Archive for the 'A Dover Dilemma' Category

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Not a Game

Published on June 21, 2008 in A Dover Dilemma, Dover and Feedback. 8 Comments

I thought I could ignore it when it happened the first time. I did, but it happened again. I gave myself some time to develop an emotional detachment from it and now I’m ready to post my thoughts.

What happened? I got another interesting blog comment. This comment came on the post Senior Business from “jen”:

Ricky I love your blog about all the problems at our school. But not enough students have ever read your blog or even know about it. Why don’t you print out some copies and bring it in to school to give out to our class? My friends say you got scared because the principals warned you to stop blogging about the school and keep your big mouth shut or else. Is that true? You have been a great president but now its looking like you sold out and aren’t going to continue to talk about our school’s problems. They are cutting all the middle school classes like music, art, computer to give the kids like my little sister more English classes. What can’t kids read and write suddenly? Why don’t they see why the English teachers aren’t doing their jobs instead of cutting all the classes kids like and need? You are our president, will you voice this opinion or are you now a scareddy-kat like my friends say. This is your last week of high school to speak up, are ya gonna be a man or a mouse? Anyone who read your blog agrees with you but not enough people have read your blog. We need a president who gets the message out and doesn’t coward when pressured to stop talking…Are you going to mention any of your opinions in your graduatioon speech or did you sell out? Are you going to speak up in school next week or sell out??

This comment was interesting in its proximity to “Katie’s” comment, which I dedicated an entire post to.

Those comments didn’t come from students. The IP addresses reveal that they came from my geographical area, but the email addresses appear to be fake on both commenters. The language that both comments use isn’t typical of a contemporary high school student and the idioms used are straight out of the last several decades.

I can’t tell you what this means, but I’ll make a hypothesis. I’m guessing that I have two comments that were written straight from the heart, but from the heart of teachers at Dover High School. This signifies that teachers, as well as students, are concerned about the direction that Dover High School is moving.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the place for those thoughts. I’m graduating from this high school in approximately one week and I can no longer do anything about these issues. I went to the Board of Education and presented my observations and opinions about the problems around the district, and that’s all I can do. Addressing whoever wrote those comments – I wish you the best of luck in enduring the oncoming storm at Dover High School, for I fear problems will only intensify.

Realize, however, that impersonating a student in hopes of tricking me into thinking I have popular support benefits no one. It’s also a sign of complete disrespect towards me. I’m honest and open with you all, so please be honest and open with me. If you’d like to submit an anonymous comment, feel free to do so, just don’t pretend to be something you’re not. If you’d like to be less-than-anonymous, I’ll take your thoughts in confidence either in person or at my email address.

The Leadership Rally

Published on May 30, 2008 in A Dover Dilemma, Dover, Ideas and Ricky. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

It’s over. Months of personal panic and political positioning finally led to today’s assembly, the Dover High School Student Council’s annual Leadership Rally. Our guest was the fascinating John Morello, who performed his one-man-show, Dirt. In a word, John was awesome. Before giving a more in depth review of the show, my opening remarks set this post up well.

Welcome to the 2008 Dover Leadership Rally, Student Council’s traditional springtime gathering with the goal of entertaining you while making you think. Before we start, I sincerely thank Superintendent Dr. Onofry and Assistant Superintendent Mr. Prill for making this assembly possible. Without their help, we wouldn’t be here today.

For those of you who don’t know who I am, I’m Ricky Mondello, your Student Council President. It is with great enthusiasm that I introduce our guest speaker this morning.

He’s been on stage for 15 years as an actor, comedian, and educator. He holds a BA in Theatre Arts and has performed in numerous professional productions throughout New England. Most notably, he has toured the United States and Canada as a headlining comedian. Although he has spent most of his time making people laugh, he has always found himself working with people whose everyday realities are anything but funny.

Born in Detroit and raised in Boston, our speaker considers himself a survivor of a “high risk” childhood. As a teenager, he witnessed friends and family lose their lives to drugs and alcohol. As a teacher in a treatment center for teens, he witnessed students repeating the family cycles of self-neglect and self-abuse.

I am very pleased to welcome John Morello to our school today. Student Council hopes that all of us can internalize his message and make intelligent decisions – tomorrow, Prom – and ever day after. Please give John the respect he deserves and enjoy the assembly. Thanks.

John’s performance tells a story of complex characters whose lives all cross. Masterfully, he crafts how their decisions affect each other in both beautiful and disastrous ways. The show juxtaposes seriousness and humor, keeping an audience on its toes. By sprinkling in pop culture references and very intelligent comedy, everyone in the auditorium was seen laughing.

The defining characteristic of John’s show is its theme. Unlike many speakers who condemn and condescend to troubled teens, John’s message is that of understanding and empathy. It’s not solely a show about drug or alcohol abuse; rather, it explores what motivates us all, including seemingly well-adjusted individuals.

I didn’t need to solicit the feedback of my peers after the assembly – it was everywhere. People all day said, “Good choice, Rick!” or “Great speaker!”. One usually quiet student, a senior, told me that this was the first assembly in his high school career that he truly enjoyed. A group of teachers believed that performance was, “The high point of our year.”

Personally, I’ve been having a hard time coping with the direction Dover High School has been heading. In this time of great hope and fear about its future, Dover needed John’s presentation; I needed it as well. As a teenager, I was touched, and as a veteran at selecting motivational speakers, I’ve never been more pleased. I give John my highest recommendation and hope he keeps spreading his great message for years to come.

Katie’s Thoughts

Published on May 30, 2008 in A Dover Dilemma and Dover. 4 Comments Tags: .

I just got an interesting comment on my article, Hopes and Fears, that I really appreciate. I don’t endorse the comment’s content entirely; in fact, I take issue with it in some instances. Regardless, I think it took a lot for Katie to write this up and I wanted to highlight it, rather than let it get buried in the archives of this blog.

I agree that there are a lot of problems with disruptive students. I do not want to bash anyone but why is it that it is this year all of a sudden? Is it just gangs or does Mrs. Bastings have a hand in it too? And lets not forget our new assistant female principal.
She was basically thrown out of Wappingers becasue she did not know how to disipline and now we are stuck with her!!!!! Who makes these decisions????? Does the board even know what is going on or is it a case that all they care about is the dollar sign and not our education?????
I’l give you a perfect example…..my little sister in going into 6th grade next year and ALL the specials are being cut!!!!!What’s that about??????Mr. Rand is really mad. I loved band and now the who program is going down the tubes!!!! AND what about what Dr. O said about that we would get more computer classes? I hear that is getting cut too. It’s a lot more then just the disruptive students.
As far as clubs go…did you ever think that maybe the teachers are just as angry as the students with what they are doing to our school??? We are loosing one of the greatest teachers becasue he is fed up with the nonsense going on. So who is responsible? And how do we get the board to see that everyone is upset????

Thoughts?

Finally

Published on May 29, 2008 in A Dover Dilemma and Dover. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM, I’ll be giving the opening remarks and introduction at Dover’s Leadership Rally, the most popular high school assembly on this corner of the Internet. When I have a moment, I’ll write up a review-of-sorts of the performance of our guest and a more personal post about what I’ve learned throughout this entire ordeal.

I’m sending this post out despite the fact you’ll likely read it after I make the opening remarks just to let all of you know I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve been a little busy, but I’ll have more time for writing here soon, I promise.

Thanks!

Responsibility, or Lack Thereof

Published on May 21, 2008 in A Dover Dilemma and Dover. 2 Comments

Christopher S. Penn left this really enlightening comment on my recent post, Hopes and Fears, where I elaborated on Dover’s problems.

You can enforce order to some degree by imposing it from the top on a group, and that’s necessary to handle the bad actors. The real question I have is:

Why can’t the students self-police to a degree?

Admittedly, I’m older than you by a generation, 33. When I went to high school, AOL was still a proprietary dial-up network, and the Web didn’t exist yet (that would take another 2 years after I graduated).

However.

Our student body was relatively self-policing against bad actors. Those folks who were ill-behaved did face disciplinary sanction, but more important faced the ostracism of their peers. There was a large majority of students who held a generally accepted behavioral code of sorts, and while it definitely had some wiggle room, for the most part, the student body self-regulated.

Were there fights? Of course. A few, here and there, but nothing as rampant as the picture you’ve painted. Were there disruptive students? Sure, but more often than not, one of the other students would just tell the bad actor to, “sit down, asshole!” – on several occasions.

In the 15 years since I graduated from high school, what’s changed so much that self-policing inside the community has broken down?

I think there are a few differences in the atmosphere of my public school in comparison to yours. A lot of these “bad actors” today don’t need the community-at-large. They have their own support system, a group of friends or gang that supports them. I believe, and this is pure speculation, that many of them have been raised by parents who believe their children can do no wrong – parents who blame teachers or other students for the havoc their own children produce.

Essentially Chris, I think the morality of our nation has changed to the point that parents blame everyone else for their kids’ problems. When kids grow up in that kind of world, they think they can get away with anything.

And so far, they’ve been successful.

Hopes and Fears

Published on May 15, 2008 in A Dover Dilemma and Dover. 6 Comments Tags: , , .

If you’re a Dover student of the past or the present, you definitely want to read this post. If you aren’t, I invite you to read it anyway, but you may miss some of the complexities of the topic.

I have dedicated my free time in the last few months to speaking out against Dover High School’s major problems. I’ve written about some of these problems in the past on the blog, but I haven’t spoken about some aspects. To catch everyone up, these are the two problems:

  1. Extracurricular activities are in a sad state of affairs. Although there are many successful activities right now, others are failing for two different reasons. Students seem to have no interest in several of the activities, but there are other activities that have a disgusting and unacceptable problem; many club advisors aren’t holding meetings or even trying to have a club. Even worse, no one is making them – there’s very limited oversight.
  2. Student behavioral problems are rampant. That is to say, everything changed this year after the development of local “gangs”. There are constant fights and rowdiness in school, especially in the lunchrooms. In my opinion, the school administration hasn’t taken the necessary zero-tolerance policy toward this ridiculous behavior.

I’ve been working my heart out on both of these problems. Let me explain the recent developments on this front.

After Dover’s Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent found the money to hold our traditional spring assembly, the Leadership Rally, Student Council’s new committee, Save Our School (SOS), set its sights toward the first problem I listed. We developed a list of recommendations to send to Administration to address the problem of advisors who simply aren’t doing their jobs. Administration took those suggestions into a meeting with the advisors, but from what I’ve heard, the main problem isn’t solved. There is no clear authority enforcing the rules for advisors, and until that is made clear, I won’t rest.

Dealing with the second problem is much harder. I attended my first Board of Education meeting this last Tuesday night in order to gain approval for a new club for the high school; this new club, the Green Team, plans to raise awareness about climate change and make the community greener. I’m very jealous that I won’t be able to participate in this noble effort. However, I digress.

At the Board of Education meeting, one of the members asked me if I have any perspective or opinions on the behavioral issues in the High School. Needless to say, I was more than happy to tell the Board how I felt. I explained the emergence of these “gangs”, who’s involved, and why I think they’re able to succeed in Dover High School – the lack of punishment.

I can’t singlehandedly change the direction that Dover is heading, that’s impossible. However, while I’m still here and able to have my voice heard – able to make a difference – I’ll try. Thus far, I think SOS has been successful in its efforts. We’re raising the awareness of the highest authorities in the school district that there is a palpable problem here and who is failing to respond. In response to my perspective, I’ve been given some deeply regrettable news.

After double-checking that I’m allowed to publish this development, I’m now able to divulge that a massive and sophisticated camera system will soon be installed in Dover High School. Things have gotten so bad that it’s now necessary to constantly monitor students. In addition to this truly depressing news, it was made public today that one of Dover’s greatest, youngest, and most popular teachers will not be coming back to Dover in September. I’m not in the position to say whether or not this has anything to do with Administration’s failure to respond to these two problems, but I’m willing to place a bet.

I have great hopes for the future of my high school. It’s natural to think that things will get better from year to year, that newer students will have more opportunities to grown and learn in school. However, right now, this isn’t the case; things are getting worse. My fears for the future of Dover High School are drowning out my hopes.

Can someone throw Dover a life preserver?

If you’re a Dover student reading this post, I want to hear from you. Please find a way to talk to me and tell me what you think about these problems. Anything you can offer helps.