Welcome to Thunderdome

Beyond our four walls, the school’s atmosphere was in total chaos. We couldn’t send students to the bathroom alone, as there had been instances of both girls and boys being raped there by other students. One of my kids found a knife on the ground on our way to lunch. An off-duty police officer and a drill sargeant were hired to help control the students in the cafeteria: one of them would bend over and scream in the children’s faces while the other marched up and down the center aisle, yelling into a microphone as the kids threw food around his head.

Not exactly a fun working and learning environment.

Things were quite a bit calmer in my classroom, but student behaviors still posed a huge problem. Getting students to respond appropriately to even the smallest request took Herculean, first-day-of-school efforts from me. It was like the movie Groundhog Day. We practiced the same basic routines and procedures over and over, and three quarters of the class just wasn’t internalizing anything.

Behavior issues that interfere with teaching and learning have notably worsened, according to an astonishing 62 percent of teachers who have been teaching in the same school for five or more years. The results were reported in Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on the Teaching Profession. The report, recently released by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, shows that the increased level of behavior problems has been seen across grade levels: 68 percent of elementary teachers, 64 percent of middle school teachers, and 53 percent of high school teachers say the same.

GORDON wrote: Yeah, they say schools need more funding to fix the problems, so they can blame the voters when schools fail.

You can't talk about the actual problems, because racism.

GORDON wrote: The "whoop your ass" generation turned out pretty well. The "timeout" generations are turning into dumpster fires.

The quote reads, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."

TheCatt wrote: Trade Joe's

Trader Joe's said it disagrees with accusations of racism and said it does not make decisions based on petitions.

In a statement last week, Trader Joe's said "We make decisions based on what customers purchase, as well as the feedback we receive from our customers and crew members. If we feel there is need for change, we do not hesitate to take action."

The grocer also said the names of its international foods "show appreciation for other cultures."

The petition calling for the renaming of the products said, "The Trader Joe's branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures - it presents 'Joe' as the default 'normal' and the other characters falling outside of it - they are 'Arabian Joe,' 'Trader José,' and 'Trader Joe San.'"

The petition has garnered more than 5,000 signatures.

Earlier this month, the company said it decided several years ago to use only the Trader Joe's name on its products and has been in the process of updating the ethnic-sounding labels.

"While this approach to product naming may have been rooted in a lighthearted attempt at inclusiveness, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect - one that is contrary to the welcoming, rewarding customer experience we strive to create every day," company spokeswoman Kenya Friend-Daniel said at the time.

Friend-Daniel went on to say that that packaging for a number of the products had already been changed, and the company expected to complete the process "very soon."

Leisher wrote: There's a cure for him. It's called "two in the back of the head".

I'd argue he needs mental help, but since we've dismantled our mental health care system and simply deemed all issues as things to be celebrated...

"Given the item has been on sale since March what systems do you have in place for reviewing descriptions and not allowing offensive terms to be posted in the first place? This is not the first time."