The Wonders of Diversity: An Integrated School

 Ernest Wiker
September 8 at 9:10pm ·

My daughter and other students at Columbia High School have been being harassed by the trouble makers in that school simply for doing their classwork. This has been an ongoing thing at that school going back 30 years since I went to school there. The teachers and administrators simply turn a blind eye to it. Watch this video and see what's happening in that classroom and you tell me if those teachers and administrators shouldn't be intervening before it reaches the point that it does in this video. My daughter was suspended for 10 days because she was doing her homework she was on her class work and other kids were picking on her. She's getting a citation in the mail for disorderly conduct, because she was doing what I asked her to do to do her homework despite these other kids harassing her. It's time Columbia High School's administrators began addressing this problem. ..it's way past time!

UPDATE... I'm adding this here, because I want to get the story out about what the problem is in that school district because it isn't the assault that occurred in this video. It isn't the teacher's fault, and honestly it's not even completely the students fault. The blame belongs squarely on the culture in the school that has festered there for years.

I don't blame the teacher. Frankly, it's the administration that has failed the teachers and the students. What occurred in the classroom the previous day is the problem in that school and is a clear indication of the culture that has festered in that school for years.

The boy shadow boxing in the video and what he did the previous day IS what is wrong in Columbia Borough School District.

The day prior to Selena being assaulted he was out of his seat, walking around the classroom and disrupting the other kids that were doing their work. The teacher asked him to take his seat and do his work. He responded by openly mocking the teacher, and then the students that were doing their work, calling them weirdos, geeks, kissasses, and other things. He went as far as to point out some of the other students papers and mock their work. Selena's paper was one of them.

NOTHING HAPPENED TO THAT STUDENT FOR WHAT HE DID. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even reported. The fact is, that exact behavior is repeated every day, in class after class, it's common place. Nothing happens to any of the kids behaving this way, and any teacher reporting a student for that type of activity is treated as if they aren't "in charge of their classroom", as if they are weak and did something wrong.

What occurred there was bullying, disrespectful, disruptive, and should not be allowed in our classrooms. It has been occurring in Columbia school district for many many many years. It has become ingrained in the culture of that school. The Administration always points to funding as the problem. Money is not going to fix this problem changing the culture is what is needed. Columbia Borough School District is a failing school district for a reason and it has nothing to do with money.

In my talk with the principal yesterday she was in such denial of any problems in her school. "Those things don't happen here." "No student has ever been assaulted in the three years I've worked here."

I say to that principle that she is wrong. That's what I told her yesterday just because you frame them as fights and dismiss them as that and treat the victims as part of the problem does not change the problem. You create a false perception in identifying these things as fights and not as what they are. It's time to reevaluate the way we are looking at what is happening in that school.

It's time we stop paying lip-service to bullying and disruptive behavior in classrooms and began addressing it, and rooting it out for the cancer that it is!

The girl that assaulted my daughter joined in on that disruptive behavior with a number of other students laughing and joking and mocking the kids that were doing their homework. It escalated to the assault you see in this video.