5.27.2008

advise

every once in a while i might ask for some advice

those who know me well know i may or may not listen

but i really like opinions of others

the perspective thing -

i only have my own until somebody shows me another.

so this thing happened about a month ago

where a good kid's computer got stolen

and my P was all like, make signs

and i did

and being that it's my school, where even quality artwork won't stay up on the walls for more than a week without being vandalized or torn down by some little snot who never learned any better, the posters are all but destroyed now.

i never heard anything back from the P or the A in general offering help or subsidizing the cost for another.

i did check in with another teacher in another school in another district, who had an extra computer but turns out it was a 9 year old box with no RAM.

and so it goes.

i have another kid in the program - one who has been designated an identical computer to the one which belonged to the first kid whose computer was stolen.

the other kid is fairly lazy, inconsistently available, overly social when he should be working, and the other day asked me what he could sell his computer for.

he also plans on not attending graduation.

the part where you come in - the advisory section:

can i, in good faith, being the moral, decent person i am, take the computer from the lazy inconsistent kid and re-designate it to the helpful good kid, whose computer was stolen? lazy kid would still get a computer, just not the computer he was planning on getting.

of course i can - i'm the teacher, i can do anything.

but is this ok to do?

i wouldn't normally ask, but i'm really struggling with this one.

thanks,

<3

3 comments:

Unknown said...

you know it's a hard one when even the internet jumping right in to advise!
i've turned it over in my head today, and i keep coming back to: re-assign the computers so the kid whose computer (kid a) was stolen gets the better one, and the disengaged kid (kid b) gets a different one. it's totally not fair, but nothing in this situation is fair, is it? it seems to me that kid a has already been screwed over by the thief and then by the lack of official response/effort to get it back. i don't see why a reassignment, if you have the power to do it, would be wrong: you'd be redressing the wrong done to kid a, rather than letting kid a's only encounter with "fairness" in this whole episode be a "fairness" that also works against him.
but that's just my opinion, man.

Unknown said...

erm, that should be "the internet ISN'T jumping right in". sorry, should have finished my tea first.

appple said...

thanks leo, this is pretty much the way i've been leaning since the theft occurred, but when it actually comes down to confronting kid b about switching his equipment, i start to back off. i really appreciate your insight and perspective.