Domestic Psychology

the world is shrinking

// June 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // local, teenagers

Sarah: “Everybody knew Justin and Adam. Oh, and Z used to be friends with the guy that beat Henry. A bunch of my friends are going to Sundown tonight. Can I go too?”

Can I just lock the doors and keep the children home?

weapons of extreme annoyance

// April 13th, 2010 // No Comments » // health, local

The next time the government needs to have a chat with people holed up in a compound, maybe they should mist a bit of East TN air over the compound. Sometime in the following 24 hours, everyone inside the compound will begrudgingly put down their weapons and come outside in exchange for the promise of allergy meds for their itchy eyes and stuffy noses.

Two cents – Inskip

// February 23rd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // local, school

It has taken me forever to feel it is appropriate to comment on the shooting at Inskip. I just couldn’t comment until the victims were stable and the school was moving forward in their healing process. The screaming about the size of the staff in the AJ building, metal detectors in every doorway or not hiring anyone with a history of mental illness was tempting to address, but in the beginning, all focus needed to be on the victims. The no explanation version of my opinion is that while everyone did what they were legally required to do, it is now time to do better. How can we do better?

Let’s start with our responsibility to report anyone we think is a serious danger to others. Alerting authorities with concerns is all that we have to do. If we do it anonymously, huge amounts of time are wasted trying to verify the validity of the complaints. Disgruntled students and parents have been known to make groundless complaints about teachers. While all concerns have to be taken seriously, they also have to be properly investigated so that teachers are not wrongfully accused. When a person in our neighborhood robbed a bank, we called the FBI. The criminal was armed and dangerous and knew exactly who we were, but the risk of that person committing another crime was great enough to warrant our publicly identifying him. We need to be helpful and not a hindrance to an investigation.

Let’s talk about teacher education programs. I write these words as someone who graduated college before the full year of internship that would have completed my education degree. I was extremely pregnant and knew I needed to spend that year focused on my new baby. I personally knew a dozen people who graduated with teaching degrees. Less than three years later, TWO of those people were still teaching. I believe that those college professors knew some of those students were not going to be teachers. Education programs that knowingly allow students to spend years studying in education when they would be better served in an MBA program are doing students a disservice. Education programs that can’t say a reasonable percentage of their graduates continue to get their Master’s degree within a certain number of years instead of losing their graduates to other careers are doing future employers a disservice. Education programs that fail to encourage medical help for students who clearly have mental health problems are doing children a disservice. Teacher education programs need to watch for signs of predatory teachers who will date their students (yes, that IS a euphemism), bully children and threaten peers. Mandatory counseling sessions may just need to be a requirement in teacher education programs.

Any laws that restrict checking of references or prevent references from being completely honest with concerns need to be reconsidered. There must be a better way to protect the innocently accused while also protecting our most vulnerable populations.

School systems need to think about their part in tragedies like this. Are we taking good care of the teachers who are responsible for classrooms full of children all day? Do we ask them to do the impossible and provide inadequate support services? Is it really a good idea to inform someone they won’t have a job next year while they are still on the job? Are school administrators given the power to terminate contracts mid-year when they know things are going poorly? Do we encourage teachers to take care of their physical and mental health or make it difficult for them to do so?

Ultimately, responsibility falls completely upon the person who made the horrible decision to hurt others. Blaming anyone else will not change that which has already happened. If we fail to learn and grow from this, then it becomes our failure.

keep them behind a locked gate

// January 28th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // health, home, local, mental health, politics

After meeting opposition at every proposed site, the plan to create permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless all over Knox County has ended where so many wanted it to be, Lakeshore. Pessimistic voices argue that this keeps the mentally ill homeless near mental health services. Optimistic voices argue that Lakeshore is lovely and one of their favorite places to go for a walk. How many of those voices have ever been inside the locked buildings at Lakeshore? How many had no idea there are still patients at Lakeshore? How many understand that Lakeshore is not an out-patient medical center, but a crisis stabilization facility? How can they miss all the news reports that identify Lakeshore as the forensic facility for people whose dangerous crimes may have been connected to personal illness?

Do I take my children to the trails at Lakeshore? Of course I do. The difference is that those buildings with locked doors aren’t invisible to me. I am constantly aware of their presence and the seriously ill people inside them. People who are struggling to survive. People in very real pain. People who have been victimized by their extreme vulnerability. Human beings in locked rooms, in locked buildings, behind locked gates. Lakeshore is a hospital and no matter how much they have to sell their land to stay in business for the people who desperately need care, it is still a place where sick people go to get better.

Is permanent supportive housing a place for people with special needs who lack the support systems needed to fully function in society? If so, why isn’t it being put in neighborhoods with other people? Group homes belong among other homes. Apartments cluster with other multi-family housing facilities. Where are the other families living at Lakeshore? They are not there. Where can the PSH residents go when they need a cup of sugar? Shall they knock on the hospital door? Even the Lakeshore chapel was sold to make additional parking for soccer moms. That’s not a community. It’s a business. It’s not a business that will hire them though.

Oh, ha-ha Cathy. You’re so stupid to claim Lakeshore is not a community. Look at all the people walking their dogs and watching children play soccer. If a crowd of strangers decided to let their dogs poop on my street, they would not make this a community. Community is the all of the neighbors who know each other. Community is the ability to walk next door for a cup of milk or collect a neighbor’s mail when they are on vacation. Community is knowing that everyone in this neighborhood recognizes my children and keeps an eye on what they are doing just as I know and watch over their children. Community is not a place surrounded by gates and designed for lock-down protocol. Not gates to keep the scary out, but gates to control the residents and keep them inside the facility. Gates to keep the mentally ill and now the homeless out of sight and out of mind.

The people who don’t want this site discussed because they think this is the issue that will put someone in or keep someone out of the mayoral office are helping nobody. Constant media attention has made politicians completely ineffective people whose primary goal is their next elected office. The only decision politicians make that isn’t based solely on campaigning are the ones they make when they take off their britches. I know that the League of Women Voters could revoke my membership for saying that, but I suspect they recognize frustration and aggravation as the predecessors to focus and motivation.

odds & ends

// August 30th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // knoxville, local, people, school

Since High School Tour 2009 will be published Tuesday morning, here is some of the stuff that won’t be included in the print or online versions of the tour.

While I sat in the school office, woman number one pulled out her cell phone to call someone and get copies of paperwork needed to complete the registration process. When she didn’t find the phone number on her SIM card, she asked the two women on the other side of the desk if they had a phone book nearby. The woman seated behind a computer, looked in all the drawers of her desk before mumbling that she couldn’t find her copy of the phone book. At the same time, the other woman looked away from the computer where she was typing and pulled a very nice smart phone out of her purse. “What number do you call for information?”

In another school office, on another day, a vice principal re-enacted a scene from “Pump Up The Volume.” I’m sure I didn’t have a p-p-p-poker face reaction, since she looked at me and declared that “they make us be this way.”

In yet another school building, a teacher actually wept for a student who made a series of bad decisions that led to a tragedy.

One principal didn’t get the e-mail about my visit, but dropped everything on his schedule to spend more than an hour talking to me.
All but one school spent over an hour talking to me and showing me the highs and lows of their facilities.
The principal at a school my children have never attended, remembered my oldest child, despite having taught 1000′s of students over the years.
One SMART principal told me exactly what her school needs first and what it already has second.
Knox County Schools’ teachers spent their summer vacation painting, scrubbing and landscaping their schools.

The high school tours and the time I spent with school administrators was one of the best experiences of my life. I highly recommend that anyone who “hears” this or that about a school, call and schedule a visit to see and hear the truth.