Clip Down, Mr. Trump

For all intents and purposes, school systems are designed to act as their own little country, complete with a system of government. A district is run by the superintendent who serves as the president and a board who acts much like congress to make up the national level. Each building in the district is its own state and has governorship in the principal, while each teacher serves as the mayor of his/her classroom city at the local level. It is within this public school governmental system that citizens live, work, produce, and thrive in an effort to build a system that all stakeholders can be proud of. 

I taught kindergarten and first grade for 15 years. Aside from covering the academic standards assigned to these grade levels, teachers of the youngest learners must also teach students how to function and behave within our school "government". There are many ways to establish a justice system within a primary classroom. I chose a behavior chart system where each student had a clip that they moved based on their classroom actions and interactions with others. Students were asked to clip up to recognize positive behavior, or clip down to call attention to behavior that was not acceptable within our school community. 

This week I watched the second presidential debate along side my two teenage boys and one of their friends. We are on vacation so it was not my plan to call a family sit down to watch. It came about when I had to address all the ruckus I heard from the boys who I assumed were watching football, but instead found them cheering as the candidates roasted*each other. As a mother I should have been proud that my boys would choose the presidential debate over football. I should have been proud that they took interest in our government and the upcoming election. I should have been proud that they understood the importance of U.S. citizens being informed, even at their young age. I was not proud at all. Rather I insisted we turn to watch the people who were supposed to be aggressively battling each other on prime time tv, the Packers and Giants. During this debate. I witnessed bullying, aggressive behavior, namecalling, and mistruths. I witnessed three very good boys drawn into the sensationalism of this ridiculous campaign. I witnessed the two people handpicked by our major political parties behave in a manner that would not be tolerated in my primary classroom, or any classroom around the nation that they intend to serve. So, clip down, Mr. Trump (and you too, Secretary Clinton) for not even taking office yet and still managing to lead our children down the wrong path. As for November 8, good luck to us all. Our parenting job is going to get little tougher. 

*Roasted: to make fun of, or riddicule another; to talk about somebody based on appearance, actions, or pesonalility -urban dictionary