NYC Public Schools... Survival of the Fittest in the Snow!

snow snow snow

I work for NYC public schools and they literally do not close their schools, EVER. If you live in New York or the Northeast, you know how much snow we have had in the past couple of months and this week has been almost ridiculous.

Every single school district around us was closed... expect New York City.  Major De Blasio thought it was a good idea that we still have school. He's so wonderful!! See this article.

The thing with this is, fine, we have to go to school and fine we have to drive in, but seriously, these kids take public transportation to school, is it really worth their lives to get to school to only have a few people there and then to do nothing at school?!

Seriously!?

Tomorrow we shall see what happens tomorrow but my real question is.....

Is it more important to go to school? Or to be safe in extreme blizzard conditions?

Teaching Kids Not to be Bullies

This is probably the hardest part of my job. I have 5th graders in the South Bronx. They are 10 year olds that travel by taxi, public NYC buses, and NYC subways in the early morning and late at night to get to and from school. They are tough; they are mean; they are not like regular 5th graders. They don't really get to act like children anymore. It could change their life if they act like a child while walking home or taking the bus or subway and someone jumps them.

But how do you teach kids like that in school to stop being an jerk? I had one kid make a comment today to another kid and I had to stop the entire class to talk about how being a bully makes them a loser. Some kids don't know how to defend themselves without being mean and they don't know how to come over and mention it to their teachers because they are embarrassed or uncomfortable doing it.

It kills me how absolutely rude and mean my kids are. I had to stay after school yesterday and talk to a kid and his mom because he was being bullied in the bathroom by a kid in my class and his older brother.

Ugh. It's not fair.

When did kids get so mean?

And now that they have facebook, Instagram, twitter, and text messages and email, it makes it like 100 times worse!

There are so many ways to bully now, it is hard to keep it under control.

Any suggestions? How do you handle it?