13-Year-Old Arested In School For Writing On Desk

(CBS) NEW YORK In this day and age where young students are frequently charged for serious school offenses such as possessing weapons, dealing drugs, or assaulting other students on school property, one Brooklyn teen's arrest may come as a surprise. A 13-year-old girl was handcuffed and placed under arrest in front of her classmates in Dyker Heights after she wrote "Okay" on her desk.

The "suspect," Chelsea Fraser, says she's sorry for scribbling the word on her desk, but both she and her mother are shocked at the punishment.

"I'm appalled, because here we have rapists, murderers, and you're taking a 13-year-old kid? Wasting valuable manpower to arrest a child who wrote on a desk?" Fraser's mother Diana Silva told CBS 2.

Police confirm that that's exactly what's written on her arrest record and for the crime, she's been charged with criminal mischief and the making of graffiti. Fraser says the day she marked her desk, she was wrongly grouped together with troublemakers who had plastered stickers all over the classroom.

Fraser was arrested at the Dyker Heights Intermediate School on March 30 along with three other male students. She says she was made to empty her pockets and take off her belt. Then she was handcuffed and led out of the school in front of her classmates and placed in the back of a police car.

"It was really embarrassing because some of the kids, they talk, and they're going to label me as a bad kid. But I'm really not," Fraser said. "I didn't know writing 'Okay' would get me arrested."

"All the kids were ... watching these three boys and my daughter being marched out with four -- they had four police officers -- walking them out, handcuffed," Silva said. "She goes to me, 'Mommy, these hurt!'

"The students were taken to the 68th Precinct station house where Silva says they were separated for three hours. "MY child is 13-years-old -- doesn't it stand that I'm supposed to be present for any questioning?" Silva said. "I'm watching my daughter, she's handcuffed to the pole. I ask the officer has she been there the entire time? She says, 'Yes.'"

On her report card, under conduct, Fraser has earned all "satisfactory" marks and one "excellent" mark.

"My daughter just wrote something on a desk. I would have her scrub it with Soft Scrub on a Saturday morning when she should be out playing, and maybe a day of in-house and a formal apology to the principal," Silva said.

CBS 2 contacted both the NYPD and the Board of Education for a response. The police say the arrests followed a request by the school's principal. The Board of Education said the matter is under investigation, adding that graffiti was found on several desks.

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

In his preface, Philip Zimbardo stated that he didn’t want to write a book after his Stanford Prison experiment ended because he didn’t want to relive the negative emotions that the experiment caused. He agreed to write a book only after the nefarious events in the Abu Ghraib prison and being an expert witness for one of the Abu Ghraib guards. He didn’t want to write it, but he did. I didn’t want to read it, but I did.

I knew about the experiment. However, it has been so many years ago that I had forgotten where it happened and I knew none of the details. It happened when I was a graduate student at CMU. A professor may have talked about it. I only remembered that the experiment was important.

As I read the book, events that had happened in the education institution where I was either a student or a teacher flashed back. Some of the events that happened in the Stanford Prison experiment had happened in schools where I taught. Events then past by me without realizing what I had witnessed. Reading the Lucifer Effect opened my awareness: kind of late. Now I know what should have been stopped and what to avoid.

Philip wrote in detail about the behavior of an assistant that had been imprisoned and paroled prior to being made a part of the Stanford Prison experiment. I thought that he would have been sympathetic to the plight of the student prisoners. Empathy should have caused him to not do to them what was done to him [The Golden Rule]. That was not the case.

This is what I realized from reading what was written about the paroled prisoner that became the chairman of the Parole Board at the Stanford Prison. When roles are reversed after someone has had their self-esteem attacked by system authority figures, they will egregiously wage an attack on someone else’s self-esteem and then justify it with eloquent reasoning or defend themselves with anger. Knowing this is another reason why you should read The Lucifer Effect. You owe it to your students to understand how good people turn evil. The best way to do that is to read The Lucifer Effect.

Cops in Schools

Pinellas County Florida has uniformed cops flaunting weapons as they patrol the halls. They are stationed in the high schools where they operate out of an office that looks better than anything I ever had as a teacher. What I find most offensive about this is that they have usurped the responsibilities of the counselor.

When I was a high school student, we had hall monitors: not cops. When I was a teacher, there weren't cops in the schools. There should not be any now. Involving law enforcement into a behavioral problem was always the last resort. Bobby Todd brought a starter pistol to class, I sent for a counselor. The problem was quietly solved. It is usually that easy.

If you routinely allow law enforcement for function within your schools as counselors then there has to be negative long term consequences. They are not counselors any more then they are medical doctors. If a student has a personal problem, then that problem should be taken to a counselor, teacher or the school nurse. They will know if law enforcement should be involved. Otherwise, law enforcement should stay out of it.

Teacher or Educator?

According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington was recently faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses). To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers.... And then there are EDUCATORS

The War Prayer

Mike Mirra, teacher, wants you to think about this.

This is from "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain.

God sends an visitor to a church congregation that is praying for
victory. The visitor says that what they were really praying for
needed to be put into words. He does as written here.
He, in his way shows them how UnChrist like they are.
He then tells them "You have prayed it"

____________________________________________

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broke! n in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

Christ said that he who lives by the sword shall perish by the
sword. He said that when the people live according to God's law
they would beat their swords into plowshares. He also said
that the peacemakers are to be called the children of God.
Even the old 'eye for an eye' old testament has God saying
"THOU SHALT NOT Kill"

Kids In Church: funny

3-year-old Reese:
"Our Father, Who does art in heaven,
Harold is His name.
Amen."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A little boy was overheard praying:
"Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it.
I'm having a real good time like I am."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After the christening of his baby brother in church,
Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car.
His father asked him three times what was wrong.
Finally, the boy replied,
"That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home,
and I wanted to stay with you guys."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One particular four-year-old prayed,
"And forgive us our trash baskets
as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they
were on the way to church service,
"And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?"
One bright little girl replied,
"Because people are sleeping."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3.
The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake.
Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson.
"If Jesus were sitting here, He would say,
'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'
Kevin turned to his younger brother and said,
"Ryan, you be Jesus!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A father was at the beach with his children
when the four-year-old son ran up to him,
grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore
where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked.
"He died and went to Heaven," the Dad replied.
The boy thought a moment and then said,
"Did God throw him back?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A wife invited some people to dinner.
At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said,
"Would you like to say the blessing?"
"I wouldn't know what to say," the girl replied.
"Just say what you hear Mommy say," the wife answered.
The daughter bowed her head and said,
"Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Great Truth That LIittle Children Have Learnd:

1. No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2. When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3. If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4. Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5. You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
6. Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7. Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
8. You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9. Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10. The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.

GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:

1. Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.
2. Wrinkles don't hurt.
3. Families are like fudge, mostly sweet with a few nuts.
4. Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.
5. Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
6. Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not thetoy.

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD

1. Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
2. Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3. When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4. You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rockingchair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5. It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers toask you the questions.
6. Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
7. Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:

1. You believe in Santa Claus.
2. You don't believe in Santa Claus.
3. You are Santa Claus.
4. You look like Santa Claus.

SUCCESS:

At age 4, success is not peeing in your pants.
At age 12, success is having friends.
At age 16, success is having a driver license.
At age 35, success is having money.
At age 50, success is having money.
At age 70, success is having a drivers license.
At age 75, success is having friends.
At age 80, success is not peeing in your pants.

Remember to forget the troubles that pass your way but don't forget the blessings that come each day. Have a wonderful day with many smiles.Take the time to live! Life is too short.

Source: Trevor

Maria deBorbon wants us to read this.

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schultz, the creator of the "Peanuts"comic strip. You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just read it straight through, and you'll get the point.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America Contest.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.
Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?

The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care.
Pass this on to those people who have made a difference in your life.
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.
It's already tomorrow in Australia " (Charles Schultz)

2007 is ahead of us.

You have an opportunity here to share your thoughts with us. If you are a student, there must be something you want teachers to know about your learning experience. If you are a teacher, there must be something you want parents or other teachers to know.

I'm going to be posting thoughout the year. I hope you do also.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Season's Greetings from everyone that makes Lessonplans.com a free service. We will soon be entering a new years with plans for even a better year.

You can help make this Blog better by participating. About a thousand visitors have read the Blog but only 2 have responded. You can change that.

The Reckoning

It was the end of the Vietnam war. I was recently divorced and sitting by myself in the Midland Restaurant. Sitting in the table behind me was a family with a soldier wearing his uniform. He was confronted with this: "You are a baby killer!" I wasn't with him so I don't know what he did with his buddies. However, I did hang-out with Paul B. He was a Marine that was active in the Vietnam war. He told me multiple times that they took no prisoners. "We killed all of them." He also told me how effectively he could lob shells into a village. Paul didn't like the World Court. I sensed that he didn't want any institution to supersede the authority that gave him permission to do what he did. Another person told me, "It's a dirty business, but someone has to do it."

Paul with his Marine buddies were effective authorized killers. Furthermore, Paul had the personal authority to give authority to an indiviual to go somewhere to kill a specific individual in a Vietnam village. What all these people like Paul have in common is a need to avoid personal responsible for their behavior. The process of holding the people that executed the Gulf wars responsible for their behavior has begun. Here are a few links that give you more information about unfolding events.

War Crimes Trials: a cloud on the horizon
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld Not Likely To Be Prosecuted
Nuremberg Trials

Trevor wants us to think about the way it was.

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli. Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool, no beach closures then. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell and a pager was the school PA system. We all took gym, not PE and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now, flunking gym was not an option! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations. Where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off, little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck. To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

Mirrors in the Mind

In this month's Scientific American there is an important article about learning. I'm delaying writing about it until I can link to it.

"A special class of brain cells reflects the outside world, revealing a new avenue for human understanding, connecting and learning."

1. "Subsets of neurons in human and monkey brains respond when an individual performs certain actions and also when the subject observes others performing the same movement."
2. "There "mirror neurons' provide a direct internal experience, and therefore understanding, of another person's act, intention or emotion."
3."Mirror neurons may also underlie the ability to imitate another's action, and thereby learn, making the mirror mechanism a bridge between individual brains for communication and connection on multiple levels." source: Scientific American, November 2006

It's Halloween

It's a day after Halloween, close enough for this announcement. I bought a 3 year subscription to MAD. I really did. On the front page there is a picture of Barry with nettles sticking in him.

I haven't read MAD since I was a teenage. When my nephew Josh was in Jr. High, I went to his school to bring him home. There I found him in the library reading MAD. I has horrified. I thought, "Kid, you are wasting your time and education." That is true from many perspectives. But, from my perspective, it is now comic relief. When life gets to the point where I think I just cannot deal with it anymore. I read Mad and escape from reality. Two beers does the same thing, but Mad is better. I now have a 3 years subscription to MAD.

I hope yours was a scary Halloween.

A Great Way to End the Day

A great way to end the day is to go to Lessonplans.com and click on Astronomy Picture of the Day. The best time is late at night. There you will see pictures that only our generation is privileged to see. It would be more accurate to say that these images were first made available by modern technology to the generation you see setting in your classroom.

Buck-minster Fuller gave me a cartographers perspective. When I became a member of the St. Petersburg Astronomy Club, I began developing an astronomic perspective. That is what will happen to you when you start thinking about what you see at Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Jack Horkheimer : Star Gazer said, "Keep on looking up."

"An astronomy picture a day is like an apple a day." Who said that? I did.

Dancing Makes You Smarter

I began taking dance classes about 3 years ago after I watched a dance class at Bronco Bill's. I watched for a few weeks and then decided I would learn to dance. The first year was a tragedy. I'm very persistent, so failure wasn't an option. I've make remarkable progress after 3 years and hundreds of lessons. It didn't take me long to start thinking about what effect this was having on my brain/physiology and if was having an effect on my brain/physiology then it must also be having an effect on other dancers as well. So I did a Google search. Sure enough it had already been researched at Stanford University. Click the following link to read the Stanford report.

http://dance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm

Zachary Goes to Catholic School

It is rare that I'm given a funny education joke. I'm passing this one on to you. Perhaps you have one you will share with me.

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Zachary Goes to Catholic School

Little Zachary was doing very badly in math. His parents had tried everything... Tutors, mentors, flash cards, special learning centers. In short, everything they could think of to help his math. Finally, in a last ditch effort, they took Zachary down and enrolled him in the local Catholic school. After the first day, little Zachary came home with a very serious look on his face. He didn't even kiss his mother hello. Instead, he went straight to his room and started studying. Books and papers were spread out all over the room and little Zachary was hard at work. His mother was amazed. She called him down to dinner. To her shock, the minute he was done, he marched back to his room without a word and in no time, he was back hitting the books as hard as before. This went on for some time, day after day, while mother tried to understand what made all the difference. Finally, little Zachary brought home his report card. He quietly laid it on the table, went up to his room and hit the books. With great trepidation, his Mom looked at it and to her great surprise, Little Zachary got an "A" in math. She could no longer hold her curiosity. She went to his room and said, "Son, what was it? Was it the nuns?" Little Zachary looked at her and shook his head, no. "Well, then," she replied, was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms? Little Zachary looked at her and said, "Well, on the first day of school when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren't fooling around."

We Created the Educator's Blog for You.

I'm Stephen Lyons and I'm the moderator. This blog is your opportunity to meet other teachers. Perhaps, you may even meet a student or parent from another country.

Think about this. Educators come here from everywhere on Earth from Lessonplans.com. For example, most educators that use LessonPlans.com live in America, as I do, but a large percentage of them live in Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Singapore and New Zealand.

What will you write? You could begin by introducing yourself. I posted a picture of my dance teacher. You'll find more about me from my profile. You could include a picture of yourself, your students or a picture of your favorite teacher. You could ask a question.

To post, look above in the blue header. There you will find 'BlogThis'. Click it. What to do next will be obvious.

Post often, practice and have fun.

Warm regards,

Stephen

Arline Winerman is my dance teacher. We dance at Dancers Rendezvous, 4445 East Bay Drive, Clearwater, FL 33764. Come dance with us.