Responding to Student Drug Use

I feel some days that I have 1100 children instead of two! Day after day I delight in the wit, sensitivity, creativity, and sense of fun of Campbell Hall students. When I get to teach a class or lead a discussion group, I almost always leave the classroom hopeful and excited that our future is in such good hands.

The greatest threat to my optimism regarding some of our children comes from their use of alcohol and drugs. Although reliable figures are hard to come by, it seems that Campbell Hall mirrors national statistics in that a majority of students experiment with alcohol during their high school years and a small minority try drugs. Both parents and educators need to be realistic in addressing those temptations. Campbell Hall has long sponsored drug and alcohol awareness programs; currently we teach several units in the junior high and high school through our human development classes, and touch on the subject many times in chapel and other classes. While we believe that every youngster who makes a mistake deserves a second chance, we have long made clear the seriousness of our approach to drug and alcohol problems through a “no tolerance” policy towards those students whom we find are using but have not come to us asking for help. In recent years we have become more assertive in investigating rumors of off-campus use (including parent-sponsored after-parties) that reach our ears and reduce the sense of safety and common mission on campus.

Despite our best efforts and those of many parents, this year’s ninth grade class has suffered as a number of students have either admitted, or have been witnessed, possessing, using, and/or selling drugs. Eight students have left the class at different times during the year. Adolescents are notoriously unrealistic in assessing the consequences of their behavior and adjusting accordingly; this year has seen a small number of more public users. While there is no evidence of any larger trend in the student body, it is still heartbreaking to us as idealistic and hopeful people that a small group could have veered so much off-track.

The number of drug-related incidents has occasioned much reflection and discussion in our administrative teams, and proposals for reviewing and modifying our drug and alcohol education program, our messages in chapel, and our disciplinary policies abound, which is as it should be. At the same time, it’s clear from conversations with families that parents play the central role in keeping their children safe from the temptations of drugs and alcohol. Campbell Hall’s Parent Education program was started about fifteen years ago in recognition of that central role that parents must play.

In response to recent drug-related incidents, we have also formed a joint PTC/administrative Drug and Alcohol Awareness Committee to review the school’s curriculum, policies, and practices, and to support the work of the Parent Education program by planning networking opportunities for parents. The following issues were prioritized in the Committee’s first meeting on the morning after the Town Hall:

-Greater clarification of the following issues in the Student Handbooks: 1) Explanation of “zero tolerance”; 2) Emphasize that “zero tolerance” includes major off-campus infractions; 3)Emphasize that families who come to the school asking for help for a student’s drug problem before a disciplinary issue arises may be able to remain at school if they participate in appropriate rehabilitation programs and stay incident-free moving forward.

-Explore Secondary “Summer Socials” for each grade level, grade level coffees, and Breakfast Clubs.

-Explore the possibility of having incoming secondary families meet in smaller groups with administrators, perhaps even one-on-one, to review expectations and policies.

-Use case studies on drug and alcohol issues in advisor groups.

-Expand community service opportunities for parents and students at local rehabilitation centers.

I emphasize that the most important thing you can do at this point as parents is to attend, in the weeks and months ahead, grade-level networking gatherings and also events sponsored by our Parent Education program. Get to know more parents in your class, and talk about parenting issues. As one parent noted in our well attended Town Hall meeting last week, we hope to see the same high attendance in all of our programs throughout the year.

Community of Inquiry (May CLIPS)

The introduction to the Strategic Plan 2000 noted that “Discussions around the word community and its meaning for Campbell Hall permeated every meeting of the committee.”[1] Certainly as the board’s Strategic Planning Committee prepares the new Strategic Plan 2008 for publication, it remains true that “when asked what they most valued about the school, current students along with student applicants and their families consistently described the strong aspect of community that the institution represents.” In some ways, the meaning of community in this context is quite clear: at Campbell Hall, we expect and work towards relationships and communication of high quality. We strive to be decent and thoughtful towards one another. When relationships are discordant, that stands out and worries us.

During this round of planning, I have become interested in expanding our common understanding of the notion of community to include our academic work more explicitly. My motivation comes in part from my own teaching experience. About a decade ago I taught a fantastic program with a horrible name: Philosophy for Children (the sixth graders informed me that they were definitely not children). Among other things, the course taught middle school students how to use critical thinking skills to approach very complex topics. The curriculum’s creator, Matthew Lipman, referred to the importance of creating a “community of inquiry” that would facilitate joint investigation and discussion of subjects where truth was not the sole possession of any one participant, including the teacher, but rather emerged in the process of dialogue.

The phrase “community of inquiry” seems to have originated from the American philosopher of science Charles Peirce, who recognized in the professional scientific community a paradigm for pursuing complex truths in every field. John Dewey in turn claimed that inquiry-based models should form the basis of all education. Retired Bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles Frederick Borsch places inquiry at the center of even our spiritual lives in his excellent book, The Spirit Searches Everything. I recently purchased copies for every trustee of a book entitled Culture of Inquiry that extols the virtues of healthy debate in the boardroom. My administrative colleagues and I have begun to investigate how the notion of a “community of inquiry” may be central to our identity as an Episcopal school.

If community just means that we all get along, it can lead to calls for oppressive conformity. If our understanding of community includes the awareness that all knowledge is provisional and mysterious, then we value the courage, civility, and discipline we show when we inquire together into difficult subjects as much as the fact that we cheer together at basketball games. We prepare students best for a larger world where highly complex and messy problems dominate the landscape by nurturing the skills of the community of inquiry so they know how to respond with grace, focus, and intelligence.
[1] http://www.campbellhall.org/aboutus/sp_1-community.asp

Digital Natives Running Amok (March CLIPS)

Have you heard Marc Prensky’s metaphor that we adults are “digital immigrants,” strangers and late arrivals in a land where our children are “digital natives”?[1] My six-year-old sure looks like a natural as he intuitively navigates software and games while I’m still leafing through the paper manuals. Kids today grew up using computers, the internet, and text messaging, and therefore, says Prensky, their brains just work differently from ours. He concludes that “the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.” He continues, "Smart adult immigrants accept that they don’t know about their new world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate. Not-so-smart (or not-so-flexible) immigrants spend most of their time grousing about how good things were in the 'old country.'" So those of us who grew up warning each other, “Don’t trust anyone over 30!” are now fogies who must defer to our kids in this brave new digital world.

I’m not sure that this dynamic is as new or different as Prensky suggests. Haven’t the young always deemed their elders hopelessly square and out of touch with all that is new, fresh, and exciting in the culture – partly because elders do not in fact take to the new technologies as quickly? And haven’t the best parents and teachers both learned from the enthusiasms of youth, and nevertheless refused to abdicate their role as guides and mentors? I remember my favorite teachers introducing me to virtual worlds I barely knew existed, let alone valued.

I just read a very recent report that “today's students are anything but masters of the technology universe. In fact the report casts major [doubt] on the view that teens are better with technology than are older adults.”[2] According to these authors, today’s youngsters “prefer interactive systems to passive ones. Therefore they love technology and yes, they do exhibit fairly strong basic technology skills.” However, today’s students also (1) “have real difficulty choosing good search terms” when searching the internet; (2) are deficient in their ability to evaluate information that they obtain through electronic media (in fact the study indicates that “students often fail to evaluate such information at all”); (3) like interactivity so much that they mistake cutting-and-pasting for analysis; and (4) “show a real preference for visual information over text,” even when images are virtually incomprehensible without the accompanying text.

Have you ever had the experience of speaking to an immigrant who knew more about your own country, and perhaps even your own language, than you did? I submit that we pre-digital fogies must stop letting the natives run amok and take back the technological high ground we have ceded! The latest research insists that students are in dire need of “a mental map of how search engines work,” as well as a greater vocabulary to give them the ability “to move beyond natural language” in search queries. I would further submit that they need adults to help them understand the values and pitfalls inherent in all the technology they use, including camera cell phones and social networking sites.

As it ever was, we adults need to learn to speak our kids’ language. But the research also notes that “perhaps the greatest issue and the one that is the most difficult is to actually get these youngsters to understand their current shortcomings.” Sound familiar?! Now that we baby boomers are over thirty, let us not be so insecure about technology that we neglict our job to teach youngsters how to use it.
[1] Marc Prensky, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” 2001; found at http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

[2] Thomas Hanson, “Student Shortcomings – Anything but Masters of Technology,” 2008; found at http://www.authenticeducation.org/bigideas/article.lasso?artId=64&-session=Auth:40D5C404055942874CLHFF61800B