Welcome to my new blog.!!! My name is Shira Dillon and I am a high school teacher in Los Angeles, CA. This blog will explore the mind and life of teenagers today and help adults better connect with them. Please come by often or subscirbe so you can receive these bogs by email. And don't forget to like my FB page www.facebook.com/ParentsTeachersandTeens to unite with me to help public education become a better institution of learning. Our children need it!
"How do you know if your child is using drugs?"
The response was, the school would let me know. She confessed due to the numerous hours she works just to make ends meet, she is rarely at home until late at night.
"My son spends most of his hours at school. So it is the school's responsibility to let me know what's going on with my son." The mom said with a sense of wavering confidence.
"Well, as a teacher, the cologne of choice for many of my male and female students is that of Kush. The smell is so strong and there is nothing I can do about it except try to not inhale too much. When I call parents like you, they are at work or do not pick up the phone." I said to her frankly.
The school cannot let you know if you don't make yourself available to know!
In a schoo in South Central, Los Angeles, a class can have thirty five students and twenty of then will smell like weed. The school isn't staffed where one teacher can send twenty kids out of class. The thermostat is set to a comfortable 72 degrees and the aroma is set to Kush. That's what it is and there's no working solution unless parents, uncles, aunties, cousins, grandparents, and everyone who has a family member that is a teen talk to them about drugs.
Most of the time when a parent comes to see me they want to know why their child has a fail (F) in my class. There's so many things that parents need to know other than their child's grades. Here are a few suggestions to help parents become more aware of what's taking place in their child's school.
1. Attend Back to School night!- This is a great way to make the connection between parent and teacher before student's even have grades!
2. Teach your child the importance of coming to school dressing and smelling appropriately! Students who are high and smell like Kush do not make the best impression on teachers nor do they make the best decisions. These students are normally absurdly late, inattentive, extremely disruptive, and my favorite, the compulsive classroom eater.
3. Give the teacher a working number! With technology the way it is today, the best way I contact parents is by text and email.
4. Talk to you child often! Take time to turn off the gadgets and talk. Replace television time with a parent selected book that your child would love to read. There are books for teens about the important issues that many parents don't know how to talk about effectively. My book "Sex, Drugs, and Other Teenager Elephants" is one of them. See the end of this blog to find out how to order your copy!
It really does take an entire community to raise a teenager. Talk to the teenager in your life about drugs, about responsibility, about prioritizing, about making good impressions.
I know I may not be able to stop a kid from using drugs because they have to make that own decision, but I do at least try to show them why it shouldn't be done at school.
Teenagers are forming their adult habits NOW!.
If you don't get anything else from this blog, then I want to make sure you get this.
Talk to a teenager about the "Elephants" in the room that we ignore.
If you know at least one teenager then you are apart of the community!!!
To order your copy of "Sex, Drugs, and Other Elephants click the paypal link below.
I'm Shira Dillon, a high school teacher in Los Angeles, CA
Like my FB page www.facebook.com/ParentsTeachersandTeens to unite with me to help public education become a better institution of learning. Our children need it!
Leave your email to get this blog delivered to you for Free.
No comments:
Post a Comment