Episodes
Wednesday Oct 16, 2019
Wednesday Oct 16, 2019
In 2013, A 7-year-old Maryland kid chewed his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun at school and wound up with two days suspension. The pastry in question was not named, but it's gotta be a Pop-Tart, right? This dubious outcome, and others like it, are often the result of what is known as Zero-tolerance school safety policy. . WHAT ARE ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES? Zero-tolerance policies were written into school handbooks in the 1990s, created originally to be a deterrent for bringing weapons into schools. Many students under strict zero-tolerance policies are punished without a second thought. School administrators are not afforded discretion to use professional judgment to match a consequence to a violation of the code of student conduct. This type of disciplinary procedure has been proven in research to have an overall negative effect on students, and a disproportionately negative effect on minorities. ABOUT RESEARCHER ANN MARIECOTMAN. Ann Marie Cotman is a doctoral student researching school policing at Texas State University. An educator since 1995 and a mother since 1998, Ann Marie fully respects and underscores that schools' first and most important obligation is to creating and maintaining a safe learning environment. As a researcher she is determined to make sure that safety driven policies truly support the safety of ALL students and are not unexamined practices that instead produce poor and inequitable outcomes. When not reading, writing, and researching, Ann Marie loves to play analog games with her three children and create art. She also gets to know the coolest kids in Austin Texas through her summer camp program and private tutoring! FOUR WAYS ZERO-TOLERANCE DISCIPLINE POLICIES UNDERMINE SCHOOL SAFETY: (1) prioritizes compliance over self-management/critical thinking; (2) undermines students' development of and confidence in their own decision making; (3) hides race (and gender, and other) inequities under the fig leaf of equal treatment; (4) discourages and interrupts the relationship building that is critical to creating a culture in which all community members want to come forward with concerns. ZERO-TOLERANCE PRETENDS TO REMOVE SUBJECTIVE DECISION MAKING THIS A PROBLEM FOR TWO REASONS: (1) Why would we want to remove the human element from addressing discipline problems? (2) We know both in design and application that it does NOT create an objective decision process. BETTER OPTIONS. Ann shifts the discussion to looking at the safety priorities of the school. Is it worth the time and investment to maintain polarizing Zero-tolerance policies at the detriment of cultivating relationships with students and families? And, for policies to be effective across the hundreds of thousands of school buildings in America, they need to be melded to each school setting. That involves affording the principal discretion to interpret and apply policies to best fit the setting. It’s not capitulating – it’s sensemaking. Ann also shared an example of a school that invited four students to serve on its safety committee and simple, potent positive changes that resulted from a group of educators and students working to solve the problem of chronic vaping by youth. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 110.
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America.
Saturday Oct 12, 2019
School of Errors – Author Event with Dr. David Perrodin
Saturday Oct 12, 2019
Saturday Oct 12, 2019
Shift the locus of control. Sometimes it's as simple as recognizing that there are things that you can change and control. That's what Torus Theory is all about... Dr. David Perrodin delivers a podcast-format author event for his book, School of Errors – and reads specially-selected passages from the most honest book about the $3 billion school safety industrial complex. School of Errors successfully applied four key concepts to allow readers to better understand school safety in America! (1) The Torus (2) Chaos Theory (3) Simulated Annealing (4) Transference Dynamic. THE TORUS - it’s like a bagel! We expect today to be similar to yesterday and that tomorrow will be similar to today. Humans prefer for things to be similar and have sometimes refused to accept that something bad is happening and they have to deal with it. If the power goes out for 10 minutes, nobody panics. If it’s out for 10 hours??? CHAOS - when we are outside of our bagel. Chaos can often simplify and clarify our option - but we need to embrace chaos and stop trying to fight our way back into the bagel. SIMULATED ANNEALING - this sounds complicated, right, but it isn’t. If you’ve ever had a flight canceled, then you’ve processed through simulated annealing. Simulated annealing is when you need to take many small steps to get from point A to point B. TRANSFERENCE DYNAMIC - what we learn about the world at kids, often through exploration, will dictate how we respond to crisis situations as adults. Exploration is a type of safety exercise. 100 years ago, a 3rd grader was able to explore 30 square miles around his or her home. Today, that unsupervised roam-zone is about a mile. And, instead of allowing kids to go on field trips, some schools are opting for virtual field trips as parents and teachers are convinced that will keep kids safe. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 109.
Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: Schools of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America