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My wife's 5th grade class had to write a single statement with "I wish my teacher knew..." as the lead phrase.

Several brown-nosers with the typical "I wish my teacher knew she is the coolest math teacher and we are the luckiest students." Several similarly written. And of course they included the optional student names.

But one was kind of sad. "I wish my teacher knew I had 3 sisters, but they don't live with us because they did some really bad things to my dad. And my mother is in jail." Breaks your heart. Unsigned, but these are hand written and my wife is pretty sure she knows who it is.

I worked at an inner city (as much as a town of 50K can have an inner city) elementary school for 22 years. Our free and reduced lunch percentage never got below 94 %. It was amazing some of the challenges that many of my kids not just faced but overcame. I often wondered if I could have handled the adversity that they faced when I was 10 or 11 years old.

I've been teaching for along time, but the email I got from a counselor this year shocked even me. The Thinkpad is a laptop-type device that students use for many things, issued to them by the school:

...we have been told by IT that XXXXXXXX's Thinkpad is so infested with bedbug feces that they don't believe it can be repaired. He will be issued a loaner, which will be kept here at the school in a Ziploc bag. He will not be allowed to take it home.....

This came AFTER the email that said that this young man's personal hygiene was so bad that he would report to the nurse when he first got to school and essentially take a sponge bath, and would be allowed to attend class only after he had cleaned himself. The combination of a severely learning-disabled adolescent, a non-existent father, and a mother who is almost as incompetent as the son is, to say the least, toxic. We're doing the best we can, but I can't have a lot of hope for him.

mrkelley23 wrote:I've been teaching for along time, but the email I got from a counselor this year shocked even me. The Thinkpad is a laptop-type device that students use for many things, issued to them by the school:

...we have been told by IT that XXXXXXXX's Thinkpad is so infested with bedbug feces that they don't believe it can be repaired. He will be issued a loaner, which will be kept here at the school in a Ziploc bag. He will not be allowed to take it home.....

This came AFTER the email that said that this young man's personal hygiene was so bad that he would report to the nurse when he first got to school and essentially take a sponge bath, and would be allowed to attend class only after he had cleaned himself. The combination of a severely learning-disabled adolescent, a non-existent father, and a mother who is almost as incompetent as the son is, to say the least, toxic. We're doing the best we can, but I can't have a lot of hope for him.

Can't CPS help?

Bob Juch wrote:

mrkelley23 wrote:I've been teaching for along time, but the email I got from a counselor this year shocked even me. The Thinkpad is a laptop-type device that students use for many things, issued to them by the school:

...we have been told by IT that XXXXXXXX's Thinkpad is so infested with bedbug feces that they don't believe it can be repaired. He will be issued a loaner, which will be kept here at the school in a Ziploc bag. He will not be allowed to take it home.....

This came AFTER the email that said that this young man's personal hygiene was so bad that he would report to the nurse when he first got to school and essentially take a sponge bath, and would be allowed to attend class only after he had cleaned himself. The combination of a severely learning-disabled adolescent, a non-existent father, and a mother who is almost as incompetent as the son is, to say the least, toxic. We're doing the best we can, but I can't have a lot of hope for him.

Can't CPS help?

Lots of factors here that might affect that,, and I'm not in the know, so I don't know which of any of these are pertinent:

1) DCS (what IN calls it), like most state government services, has been throttled, funding wise, for the last 10 years by budget-cutting Republicans. While they have opened a couple hundred new positions in the last 2 years (probably in response to a now-dismissed lawsuit by ACLU), the caseload and working conditions are causing high turnover, so many of those positions are still unfilled. Easy for kids to get lost in the cracks that way.

2) Mom is not actively abusing or allowing son to be abused. More of a case of benign neglect -- she really has no clue what to do. DCS tends to step in where there is active abuse going on.

3) It's possible that it hasn't been reported, but highly unlikely. The folks I know in that pipeline are pretty highly trained to err on the side of caution in reporting unsafe conditions. We're just limited in what we can do in the home to help Mom figure out how to parent an adolescent male.

4) The opioid addiction crisis (and I believe it really has reached crisis proportions in Indiana) has drawn all the attention right now, for good reason: there are lots of other cascading ill effects beyond overdoses and prison terms, including a sharp rise in DCS filings. So if Mom is not an opioid abuser, they're likely to turn a blind eye for now.

5) The cynic in me wonders if the people who might help look at his cognitive abilities (his reading level is basically non-existent) and figure their energies are best spent elsewhere.

4) The opioid addiction crisis (and I believe it really has reached crisis proportions in Indiana) has drawn all the attention right now, for good reason: there are lots of other cascading ill effects beyond overdoses and prison terms, including a sharp rise in DCS filings. So if Mom is not an opioid abuser, they're likely to turn a blind eye for now.

My book club just read Dreamland by Sam Quinones. Made me glad I grew up in a small town in Colorado and made me fearful for big cities like New York and LA with the gangs and for medium cities like there are in Indiana.

SportsFan68 wrote:

4) The opioid addiction crisis (and I believe it really has reached crisis proportions in Indiana) has drawn all the attention right now, for good reason: there are lots of other cascading ill effects beyond overdoses and prison terms, including a sharp rise in DCS filings. So if Mom is not an opioid abuser, they're likely to turn a blind eye for now.

My book club just read Dreamland by Sam Quinones. Made me glad I grew up in a small town in Colorado and made me fearful for big cities like New York and LA with the gangs and for medium cities like there are in Indiana.

Sprots-I also give thanks that I grew up in small-town MN and so forth, but I have learned that there are more bad situations around because I have kids in schools. Mr. Kelley could probably attest to the eye-opening nature of being involved in the school system.

However, this may not make any sense, but due to school involvement I have also learned that there are more good situations around than you might think.

I once read a post or something from somebody who moved from the Twin Cities to a small city in Wyoming and absolutely trashed Wyoming as a trailer park state.

He was not married and did not have kids. His social life was going to the bars. I kept thinking as I read him that he didn't see the families involved in church and youth sports and so forth.

I do have major issues with the way youth sports is done in this country, for example, I am not a fan of burning kids out on sports by 4th grade-but that is another issue.

Mr K.>>>2) Mom is not actively abusing or allowing son to be abused. More of a case of benign neglect -- she really has no clue what to do. DCS tends to step in where there is active abuse going on.<<<

We had an absolutely horrific case locally that lead to reforms (supposedly) statewide and may have resonated nationally.

http://www.startribune.com/eric-dean-th ... 273325741/

As I understand it, at this point, the grandmother, who was not in the child's life, is suing the relevant local agencies.

Work contacts with my wife who are friends of the local social workers say they went to a judge multiple times to get the child removed, and he wouldn't do it, but that that part of the record is "Black" at this point, but they hope that part can come out.

This may or may not be the case, for all I know it may be CYA-but abjudication should answer some questions.

Spock wrote:Mr K.>>>2) Mom is not actively abusing or allowing son to be abused. More of a case of benign neglect -- she really has no clue what to do. DCS tends to step in where there is active abuse going on.<<<

We had an absolutely horrific case locally that lead to reforms (supposedly) statewide and may have resonated nationally.

http://www.startribune.com/eric-dean-th ... 273325741/

As I understand it, at this point, the grandmother, who was not in the child's life, is suing the relevant local agencies.

Work contacts with my wife who are friends of the local social workers say they went to a judge multiple times to get the child removed, and he wouldn't do it, but that that part of the record is "Black" at this point, but they hope that part can come out.

This may or may not be the case, for all I know it may be CYA-but abjudication should answer some questions.

I had the opportunity to talk to the relevant resource person about this case this weekend. She says DCS has been called by school personnel, multiple times, but as I feared, it's a case of bad prioritization. He has a sister who was "hurt" by a family member, and he is getting lost in the shuffle. The resource person has visited the home, and says it looks like an episode of Hoarders. LEOs won't do anything without DCS.

You know, we have over 1500 kids in this school, and 1400 of them come from good, caring homes. If we could find a way to bear down on those 75 or so families, there's no telling how much this school could improve. But those families are depressingly lacking. As Spock says, though, there's so much good going on out there, as well.

Hate to have to say it, but this kid is an incredible danger to the health of the rest of the school. Bedbugs are much harder to get rid of than lice. Someone I know who's had to research this on account of someone in their building says they can live up to a year w/o feeding. Its not the feces the school has to worry about, its the babies.

Spock wrote:

SportsFan68 wrote:

4) The opioid addiction crisis (and I believe it really has reached crisis proportions in Indiana) has drawn all the attention right now, for good reason: there are lots of other cascading ill effects beyond overdoses and prison terms, including a sharp rise in DCS filings. So if Mom is not an opioid abuser, they're likely to turn a blind eye for now.

My book club just read Dreamland by Sam Quinones. Made me glad I grew up in a small town in Colorado and made me fearful for big cities like New York and LA with the gangs and for medium cities like there are in Indiana.

Sprots-I also give thanks that I grew up in small-town MN and so forth, but I have learned that there are more bad situations around because I have kids in schools. Mr. Kelley could probably attest to the eye-opening nature of being involved in the school system.

However, this may not make any sense, but due to school involvement I have also learned that there are more good situations around than you might think.

I once read a post or something from somebody who moved from the Twin Cities to a small city in Wyoming and absolutely trashed Wyoming as a trailer park state.

He was not married and did not have kids. His social life was going to the bars. I kept thinking as I read him that he didn't see the families involved in church and youth sports and so forth.

I do have major issues with the way youth sports is done in this country, for example, I am not a fan of burning kids out on sports by 4th grade-but that is another issue.

Yes, good and bad both abound in schools. I agree, kids should not burn out on sports until they're in their twenties and it's their choice. That's easy for me to say, never having had kids so no son with the potential to get a full ride scholarship to CU with his throwing arm and no daughter with the potential to get a similar scholarship with her ability to drain three after three after three .. . Would my attitude change? I dunno.

Some back east reporter trashed Denver as a cow town before the 2008 Presidential convention. Probably she knew that maybe one person in several thousand would recognize her designer clothes and jewelry . . . Her loss, same with your Wyoming trasher.

Sprots>>>Yes, good and bad both abound in schools. I agree, kids should not burn out on sports until they're in their twenties and it's their choice. That's easy for me to say, never having had kids so no son with the potential to get a full ride scholarship to CU with his throwing arm and no daughter with the potential to get a similar scholarship with her ability to drain three after three after three .. . Would my attitude change? I dunno.<<<<

A minor rant on my high-horse of the moment. I would really like to go to Knowledge Bowl (a team trivia contest) matches. That was kind of my thing in high school.

Littlest Spock (8th grade) was moved up to the #1 Varsity team-which is really kind of cool. Like I told him, it happens in sports, so it makes sense for knowledge bowl too. One of the seniors told the Spocklette that he can't believe how much history/geography Littlest Spock knows.

The Spocklette (10th grade) is on the second team and they went head to head last match and finished 1 and 2.

I go to the local match. Last year I helped and this year I just watched a couple rounds.

People(myself included) will drive 150 miles in extremely dangerous conditions to watch 3rd Graders play basketball. But I can't go watch my Varsity Knowledge Bowlers?