Enough Already

Yet another story of a teen killing themselves after being tormented by their classmates- this time a 14 year old girl who was bullied by her classmates because she dared to report that another student had raped her.

It's got to stop. Bullying is not a normal part of growing up. It leaves permanent scars, even if they're not visible. Parents and educators have got to stand up and say "no more."  If a student bullies another student, kick their horrible little butts out of the school. Make their parents, who couldn't be bothered to teach them to be decent people, pay to educate them privately and send them to corrective therapy.

Every single child who tormented this girl is morally, if not legally, her killer. And they should be forced to live with that fact for the rest of their lives.

Especially in this case. Rape is not a joke, and it is not the victim's fault. It is a crime, arguably the worst crime; something that school administrators need to remember  Specifically administrators in Detroit, where this young woman lived; and Muncie, Indiana, where the school thought rape allegations would be better handled in an internal investigation than by the police; and Silsbee, Texas, where a girl was kicked off the cheer squad when she refused to cheer for her rapist; and who knows how many other schools that haven't made the news.

How many more people are going to have to die, or have their lives destroyed, before the country as a whole realizes that there is a problem.

And, of course, a plug for the It Gets Better project.

The trip that can't happen

The (rather long) backstory.
I have a license to teach high school history. For a variety of reasons that I'll not get into (makes me sound bitter, which I'll admit to being... a little) I'm not doing so. Since that didn't happen, I finally got talked into decided to go back to school. Thinking only of the resume and job prospects, I decided to add on an English as a Second Language licensure. Turns out, since it's not a full degree, no financial aid was available, so I wound up adding on an elementary education program as well.

That's how I wound up being in a place to hear about the fun and interesting summer programs that are available.

The first one was a program through a university in Liverpool. Take classes and have the opportunity to actually work in a British school. Sounds awesome, but the truth of the matter is that it wasn't the program that sounds that appealing; it was the being back in England. But it was very expensive and not really worth leaving my husband behind for 8 weeks over.


And then Tony Kline came in to talk about his program. And this time it was the program, and not the location, that made me want to go. It would be working with students and teachers to create/improve a literacy program at an orphanage in the country of Malawi. 6 weeks, working hands on with these kids and really truly making a difference. I can't put into words how much I want to do this. It won't happen though. In passing, I mentioned the idea of taking some time off over the summer and was left with no doubt that I wouldn't have a job when I came back. It's expensive; I don't know the full cost but summer tuition alone is somewhere around $3,000 with travel expenses on top. Last, but certainly not least, Dustin doesn't care for the location. Intellectually, he knows better, but on an emotional level any place in Africa still equals Somalia 1993 (Black Hawk Down, for those who know their history from movies). We're working on it.

Someday, maybe. I'm certainly going to try. Perhaps the summer after graduating (again) I'll have a job lined up and will be able to take two months to do something like this.

The beginning

I'm not sure how often this will be updated. Rarely, I suspect, as it was created mainly to make it easier to follow the blogs of others. Regardless, I might occasionally get the urge to go on about something.