Mother calls school suspension of her son for showing toy gun online " insane"

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Thank goodness the Internet didn’t exist when I was showing off my Johnny Seven One Man Army
 
The schools have been so strict, even a lego toy in a kindergarten’s jacket becomes a reason for a school meeting.

Parents have known this but maybe with homeschooling, they failed to realize that this was still a major issue. A suspension of five days seems “insane”, a simple call to the parents advising them that the rules for in school are the same for home classes.
 
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/08/black-student-suspended-police-toy-gun/?amp=1

A Black seventh-grader played with a toy gun during a virtual class. His school called the police.​

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Dani Elliott was at work last month in Colorado Springs when her 12-year-old son’s vice principal called with alarming news: A police officer was on the way to her house — all because her son had played with a toy gun during his virtual art class.

Elliott says she was terrified, especially considering her son is Black.

“I never thought: ‘You can’t play with a Nerf gun in your own home because somebody may perceive it as a threat and call the police on you,’” Elliott said.

Elliott’s son, Isaiah, was later suspended for five days and now has a record with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office and a mark on his school disciplinary paperwork saying he brought a “facsimile of a firearm to school” — even though he was in his own home doing a virtual class. The “gun” was obviously a toy, painted black and green with “Zombie Hunter” on the side.

Elliott lashed out at the school, arguing that it was irresponsible to call police given the frequency of police violence against Black people.

[…]
Elliott said she thinks the school doesn’t understand the possible consequences.
[…]

The other boy was a classmate who was studying at Elliott’s house at the time; deputies later visited his home as well, according to the police report. KDVR reported that the boy is believed to have also received a five-day suspension.

When officers arrived at Elliott’s home, her husband, Curtis, let them in. They explained to Isaiah that if he brought a toy gun to school, they could file criminal charges.

But when Isaiah’s father viewed body camera footage of the tape from his son’s class, he said it only showed Isaiah sitting on the couch, moving the green toy gun from one side to the other — not waving it as the teacher alleged.

Over the following few days, Elliott and her husband spoke with the school’s principal and vice principal, as well as a district superintendent. They would not budge on Isaiah’s suspension and disciplinary record.

“I said: ‘Black children cannot have that sort of thing on their record. You are reducing his chances at success,’” Elliott said she told school administrators.

She also questioned why the school called the police before notifying her and her husband. Elliott said that the vice principal said their son’s safety was the school’s top priority. But Elliott argued that calling the police actually put Isaiah’s life at risk, noting that he is the same age as Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed in 2014 by police in Cleveland while holding a BB gun.

Isaiah was traumatized by the experience, she said. “He was in tears when the police came,” Elliott said. “He was very scared. He said: ‘Mommy, I had butterflies in my stomach. I was scared and thought I was going to jail.’”
 
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Why is this a surprise? The DMs think masks should be worn during zoom meetings
 
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I dont think this has anything to do with the kids skin color. This is just how anything gun related with schools are handled now-a-days. Anybody remember the “pop tart gun”?
 
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Not with my students. I’m a Registered Behavioral Technician, not a teacher, but I have been put in a teaching role due to distance learning. My 7th and 8th graders know what my expectations are. We are way more laxed than my peers. As long as they have pants on, show up to class roughly on time and do a decent amount of work, I could care less what else they do. They are supposed to be well dressed, not eating on cam, being present for the entire time, etc. I understand they should be treating it like they are in the classroom. But with my particular students (who have Emotional Disturbance) this adds unnecessary burdens on them that don’t jive with me. So I throw all the rules to the wind, so long as my students are doing what they need to be doing. I let them eat. I let them take breaks whenever they want, for however long they want. They can be gaming or listening to music or eating or whatever. So long as their distractions are not stopping them from getting “quality” work done (meaning that the work they turn in is accurate and they aren’t just turning in crap as quickly as possible to go goof off). I’m not suggesting my way of doing distance learning is good for gen ed classes. And it’s certainly not good for large groups. But I mostly do one-on-one instruction or have a very small group (so far it hasn’t been more than 5), so this has worked for me so far (God willing things keep going well).
 
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I can appreciate the need to get dressed,and have a sense of decorum even while on zoom.It would create a more structured environment for learning.
 
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Thank you. Your words are too kind. I’ve been in this and similar fields for most of my professional life (which isn’t extensive as I’m only 32). Besides 6 years of retail early on, I’ve mostly spent my time working in various non profits for adults with intellectual and/or cognitive disabilities and had only recently (in the last year) gotten the opportunity to work with children. I am planning on completing my education and trying to get into special education myself. I agree with you, it’s a different ball game. And nowadays, it changes year to year. I live in California so there is always an ever changing landscape for protocols and what not. But we have a good team and they are always revising training strategies to help us learn new methods for addressing the specific needs of individual students.

I, personally, don’t like the public education system at all. It did very little for me when I went through it years ago, and I don’t want my kids to experience it. We have our children in a Montessori school specifically because we appreciate that all children learn at their own speed. And Montessori is all about child-led learning. It has had such an incredible impact on our son and daughter. They can perform better academically at 3 and 4 years old then their older cousins can at 6. And while I don’t care as much about the academic side (which is a strong point for Montessori education), the biggest benefit I see in our kids is their absolute LOVE of learning. They are always excited to go to school and engage their environment and learn new things. They love to tell us about it during dinner time, what they learned each day. We are trying to mirror this at home so that, God willing, they maintain a love of learning all their life. The public school system with it’s overloading with homework, standardized tests, etc place so much stress on these young shoulders that most kids burn out. They go with the flow to “survive” school, rather than truly engage it. This might not be true for everyone, but it was certainly my experience and that of my friends. Thank you for devoting such a large portion of your life to serving children with disabilities. They have been and still are left behind in many school districts. This is a very difficult population to work with and many people simply don’t give the field enough time to teach them about these wonderful children/adults. I never had experience with an intellectual disability before, but after working with people with these disabilities for a couple years, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I have worked with so many extraordinary people and they have taught me more than I could ever hope to teach them. It has been a real blessing.
 
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This is a duplicate thread. This same topic was on the forums a few days ago
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Mother calls school suspension of her son for showing toy gun online " insane" World News
https://news.yahoo.com/mother-calls-suspension-son-showing-165940305.html Any feelings on this? He was suspended for five days. It was a zombie gun.
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Can we link do this manually or does the moderator have to do it?
 
Xystus said:
Anybody remember the “pop tart gun”?
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Remember the Pop-Tart gun kid? He was 7 years old when he was suspended for chewing his breakfast (not actually a Pop-Tart, as it turned out) into the shape of a weapon and pretending to fire it at his classmates. Now he’s 11, and Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Ronald A. Silkworth just upheld his suspension.

In the end, the case hinged on whether the pastry incident was, in fact, the last straw in a long line of disciplinary problems. The Maryland school says yes; the parents say at the time of the suspension they were told that the two day suspension was a direct result of the deployment of food weaponry and that no other incidents were mentioned.

The story got national attention. The Florida legislature even passed a bill specifically protecting the act of “brandishing a partially consumed pastry or other food item to simulate a firearm or weapon.”

Last year the Maryland State Board of Education backed the school’s narrative, finding that: “The student in this case had a long history of behavioral problems that were the subject of progressive intervention by the school. He created a classroom disruption on March 1, 2013, which resulted in a suspension that was justified based on the incident in question and the student’s history.”
 
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I used to work at an “Enhanced Behavioral Support Home” for a group of individuals who had various severe diagnoses (primarily autism). 3 out of the 4 were non verbal and all were prone to physical aggression. It was the most challenging environment I’ve ever worked in, and I admit, I was eager to leave due to the high frequency of aggression. I wish I could say that I had the fortitude to stick it out, but I jumped at the chance to work with kids. I want to be a teacher, eventually, so working with adults was great for a time and gave me a wealth of knowledge/experience I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. So as challenging as that job was, I am grateful I got to experience it. But I also think this is an important thing people that get into this field need to realize. KNOW when you are beyond your limit in your work. If you know in your heart that you aren’t cut out for a certain assignment, have the courage to admit so to your supervisor or look for another job. There is no shame in this. Just as the people we serve all have their individual strengths, weaknesses, and challenges; the same is true for staff. You could be the best in the field at what you do and simply not match well with a client. Even if you’ve worked with hundreds of people with the same diagnosis and behavioral patterns. No two people are the same, and the difficulty in this field is matching the right staff with the right client/student.
 
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1- if I’m a teacher that sees a kid playing with a gun live on the internet, I’m absolutely going to call the police.

2- it’s understandable that someone cannot tell it’s a toy looking at their computer screen, and the fact it was painted crazy colors doesn’t mean it wasn’t a gun. New guns come in colors these days…
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3- saying suspension was uncalled for because it was a toy misses the point. It can’t be expected that everyone who sees a toy gun in the hands of some student who brought it to school is going to realize it is a toy. The image of a gun in a school itself is akin to screaming fire in a crowded theater. People could get hurt in several ways. Every student needs to be aware of that and also aware of the consequences.

But yes, I would have called the parents as well.
 
Ok call the police but notify the parents first they will being coming to check on things.

End of Story.

This is how extreme it has become
When officers arrived at Elliott’s home, her husband, Curtis, let them in. They explained to Isaiah that if he brought a toy gun to school, they could file criminal charges.
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I am glad they at least said **could.**not would.
 
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That’s exactly why the police needed deal with it. The kids needed to know why it was an issue in the first place.
 
CradleRC58 said:
That’s exactly why the police needed deal with it. The kids needed to know why it was an issue in the first place.
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The kids did not need to know anything. They have parents.

This is extreme. Children like zombies, they like legos, they like lots of toys with guns and knives, swords etc.
 
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