Blog #4

So for this last blog post I am going to reflect and narrate the best I can on what lead to an interesting conversation I had with Mrs. Garcia about one of her students, Madelyn, situations. This past Friday I went into the class and after about an hour of being there the principal came in to have a talk with the class. I was very excited to experience something out of the ordinary happening in the classroom environment. Mainly because I was curious about how the dynamic in the classroom would change after the principal walked in for both the teacher and students. I got to witness firsthand that it definitely did, you could almost feel the tension.
The principals speech turned out to be a very serious talk about bullying because of a certain incident that happened among three students in art class a week prior. Of course I had no idea what had happened but her talk was a bit off for me as an outsider. Mrs. Sanchez (the principal) had a strange focus in her speech. She stressed that the students had to be careful about who they called a bully. She kept stating that the definition of a bully is someone who consistently picks at someone else not someone who picks at you one time. I did not really see a point in her speech at all. All I would have gotten out of it, as a 5th grader would be, "I can be mean to someone one time and that does not make me a bully". So basically as long as they do it once it is okay and they are not a bad person. I was completely confused about everything she was stating until Mrs. Garcia cleared it up for me.
It turns out that 2 students were basically cyber bullying another student. These 2 students were photo shopping pictures of Madelyn onto  cows and other disturbing pictures and posting them on twitter for other classmates to see. This was a one time occurrence and the problem was addressed quickly. Other classmates found out and were all protecting Madelyn by calling the other 2 students bullies. After this whole incident one of the two students went home crying because she was being called a bully. The parent came in upset that students were calling her daughter a bully because she had only picked on Madelyn once. This situation was so strange because it seemed like administration decided to be on both sides. They reprimanded the 2 students but still had the principal talk to the students about loosely throwing around the word bully. Mrs. Garcia and I had a whole discussion about what lead to this situation and whether we agreed how it was being handled. We both agreed that principals speech was not completely efficient and that she should have focused on everyone just being  nice to each other. This way she would have avoided instilling in the children heads' that it is okay to be bad once.
After more conversation Mrs. Garcia began to tell me that this never would have happened if Madelyn's' parents would just test her.  Mrs. Garcia keeps referring her and the parents refuse  to listen, she thinks Madelyn has a mild form of autism. Apparently Madelyn's social interactions are off therefore, she gets picked on often. Mrs. Garcia does not know what to do because she can not have a discussion with the class about Madelyn's' unique ways without the label being assured. She really worries for Madelyn's future because without the IEP she needs and continuing school un-diagnosed she predicts there will be much more trouble her way.