rumor mills are turning faster than windmill in Western KS.  (a joke most students won't get :) )  I knew that this would be part of the job when I moved to the middle school population, but what I didn't count on was how constant and complicated the problems would get.  Tangled webs is an understatement compared to what some of the middle school students are able to create here.  If these students spent half of the energy on their classwork as they do on these rumors and deceitful comments, we would have a school full of scholars. 
The teasing and the rude comments are hard enough when you are in middle school, and they lead to attendance problems all across the country.  However, the deceitful comments and straight out lies about the other students are the problems that are causing the greatest difficulty for many of the students.  There are students having to choose sides and pick between friends when the story doesn't have any truth to it in the first place.  Does anyone else remember playing the telephone game when they were in elementary school or at sleep overs?  You remember the game, where you sit in a circle and someone says something crazy, but they can only say it one time.  The next person has to repeat the sentence as they heard it, and so it goes.  Those are the politics of middle school.
Re-reading over the last several blogs, it is a wonder that any of us survived middle school at all.  But times are different now.  Social media is making middle school a different game altogether.  The best analogy I can come up with is that when we were kids we shopped with cash, and now our kids are shopping with debit cards.
Not that what we did was wrong, or what our kids are doing is wrong either.  It is just different.  A saying from my old school was "What we know today, doesn't make yesterday wrong, it makes tomorrow better".



With that information in hand, parents we have to start arming ourselves with the same information that our kids have.  We need to educate ourselves on the social media forms that you are kids are using.  We need to know how to use their forms of technology so that we can monitor and supervise them with an educated mind.
Parents, we can not control every aspect of our student's lives (trust me I have tried, and they are very resistant to that process).  However, we can continue to have informed conversations with our students.  I am not talking about the hard conversations about sex, drugs, and violence.  I am talking about everyday conversations about how their friends are doing, where they are going, and how they are spending their time on their devices.  Have your student teach you the latest and greatest new social media craze.  What a great way to empower a child, learn a new skill, and develop your relationship.  Who said middle school had to be all bad?

...And there is more

It is so strange how some things happen, but one of my co-workers (Thanks Michele!) sent me article that I felt had to be shared.  I am working really  hard to make sure that I blog each week, but this one really couldn't wait.

In Middle School, I frequently get confronted by students stating that they have been bullied. Bullying is the new buzz word.  But this article does a great job of talking about the differences in rude behavior, mean behavior, and bullying behavior.  I couldn't have said it better myself.  Take the time to read and review with your student.  

Rude vs. Mean vs. Bullying

Girls vs. Boys, there is a difference!

We have surely all heard of the school yard bully that took lunch money from the scrawny little kid in a alley on the way to school.  When we discuss bullying that is the image that comes to mind for many of us.  But unfortunately, bullying has taken on many different forms and fashions here in the fourteenth year of the twenty-first century.
The thing that is becoming glaringly apparent is that boys and girls both participate in bullying, but they do so in a very different way.  Boys tend to play out the physical aspects of bullying: fighting,  taking lunch money, and teaming up against one kid. Girls are another story entirely.  They can be downright evil with their behavior.  Now, before everyone starts getting mad at me, I am not saying that girls are evil. (In fact, some of my favorite people are the girls). It is some of their behaviors that are evil.  Relational aggression is the term being used to define girl bullying.  This term is more accurate than bullying because girls use their RELATIONSHIPS to gain power over others.  Some examples of this include exclusion, spreading rumors, and reveling secrets.  Girls can be cruel and demeaning with their behavior.  This relational aggression is what keeps my door revolving during the school day.  "...This person said this about me, and now my best friend doesn't like me anymore."  "Why does my friend believe those rumors when they know that they aren't true?"  And so goes the angst of the middle school mayhem.
So, why have I gone of this little tyrant telling you about the difference between girl and boys and their bullying styles?  Great question!!  My sole intention is to let everyone know that bullying no longer fits in a neat little box like it used to when Ralphy was walking home from school in "The Christmas Story" facing his school yard bully.



Bullying takes on the face of the girls in the movie mean girls.



Anyone can be bully, and anyone can be a target.  Our next steps are teaching our students resiliency and how to handle the bullying behavior.  While we can not prevent our students from becoming a target, we can prevent them from becoming a victim!  

Social Media Madness

It has only been three weeks since the start of school and already things have returned to the normal motion of the mid-year mayhem.  What do you think we have to thank for this constant chaos?  Of course, it is the silly social media networking sites!  Facebook, twitter, instagram and snapchat were all great ideas when there were created, and the majority of their content and intent is great.  However, it is when the intent takes the content and uses the power for evil that it creates total turmoil in the middle school building for the better part of the school week.
School counselors can site example after example of students whose lives are turned upside down because of these media sites.  A simple text conversation they were having with a friend is screen shot and shared with the masses.  The intent of the original conversation is twisted and distorted until the real meaning is lost in translation like the telephone game played at elementary sleep overs.  Numerous hours of academic classes are lost due to students refusing to come to school, talking with counselors, or just skipping classes.  Theses students fall behind in their classwork and become segregated from their peer groups as their situations increase the anxiety until the next incident of teenage drama comes along.  Fortunately for some of these students, it only takes a week or two.  For others, it is months of alienation and seclusion by their peer groups.

So, what do we do about it?  COMMUNICATE, Communicate, communicate!!!  Check your students phones, computers, and ipads.  I know that student privacy is a sticky subject with many adults, but I am going to get on the soapbox here and stand up for the adults for a change.  You own everything the student has, and it is better to check it early and often, then find out too late to do anything.  Ask any parent of a student who has lost a child to suicide.  I am almost positive they will tell you to check.  Parents, talk to your students, and then check to verify.  It doesn't mean you don't believe them, it just means that you care about them.  Parents, you have to have their back. If they can fool you, then who do they have to count on when life really gets hard....like HIGH SCHOOL!