Well, I can only really give you my opinion on our school as that's the only one I have experience with. The Christian school my DD went to for her 2 kindergarten years (if you remember we do 2 years of K here) and DS did his first "year" (actually only 6 months) of K...we didn't have that problem. It was such a small school...there were only 3 to 7 kids in each grade...I think we had 60 kids in the whole school and the older kids really looked out for the younger ones and it was just such a nice atmosphere there. But this school... to be honest I think the parents play a huge role. This boy pointing at a darker kid shouting "Turk! Turk!" His mom was in the parents organization with me and made several comments about foreigners and "not knowing what kitchen that came from...it might be from a Turkish or Moroccan home." He's getting that from home...try telling his mom there's a problem with him shouting racist sentiment in the gym. She's not going to see it as a problem because she's racist herself. He told my son in first grade he was going to kill him and our whole family. His mom laughed about it and said he probably just got it from video games. She didn't think it was anything big...a 6 year old making death threats...."He doesn't MEAN it." His intent is to make my son afraid...that's WRONG.
And they have this method where they are trying to teach kids to communicate themselves and set their own boundaries...good in theory, but it assumes that all kids respect those boundaries and will treat each other with equal respect, but some don't and the school doesn't seem able to differentiate between normal accidents and bullying. They treat each incident as an isolated event and don't see a pattern where a particular student or group of students consistently singles out another and purposely does mean things. Then it's a "misunderstanding" that my son just took wrong, or it was an accident that the kid just stepped on his foot...6 times in a row walking down the hallway. Or a kid says "Let's play a new game, called Kick the ball as hard as you can at ----" (my son) and they do, and it hits him and he cries and then the teacher comes and the kids say "It was an accident...I didn't mean to hit him" and the other boys all go "Yeah, it was an accident" because otherwise they will get in trouble. So the teacher tells my son "You know...those boys just play rough...maybe you should find something else to do" and they can't do anything to the boys because they didn't hear the comment and so they can't take DS's side. It's a combination of not enough supervision, sneaky kids, and unsupportive parents. In the morning, they had 200 kids on the playground at our old school and only 2 teachers to supervise, and those two teachers would stand on one end of the playground drinking their coffee and chatting. I once saw a group of 6 kids...one was getting frustrated with the others who were teasing her, and she started windmilling her arms at them while they are laughing and dancing out of the way....they were literally less than 1 meter from the 2 teachers and the teachers didn't notice a thing. They don't want to be out there on playground duty, there are too many kids to watch, the parents don't care....there was a group of parents standing 10 feet from where my son was being bashed against a brick wall and screaming his head off and not one of the parents saw a thing. The school relies on the parents to support them and help, and the parents say "It's not MY job! That's what the TEACHERS are for." But when the parents don't care, there are going to be issues. Sorry, that was REALLY long.
, and had my phone screen as dim as the settings would allow me to go, and it still woke my DWifey up...
The soup sounds yummy though.
Alex MorganVerified account @alexmorgan13
"Hey Sergio!"
