The rest of the story...
Written on 12:42 PM by Unknown
With all due respect to Paul Harvey for his famous phrase, I believe it fits this situation too. Over the last few days, I've been seeing several of the wonderful educators I follow on Twitter commenting on the bus bullying situation in New York. One blog I read regularly belongs to @pernilleripp and here's her well written view on our need to provide services to change behaviors like this. I am proud to say we have many interventions we use at Owen to address bullying behavior and I believe our efforts at the elementary level help our district avoid situations like this on our buses. It is important that we dig deeply into the situation to identify the right remedy to help change student behaviors whenever bullying issues arise.
However, all the Twitter and blog comments I've read have talked about how the school district may have given an excessive penalty by removing those students from their bus and home school for an entire year. Now, this is also where I think we need to look beyond the superficial headlines and bombastic reactions. Here's a link to that school district's news announcement about the consequences given to those students. In reading a bit more information, I learned the students will not be denied access to education for a school year, but rather they will be assigned to the district's alternative education center to receive education and perform their community service requirements. The article also mentions that the students will receive support services to teach them about behavior. I certainly don't know very much about the district involved or the discussions behind the actual consequences given, nor do I feel that I know enough to offer commentary on that decision . I just know that there is more to the story and I hope everyone takes a minute to look a little deeper into a story before assuming they know the whole story. As I write that, I am also thinking this is true for all news stories. It's hard to make any assumptions with only the initial and possible superficial information that comes out as a story breaks. I know our news outlets try to break stories as they happen and that does not afford the opportunity for reflection. That's part of the nature of news, I think. However, the rest of us have the option to not jump to conclusions and I hope that's how everyone sees it.
