School Climate & Safety

The Absolute Best School Climate Blogging (This Week)

By Ross Brenneman — December 28, 2013 2 min read
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The motivation of a school shooter, hip-hop’s homophobia, and smartphone addiction—here’s what you might have missed in news and thoughts related to student engagement, school climate, and the world that affects them.

“One of the bedrooms is Sammie’s room, though he hasn’t had a chance to see it. Affixed to the door is a hand-scrawled NO TRESPASSING sign, on which Jessie has taken the trouble of adding a clarification—VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT/SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN, with four miniature guns as visual aids.”
—Gawker’s Camille Dodero, on the life of would-be school shooter Sammie Chavez

“Even if you’re six years old, finding out that the handsome guy who won you over is a cad is never going to be worse than your mom going down in a hail of gunfire.”
—Slate’s Amanda Marcotte, defending Disney’s “Frozen” for its twist on Prince Charming

“Over time, it seems, the belief that coffee is unfit for children—and, specifically, that it stops them from growing—slipped into the country’s cultural consciousness and took root, despite a total lack of scientific evidence.”
—The Smithsonian’s Joseph Stromberg, on how a cereal company’s advertising campaign discredited coffee as safe for children

“While I know that children would benefit greatly from having a more diverse teacher population, I have a very hard time actually putting ethnic minority teacher-candidates through the risk of a demanding college program with very little to show for it in the end.”
—An anonymous guest blogger for Marilyn Rhames’ Charting My Own Course blog, on why he’s losing enthusiasm for recruiting minority students for education programs

“Are we working toward an ideal where nothing off-color or politically incorrect can be said? Maybe the ideal is that more thought be put into the words we use, which is not an unreasonable expectation for verbal art.”
—Gawker’s Rich Juzwiak, on the sort-of decreasing homophobia within the hip-hop community

“I clearly take advantage of my looks. I’m a model, for Pete’s sake. And in general, having beauty and intelligence is super useful during occasions that require me to assert a bit more authority.”
—Victoria’s Secret model Lyndsey Scott, in a Q&A for the site Quora, about how being bullied in high school still irks her

“No, Ashley. You’ve been watching too much Law and Order. Nobody’s going to pull DNA off a baseball cap to try to find your iPhone.”
—xoJane’s Ashley Perks on having her smartphone stolen in Washington (Related: device addiction in youth)

Apologies for the break last week; unforeseen power/Internet outages, alongside Christmas travel put a crimp in blogging plans.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Rules for Engagement blog.