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Category Archives: Public School

The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 7/7

18 Jun

The day I discovered the principal was not going to do anything about Macario, I finished my workday at 6:00 PM and drove to the police station that served the neighborhood where Macario lived, which was a fifteen-minute drive in the opposite direction I would take to go home and the drive home usually took an hour in the afternoon and evening due to rush hour traffic.

When I arrived, the lobby at the police station had several other people already there waiting to talk to the officer working the counter. While I waited, I broke out the red ink and correct student work.

I had to wait a half hour before I could talk to the officer on duty and get the proper forms then spend another thirty to forty minutes filling out the forms, which resulted in a squad car with two officers visiting Macario’s home to question him and his parents then report the incident to child services, who then became involved.

After child services became involved, Macario had more counseling in addition to the school counselor, his mood improved but the joker in teen was gone.  He even started to do the schoolwork in my class and managed to bring his grade up to a “C” or a “B” by the end of second semester.

To do this, he spent more time at Janice’s house doing homework and a few years later he graduated then I lost contact with him and Janice never hearing from them again.

Moreover, Macario was one of about 6,000 students that I taught during my thirty years in the classroom. I have hundreds of stories similar to this one but not about sexual abuse.

According to studies, one in six men has been sexually assaulted by the age of 16. Source: Sexual Abuse of Males

Return to The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 6 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on June 18, 2011 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, Parenting, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 5/7

16 Jun

My first step after talking to Janet was to make sure both of them came to my class after school.  We talked again and he admitted to me what had happened but stuck to his story that he managed to fight his way free, get some clothes and escape the house.

That’s when I called the ninth grade counselor to see if she was free, and I walked him and Janet to her office where we had a meeting.  After I reported what I knew and Macario admitted that’s what happened, I left that meeting to fill out the proper form, which went to the principal.

The principal at that time was an unpopular ogre and not popular with the teaching staff. Since he’d been running the school, many teachers had found jobs in other school districts and left to work elsewhere. We even lost a few of our vice principals due to the ogre.

He was one of those administrators that believed teachers were responsible for everything and blamed them for students not studying, misbehaving, failing, not reading—you name it and it was the teacher’s fault.

In short, he was an ogre idiot that spent more time criticizing teachers and writing them up than anything else he did. I half suspected he would blame what happened to Macario on me in some way. That’s how twisted he seemed to be.

That ogre idiot called Macario into his office the next day.

A few days later, I asked Macario for an update. He said after he talked to the principal, the ogre idiot (my words) dismissed the case and said to go back to class.

I met with the ogre idiot and asked him why he was not following up. By then, more than a week had gone by since the sexual assault, and the ogre idiot told me he thought Maracaro was lying to get attention.

To be continued on June 17, 2011 in The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 6 or return to Part 4

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on June 16, 2011 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, Parenting, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 4/7

15 Jun

Janice told me that Macario’s parents both worked and were out of the house before he left to school.

She said the only reason he ate a good breakfast was that she made him eat something like a banana, an egg and a piece of toast when he arrived at her house to walk her to campus each morning.

Janice was not only Macario’s best friend and lover, she was also more of a mother to him than his mother was.

The story she told me was that while he was still in the shower that morning, two strange men broke into the house and tried to rape him.

They came into the bathroom and dragged him out of the shower.  He fought and said he managed to break free, but his eyes darted away again as he answered my questions about what happened after the men dragged him from the shower.

He claimed he fought his way free, grabbed some clothes and escaped from the house and hurried to meet Janice on the way to school where he told her what happened to him.

To be continued on June 16, 2011 in The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 5 or return to Part 3

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on June 15, 2011 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, Parenting, Public School, Teaching

 

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The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 3/7

14 Jun

Macario was a talker and loved to be funny and get people to laugh, which wasn’t always welcome when it disrupted a lesson.

However, I must admit, even when Macario interrupted a lesson with one of his off-the-wall jokes or comments, I often laughed too.   It was impossible not to like him.

Then, as he often did after he cracked the entire class up, he would apologize.

Janice, on the other hand, was an “A” student that enjoyed reading books and was as determined as I was to motivate Macario to do the school work and study.

I conspired with Janice to find ways to trick him into doing his homework, which even for the young girl that loved him was a challenge. He was more into having fun than being serious about anything.

Some might wonder why I didn’t contact his parents. In fact, I had called them several times over the months and even had a face-to-face parent conference, but his study habits did not change.  I tried referrals to the counselor, and assigned after school detentions and even a Saturday school. Nothing worked

That is when I made the decision to see if Janice could help.

Between us, Janice and I managed to squeeze a “D” out of Macario in English his first semester in high school.  Without her efforts, he would have failed.

To make a long story shorter but not too short, I kept Macario after class that day and asked him what was wrong. He swore nothing was wrong but I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was disturbed and had lied to me because he glanced away to stare at the floor when he answered the question.

This was unusual since Macario had never lied to me. When confronted for something I saw him do in class, he always admitted guilt and said he was sorry (once again).

However, when Janice came into fifth period after lunch, I asked her what was going on and she told me everything she knew.

To be continued on June 15, 2011 in The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 4 or return to Part 2

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on June 14, 2011 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, Parenting, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 2/7

13 Jun

Since I don’t remember the student’s name and will not spend the time to search my files to find it, I will call him Macario because he was a happy boy of 14 when I knew him.

Macario was in my fourth period class before lunch and he wasn’t a good student and seldom did his work but he was a good person and someone easy to like and almost impossible to get angry at.

I also knew his girlfriend, who I will call Janice, since she was in my fifth period class after lunch. The couple often came to my class at lunch when my high school journalism students were working. The chess club also met there to play chess and the high school environmental club met there once a month to plan hikes and projects.

One would think that spending lunch with friends outside would be preferable to a teen.

If you knew the high school where I taught and the gang culture that dominated it, it made sense that good kids would want to find a sanctuary from the potential violence. The gang culture then was large enough that it brought an armed sheriff’s deputy to campus daily, who sat in his squad car in the mall where most of the kids ate lunch and where all the gang bangers could see that shotgun attached to the dash.

The high school also had an unarmed squad of campus police officers.

However, getting Macario to read or do homework was a challenge and 75% of the way through the school year, I wasn’t having much success beyond the minimum necessary to keep his girlfriend from leaving him.

Macario wasn’t interested in school work or reading books, but he was always in a good mood and happy, which is what made me suspicious something happened the one morning he came to class early and with a dazed, disturbed look on his face and didn’t say a word all period.

To go an entire period without attempting to get others to laugh was not Macario.  At first, I thought he may have broken up with Janice, or a family member died or maybe his parents had separated and were going to get a divorce. I had no idea that Macario had been sexually molested.

That day Macario and Janice did not show up for lunch.

When Janice came to fifth, I asked if she’d had an argument with Macario or had broken up with him.

To be continued on June 14, 2011 in The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 3 or return to Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2011 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, Parenting, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 1/7

12 Jun

It’s strange what triggers a memory.  This memory should have been triggered when my wife and I were watching the Oprah show on November 5, 2010, where she had 200 adult men in her audience that had been sexually molested as children.

As millions know, Oprah was abused as a child and is seriously passionate about the awareness of sexual child abuse.

What triggered this memory was a series of stories such as Anthony Weiner‘s inappropriate Twitter exchanges with a 17-year old girl and French writer Tristane Banon, who refuses to testify in the Strauss-Khan U.S. sexual molestation case.

At this point, you may be thinking that this is about me being sexually molested as a child but no, that is not the story.

This “true” story is about a ninth grade student of mine while I was still teaching high school English.

Since I wrote many of my reports on a computer and kept them on a USB drive, I probably still have this report and the name of the boy that was molested stored away somewhere in a file, but I doubt if I would ever find it since that CPU is now on a shelf and has been replaced by a series of newer, faster computers over the years.

California has a law that mandates educators must report suspected child abuse or the educator (including teachers) may lose his or her job and never work in education in California again.

In California “child abuse” refers to physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and severe emotional abuse. The pdf. document to educate educators and/or teachers is 85 pages long and comes with a test.  Source: Mandated Reporter Ca.com

If you are curious what this training entails, click on the above link and discover the training I had one year.  We may not have used this exact manual, but we had one and spent several hours in a workshop learning what to do and what happened if we didn’t do anything.

The penalties for failure to report are severe. “A person who fails to make a required report is guilty of misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and/or up to a $1,000 fine.… Educators who fail to report may also risk loss of their license or credential,” which means losing your job as an educator/teacher.

During my 30 years as a teacher, I filed one report.  It was the only time that I suspected that one of my students had been sexually molested.

To be continued on June 13, 2011 in The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 2

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on June 12, 2011 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, Parenting, Public School, Teaching

 

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Making Positive Impacts on Education – Part 2/2

01 Jun

Steve Fisher writes in the Costco Connection, “Alan Page was a defensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears. During the off-season, Page studied law and in 1992 was elected the first African American associate justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court.  Page was inducted into the Pro-Football Hall of Fame in 1988.”

Alan Page says, “My parents knew and understood the value and importance of education and they instilled that in me.  And for young people who don’t value education as much as they could or as they should, it seems to me that trying to change that focus benefits them a great deal but also benefits all of us in society a great idea.”

Edgar Martinez says, “If you don’t’ have access to an equitable education, the chances you have in life aren’t equitable either.”  Martinez played for the Seattle Mariners and many fans credit him for saving baseball in Seattle.

Both Alan Page and Edgar Martinez are right, which is why students must have the importance of education instilled in them at an early age and the best people to do that are the parents.

While earning my teaching credential, I learned that 90% of a child’s development forms before starting kindergarten.

In fact, prenatal care and the quality of life experienced in the early years from birth to the first six years affect physical and brain development of children, and lay the foundation for cognitive and socio-emotional development in subsequent stages of their lives.

“Early childhood experience has a great impact on the development of one’s intelligence, character and social behavior. If the window of opportunity is missed during early childhood, it would be much costlier and harder to build a successful life later,” said Dr. Zhao Baige, Vice Minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission. Source: The World Bank

Did you know that the Oprah Winfrey Scholars Program has helped thousands pay for a college education?  On the next to the last Oprah show several hundred Morehouse College scholarship recipients walked on stage giving thanks to Oprah. One of the many that Oprah had helped was Air Force Maj. (Dr.) Van Adamson.

After learning more of the facts, what is leading the assault on public education and teachers? One answer may be the $533 billion dollars of annual taxpayer money that funds the public schools, which could be used to generate profits for a shaky private sector that feeds on economic growth.

Return to Making Positive Impacts on Education – Part 1 or discover Tiger Coach Bob Hurley

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on June 1, 2011 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, Parenting, politics, Public School

 

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Making Positive Impacts on Education – Part 1/2

31 May

I have more to share from the Costco Connection. This time it is the Cover Story by Steve Fisher in the May 2011 issue, about pro-active professional athletes making a positive impact for individuals and education proving once again if the will is there, students will learn and succeed.

I must have taught more than 6,000 students during the thirty years I was in the classroom, and it is a fact that in every class there were willing students that wanted to learn and did.  The students that earned A’s, B’s and C’s were not the exception—they just applied themselves.

What made the difference in students that listened, read, asked questions, took part in discussions and worked was someone that instilled at an early age the importance of an education.

Unfortunately, students that disrupted the learning environment and/or did not study or do the work outnumbered those that cooperated.

However, according to many American politicos and even US Presidents, failures in the American public education system is due to bad teaching.

In fact, the real reason is that there are about three million public school teachers in the US compared to more than sixty million parents. Why tell the truth and lose the votes of parents, which outnumber the votes of teachers?

When I Googled “How many bad teachers are there?” 45 million hits came back. Most that I looked at were opinions, but I discovered the results from one reputable study that said, “fewer than 1% of teachers are rated unsatisfactory”. Source: Ed Policy Thoughts.com

I then learned there are about 3.2 million public school teachers in the US (K to 12), which means about 32,000 teachers are doing an unsatisfactory job with more than three million doing a good job with students that cooperate.

If a few bad teachers are the problem, whom do we give credit to for the successes? Alan Page, Edgar Martinez, or Oprah Winfrey are a few besides the more than 3 million public school teachers doing an adequate or outstanding job with students that cooperate.

I will share more about what I learned from the Costco Connection in addition to what I have learned Oprah Winfrey has done for education in Part 2.

Continued on June 1, 2011 in Making Positive Impacts on Education – Part 2 or discover Costco Connection’s “Is College Worth It?”

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 31, 2011 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, government, Parenting, politics, Public School, student behavior

 

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Putting the Blame where it Belongs — Part 6/6

20 May

Comparing the current method used to report API scores with my friend’s suggestion.

A numeric API score ranges from a low of 200 to a high of 1000. The interim statewide API performance target for all schools is 800. A school’s growth is measured by how well it is moving toward or past that goal. The target date to reach this goal is 2014. Recently, Education Secretary Arne Duncan admitted that 82 percent of public schools could be labeled “failing” under No Child Left Behind specifications as they are written at this time.

Current Academic Performance Index Growth by Student Group in California

2010 Growth API Comparison

All Students ­– 767
Black or African American – 686
American Indian or Alaska Native – 728
Asian – 890
Filipino – 851
Hispanic or Latino – 715
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander – 753
White – 838
Two or More Races – 808
Socioeconomically Disadvantaged – 712
English Learners – 692
Students with Disabilities – 580

My Friend’s Suggested API Report
(Since this does not exist, this is a fictional representation)

900 – 1000
5% of student population, which completed 95 to 100% of homework and/or class work and participated daily in class – average student with this API score reading at or above grade level

800 – 899
15% of student population, which completed 80 to 95% of home work and/or class work and participated often in class – average student with this API score reading at or within one or two years of grade level

700 – 799
30% of student population, which completed between 70 to 82% of homework and/or class work and sometimes participated in class. – average student with this API score reading two or three years below grade level

600 to 699
30% of student population, which completed between 55 to 68% of homework and/or class work and seldom participated in class – average student with this API score reading four to five years below grade level

500 to 599
15% of student population, which completed between 45 to 60% percent of homework and/or class work and rarely participate in class – average student with this API score reading at about fourth grade level

499 or less
5% of student population, which completed less than 10% of homework, 30% of class work and never participated in class – average student with this API score reading at about second grade level

Note — There may also be percentages for each of the six levels that show each ethnic group in each API ranking. For example, 800 – 899 = African-American 10%, Asian 30%, Latino 8%, and White 52%. This way we learn that of the 15% of total students that scored in the 800 – 899 range, there are students of each ethnic group in that API ranking.

Return to Solving the Putting the Blame where it Belongs – Part 5 or start with Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on May 20, 2011 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, Parenting, politics, Public School

 

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Putting the Blame where it Belongs — Part 5/6

19 May

The last step to input this data into the new API index would be easy.  Teachers would make a digital copy of the grades on a CD or a thumb drive or attached to an e-mail sent to an administrative site where the information was fed into a database.

If the law says we cannot reveal student names, then we use student ID numbers, which are kept confidential at the school site.

The district has information on ethnicity, age and sex for every student so that information is merged using the student ID numbers.

The result would be an index that reveals which students are working and those that aren’t. Teachers would only be responsible to teach, correct student assignments and record grades, while students and their parents would be responsible to see that the work and reading is completed.

To make sure that students are learning, there would still be the standardized test to measure growth but with students actually involved instead of watching TV, playing video games or sending the average 1500 text messages a month, there would be reading outside of class, doing homework and studying instead.

This puts the responsibility where it belongs—on students and parents. If a teacher is not doing a good job teaching, students are going to complain and administration is going to observe.

Every few weeks, I printed out a progress report for each of my students that told them everything I’ve mentioned in this series of posts and I required those students to take those reports home and have their parents sign them.

However, if our society is unwilling to hold students and parents responsible to cooperate in their education and we keep placing “ALL” the blame on teachers, America has failed and nothing will solve this problem.

On May 20, 2011, in Solving the API Dilemma – Part 6, we shall see a comparison between the actual API scores in California and my friend’s suggestion of how to show results on standardized tests without being racist when showing who is responsible for the results.

Continued on May 20, 2011 in Putting the Blame where it Belongs – Part 6 or return to Part 4

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on May 19, 2011 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, literacy, Parenting, politics, Public School

 

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