Molly Zilgalvis

Katie Stump

Molly Zilgalvis

EDE 300-02

Hot Topic

Is your school Rated R?

The topic chosen for this assignment is violence in schools, because it is a hot topic in today's society. We chose this topic because in recent years parents, educators, and students are facing a war against violence in the public schools The articles read for this assignment deal with issues that educators face on a daily basis. Violence among students has become common in any school district. Surprisingly, violence has been reported in elementary and middle schools. Today's society believes violence just occurs in high schools, but this is not the case anymore. Statistics have shown violence occurs more and more each day. Violence has always been a problem in the schools, but now parents, educators, students, and the press are uncovering it because they are trying to fight the battle against violence. In the past couple of years, this topic has been covered by the news media.

The articles chosen for this assignment are: "Strategies to Keep Schools Safe", "Principals Perceptions of Discipline Issues in their Schools", "Incidents of Crime and Violence in Public Schools", "Million Mom March: Stop the Guns-for-Criminals Bill in Massachusetts", and "Stop Violence Coalition of Kansas City". These articles contain information about violence, discipline, and statistics about schools in the United States. Each of these articles listed has explored the issues dealing with violence in the schools. Some of these articles contains facts, statistics, or graphs about this issue. The articles chosen not only deal with an educator's point of view, but parents ' opinions on this topic. Many parents are forming organizations or demonstrations to stop the violence in the schools. Parents are taking the concerns about safety in schools all the way to Washington D.C. and petitioning bills against these violent acts. Students are also advocating for safer schools by forming support groups for their peers and themselves. Each of these articles display different viewpoints on this topic through many angles.

Web Links on Violence in Schools are:

Teachers are faced with the challenge of creating a safe classroom environment for students. Teachers can create lessons or activities geared toward promoting nonviolent behaviors. The first activity is called "Around the world". The students are placed in a circle and introduce themselves with name and say one characteristic about themselves. Each child has to say the name and characteristic about the person before them. The second activity is a word search including words such as love, peace, unite, tranquility, nonviolent, etc. The third activity is haiku poetry. The children put their name vertically on a page and write words or phrases dealing with nonviolent themes.

Example: K-indness, A-wareness, T-ranquility, I-'m worth it, E-nthusiastic about peace.

The fourth activity involves passing out pamphlets on the statistics about violence in schools and have group discussion on their thoughts of the subject. The fifth activity includes problem solving, and teamwork. Children will be placed in groups according to class size, so each group will have approximately six people. Students will be given eight wooden boards, which each student has to stand on and give someone else a compliment. Each round one block will be taken away and eventually students will be left with one board for a group to stand on. Students will have to work together to complete the task. This activity promotes positive attitudes towards each other by working together to solve the problem. Each of these five activities can guide a teacher to a positive healthy classroom.