10/30/09

Friday was somewhat eventful. I had a problem, yet again with one of the kids saying cuss words. He ended up leaving right after I had told him to sit down in time out, but he will have to pay his time when he comes back. I also sat one of the kids down later on for making some rude comments to one of his peers. I gave him several warnings to be nice to the other kid, but he refused to listen.

As it was getting closer to the evening, some of the kids began either to tell racist jokes or make racist comments towards each other. At one point, one of them called another a cracker. I thought that she said something else so I let that one go, but later on I found out that I was wrong. That goes to show that I am not perfect. I try as hard as I can. As far as the racist jokes, I had to allow my supervisor to handle it because I was not trained to deal with a situation like that. We held a meeting with the kids and one of their parents and addressed each individual situation and mentioned that there is zero tolerance for that type of behavior. I am not sure what the punishment will be, but I imagine that they will be suspended.

My thoughts are that they are good kids, but they do not know any better about making racist comments and jokes. They are influenced mostly by their possibly deadbeat parents and their friends that they hang out with at school. I am not saying that all of them have bad parents and hang out with the wrong crowd, but I believe that there are a select few of them that do. Some of them do not have any structure at home and live in households where the parenting styles are permissive. Their parents let them walk around town and just do whatever they want and be friends with whoever they want.