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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 6/7

17 Jun

I did not agree with the ogre idiot but the principal refused to take this incident to the next step and contact the proper authorities such as the police and child services.

The law in California is specific. Since I was a teacher and the one that reported the incident, I was the one that could lose his job if Macario was sexually molested and it went unreported to the proper authorities, and the ogre idiot would not lose his job.

I had no choice. I had to finish the job that the principal should have done.

My school days were often 11 hours or longer. I usually arrived at 6:00 AM when the gates were unlocked and seldom drove home until after 5:00 PM and sometimes stayed as late as 11:00 PM to work with my journalism students.

The time I spent at school does not count the time I spent at home correcting student work or planning lessons.  On average, I corrected at least 20 to 30 hours at home after having spend a workweek that often ran 60 to 80 hours at school.

Many people outside of education believe a teacher’s job is only the time he or she spends teaching, which is about five or six hours a day during a school week, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. To keep a credential, teachers are required to take annual classes and workshops to stay current in their field, attend staff meetings, and spend 20 to 40 hours of annual duty supervising sports outside the regular school day.

I also corrected student work before school, at lunch, after school and any time I could find during class when my students settled down and quietly worked on an assignment, which was rare.

To be continued on June 18, 2011 in The Sexual Molestation of the Happy One – Part 7 or return to Part 5

______________

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 17, 2011 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, Parenting, 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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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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