The hands-on approach
Welcome to Room 120, Blaska Memorial middle school’s restorative justice room. You are here because you screwed up big-time.
We do real restorative justice here. This is not a daycare center. I am not a babysitter. I am the adult in the room. I speak, you listen. I teach, you learn.
I am your positive behavior coach. You call me MISTER Blaska. When I say “Sit in your assigned seat,” you say, “Yes, Mr. Blaska.”
Let me repeat what our new school district superintendent, Mr. Mueller-Owens, told you at the school assembly to start the school year: No, you cannot hit a teacher and, as you just learned, we can and do touch a disruptive student when need be. Teachers are not your punching bags. We will keep an orderly classroom.
I will help you straighten out but if you want to keep screwing up it is your decision. It’s your life, not mine. You need to know that Room 120 is the intersection of the school-to-prison pipeline the social justice warriors keep prattling about. If you want to come back to the sunlight, I will show you the way. If not, I’ll take you to our new middle school resource officer. His squad car is waiting outside. Your choice.
But I will fight like hell to keep you out of that squad car. Because I hate failure like I hate sin. Because you are NOT a victim, despite what the previous superintendent and the old school board kept saying. I don’t want to hear race, poverty, bad home life or any other excuses. If you have to work a little harder to overcome your adversities, then that is what you have to do. We will help you.
You are 11, 12, 13 years old. You are making your life this very day. Let me write it on the chalkboard:
S U C C E E D
Or be a Loser!
Your choice. Because you CAN succeed. Because we DO have a cure for poverty. It is called EDUCATION. This is the place where you get it. This is where we punch your ticket to a good job, a nice home, children that will make you proud, a community that will rejoice that you are their neighbor.
We have counsellors, nurses, special ed aides, Pathways for Progress, athletics, competitive sports, clubs, nurses, wholesome food and people who love you too much to see you fail.
Now give me 500 words on the apology you are going to read to your class tomorrow for what you did, why it was wrong and who you hurt.
66 responses to “Mr. Blaska will be your positive behavior coach”
Blaska is hot.
This is inspired.
Bravo to Blaska.
Hear, hear!
Very good – except the 2 syllable superintendent name is too pansyish.
”How about three names?”
Gunny Sergeant Highway…?
The Gotch
And then I woke up… Deeply saddened that it was just a dream. And yet…………
A humble suggestion: trade that baseball cap for a Campaign Hat (modified Montana Peak).
And where’s Sergeant Hulka or Gunny Hartman when you’s need ’em?
After all: IT’S_FOR_THE_CHILDREN!!
The Gotch
Well thought and well reasoned!
I love “our new school district superintendent, Mr. Mueller-Owens” that was a really nice touch!
Great job!
Your second sentence is where those loony lefties will start to attack you, you had the audacity to write “you are here because you screwed up big-time”. How dare a privileged old white conservative man like yourself say that an immature future progressive youngster is wrong and “screwed up big-time”, that will tarnish their self esteem, scar them for life, bust their victim hoodie bubble, cause them to violently lash out at society, and likely be the seed that spawns the violent criminal that’ll be thrown in prison in the future. These behavior challenged students deserve participation trophies to build their self esteem and an honorary wall plaque to make Mommy and Daddy proud. Dave, don’t you know that if you’re a privileged old white conservative man your words have consequences?
Seriously, I can’t wait to see the nut job lefties that crawl out from under their rocks to attack you for this blog with their blind ignorance. This’ll be fun!
Victimhood is a choice, and the pernicious prog/lib social warriors that foment that mindset amongst students do them no favors. Success comes by besting adversity, victimhood is caving to adversity. I’d like to salute a man of color in this community who successfully made his way through Madison Public Schools, UW and UW Law School. A man who would certainly not have succeeded had he taken counsel from those who poison young minds with thoughts of entitlement by virtue of a perceived victimhood. A man with whom I share little philosophically, but who just showed courage in the toxic political stew that is our community. Well done, D.A. Ozanne. Be a light to those in these precincts who are urged to the darkness, and show them that it’s better to triumph over adversity than to be crushed by it.
Just don’t touch the kids! Right….
Where’s ABob and Sir Richard and their merry men?? – Former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke declares Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to be “the most important Member of the US Congress!”
I’m right here Bob; watching and waiting to see if my prediction was correct. Manafort dies in prison. “Binary Choice” yes or no. I said yes. Still unknown is why that traitor Flynn hasn’t been put in front of a firing squad and why Stone is not in jail. White privilege??? AMIRIGHT? So many indictments; so little time.
Cheer up, Richard. He still has more sentencing to come next week in D.C.
That’ll please “Mr. My Glass Is So Full.” That’ll cheer you two right up. Any response to David Duke’s support for Ilhan Omar?
Any response to Duke’s enthusiastic support for Trump?
I think the real point of the “XXX” incident is that it is not a good educational practice to mainstream special ed/special needs students, with aggressive behavioral disorders, into the general school population. This kid ain’t normal.
Right. She does seem to have more than the normal adolescent issues. Feel for the kid but even with a full blown mental health diagnosis cannot be allowed to disrupt the class to that extent. And my own son deals with his mental illness. (And he is a champion!)
I salute your son. And, on this, his father.
Yes, such special needs kids can’t be allowed to disrupt to this extent. The way the adults’ statements speak about XXX prior to the incident (had a bad morning) telegraphs that they knew she was a ticking time bomb. Allowing XXX to be mainstreamed is a very poor policy for the rest of the kids, and it’s ALSO a very poor policy for XXX’s welfare. I’m sure no one on the staff was really surprised at her behavior. This negligence in dealing with the troubled child could present significant fault liability were XXX to injure someone else, or if XXX herself is injured.
List teachers and administrators who have had MILITARY experience. Bet it is less than 2%. Thus, the culture of “performance,” and “no excuses” with zero tolerance seems so foreign. It was to me, too, until I lived under the ‘system’ for a few months. Until after I had observed many students from foreign nations adapt to this more “disciplined” culture, I never would have believed that the “system” produced outstanding results. The military system of “choices,” allows each person to select the amount of pain they prefer in lieu of getting wid the game plan. Like life, there are no re-runs for the slip of chainsaw, or passing on double-yellow. Reality can bite severely; life is not series of video game re-runs.
Your prospective philosophy of education is FAR removed from what most women and young teacher graduates could ever imagine. Simply put, the WUSSIFICATION philosophy has become ubiquitous in the “feminine” attributes of educational philosophy. Yet, as consumers, we ALL expect zero tolerance from employee errors (nurses, dental techs, auto mechanics, bank clerks, etc). BUT we also irrationally expect that student graduates will exhibit perfectionist characteristics in all occupations, EVEN THOUGH educational training and culture never teaches these universal values. Hello? No wonder your burger is under-cooked and the fries are cold.
O M G….. display empathy to the students, especially those of color. Cut dem some slack, Jack. Enable mediocrity and exalt the notion that 70% is gud eeenuf. Consensus and collaboration. Smiley faces and contradictions? Just pay the teachers and administrators, more.
Intriguing. “The existence of white racists” made them punch a teacher? Are crosses being burned in Madison. Refused service at the sit-down restaurant? Denied membership at Nakoma Golf Club? Who are these Madison racists and what are they doing because we need to report them to the EOC.
Here is wisdom and a moral compass for lost kids. This world view requires a knowledge of right and wrong. Everything is not relative. Read Jordan Peterson as well.
Dem Star Omar (from Politico for ABob and Lesiak):
As she saw it, the party ostensibly committed to progressive values had become complicit in perpetuating the status quo. Omar says the “hope and change” offered by Barack Obama was a mirage. Recalling the “caging of kids” at the U.S.-Mexico border and the “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch, she argues that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor.
“We can’t be only upset with Trump. … His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar says. “And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”
You keep calling out my name Bob and I have responded to your previous post twice. Both were spiked by< I assume, the author of this blog. Therefore; the floor is yours to say whatever you wish without the threat of an opposing view. Good day to you sir.
@Bob Dorn;
I’m not so sure why you’re dissing Freshman HoR Ilhan Omar (Dmented-MN), she’s from a REALLY close family, after all.
How close you may ask? Welp, she married her brother, which meshes perfectly with Lefty’s desire for Moral (heh!) Relativity (nudge nudge, wink wink).
Anywho, seems she’s gotten a little too big for her Burqa; she’s gone and called SanFranNan a White Supremacist, hilariously ironic considering Omar’s David Duke endorsement.
But like you noted above, Omar’s gone-n-screwed the pooch by besmirching the self-anointed 4th Greatest President EVAH!!!, saying Hopey Changey’s a “Pretty Face that Got Away With Murder.
Glass half full? She didn’t use the Pretty Face reference with SanFranNan so she must have good vision, am I right?
Keep your popcorn at the ready, Lefty’s cascading EPIC FAIL is imploding in real time for all the lucid to see.
Which explains why it’s necessary for you to alert @AnonyBob & @richard lesiak.
The Gotch
Bob,
Could it be that Omar is a republican “plant” sent to cause division in democratic circles?
Improving Madison public schools requires a consultant (or board member or superintendent) who has a proven record of an understanding of statistics and the ability to judge whether research was employing proper methodology and measurements. School Districts, in addition to Madison, often adopt programs based on poor research. For some reason, they hang onto these programs for years after they clearly have failed. One example is a reading method called Whole Language..or learn to read by osmosis. It was based on poorly done research, it didn’t work for the vast majority of children, but some districts, including Madison, held on and on and on. In addition to well regarded research, nuance and common sense is required.
Few things are either/or.
Common sense, ( based cross culturally and experienced over hundreds of years), tells us that for learning to take place a safe, non disruptive environment is needed. The present behavior plan, while it might improve the lives of some students, is not providing the majority with classrooms free of violent behavior and free of repeated disruptions. Better research and more nuance is needed. Repeated misbehavior, that is not fixed by smiley charts and behavior coaches, needs a new plan. Concepts like zero tolerance or anything goes are not nuanced solutions. Careful research needs to re-examine concepts such as: every child belongs in the mainstream, encouraging victimhood solves personal challenges, removing a repeatedly violent child from the mainstream is a pipeline to jail, special-ed teachers are magicians who can cure deep seated emotional problems. The many things that need to be fixed in our society need solutions based on realistic outcomes not wishful thinking. Citizens should be spending tax dollars on leaders who live in reality.
Ana,
Excellent analysis, however zero tolerance does not preclude different repercussions for different infractions, so why is zero tolerance unwise?
Zero tolerance means that no bad behavior is overlooked or tolerated. The punishment can range from a simple “stop it” command to expulsion. Better to become acquainted with the concept while in school than later on when the consequences will be considerably more serious.
Zero tolerance sets a easily understood implacable standard that everyone must adapt to as opposed to the current overly legalistic 82 page gibberish BEP.
I can see it now: unruly student disrupting class~~~~~> teacher consulting the labyrinthian BEP and 15 minutes later applies the prescribed punishment, all the while appearing as a fool to the students and losing their respect.
@Batman emerges from the Bat Cave…DIG IT!
The Gotch
Fighting crime sometimes interferes with life’s simpler pleasures.
@Batman;
The CRIME interfering with your simpler pleasures, pleasures I suspect include, but are not limited to, B***HS**P***G an eminently B***HS**P*ABLE Lefty?
That, by any chance, include the one Madison/Dane County/MMSD/Superintendent Jen Cheat’em/FreeDUMB Inc., et al, committed against Positive Behavior Coach Robert Mueller-Owens?
The Gotch
You make good points. Keeping things simple often works best.