Mandy Marchant: Socialization in School

Social capital and its’ influence on how children perform is an applicable idea from the chapter to my personal experience. In my practicum, I work with a student who has underdeveloped social skills. Thus, making friends and lasting relationships for this student is hard because they do not know how to appropriately react in situations. The school has a successful way of assisting this student make connections with their classmates. Everyday a volunteer comes from the high school to read with this student and play games for one hour, to help develop this child’s socialization skills in certain areas. Once a strong, trusting, and positive relationship was formed between the volunteer and the student, the principal included another element. The child began to bring one friend, of his choice, from his class to his meeting with the high school volunteer. This made the child, and the friend, feel extra special, as well as gave the student an opportunity to play with his peers and have a mediator present if assistance was required. This student doesn’t always have to take the same friend and many friends are eager to go with this student and volunteer. Even in the short time I have been in practicum, I have seen a huge improvement in the student’s socialization development and a noticeable increase in the friendships the student has. The students improved socialization skills has translated into the classroom and their learning.

The other notion applicable to my experience is the idea of zero tolerance policies. I was in high school when zero tolerance policies were implemented in my school. There was a zero tolerance for bullying established. Except, bullying still continued, and with varying consequences. Our school did not have a well-thought out set of repercussions for transgressions against other students. Instead, certain acts were punished one way and similar acts may have been punished another way. Also, in some cases teachers heard of bullying and did nothing about it. Teachers are not around every student, every minute so I understand that extreme actions cannot be taken on things they have not seen because there is no one to tell the actual truth. However, schools that implement zero tolerance policies need to have in-depth, regulated, consistent, and fair consequences for actions. Consequences need to be appropriate and need to focus on remediating the issue so it doesn’t happen again. Otherwise, the program becomes ineffective because students feel disrespected and treated unequal when consistent approaches are not taken. Furthermore, the issues are not resolved, which is the most important part.

Discussion Question: Should nations/provinces be concerned with females outperforming males on standardized tests, aka a moral panic?