October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month
Submitted by Frank Murphy, Oct. 28, 2010
“ It was that the boy kicked Armand in the butt. That really made me mad. It reminded me of when Armand’s father kicked me in the butt. It really hurt. I was pregnant then with Armand’s sister. He almost made me fall down the steps. I had him arrested. He went to jail for three years. I’m not holding any grudge now. He paid for what he did to me, after he was arrested. He hurt me again before he went to trial. He came over to my sister’s house and beat me. That’s what that boy reminded me of. It made me really mad.”
(Ms Miller, mother of a fourth grade boy in Confessions of an Urban Principal: October)
According to research studies posted on the Domestic Violence Resource Center’s web site approximately 25% of American women have been victims of domestic violence at some point in their adult lives. Further studies sited by the DVRC suggest that between 3.3 and 10 million children annually are witnesses of domestic violence in some form. The National Organization for Women reports that a disproportionate percentage of female victims of abuse are young women, low-income women and minority women. When race is considered, African American women are victimized at higher rates than white women.
Domestic abuse has a tremendous impact on both the victims and their children, particularly in low-resources communities. In the school setting, this can affect both the academic performance and overall behavior of children. Children who witness domestic violence often suffer post-traumatic stress. This results in excessive absences, which in turn can impede academic progress. Some children respond to this stress by acting out violently in the classroom, thus disrupting the learning environment for others.
Making the connection that poor student behavior and academic performance might be related to domestic violence is not obvious to a classroom teacher. It wasn’t until after I had many years of experience as an educator that my awareness of this problem was heightened.
When I assumed the role of principal at Meade Elementary School, I became actively involved in the grim reality of the impact of domestic abuse on my students and their parents. The negative life experiences of these adults regularly played a role in how they interacted with the school and often determined how they reacted to events in their children’s life. For some parents, like Ms. Miller, a displacement of their own hurts into their children’s experiences prevented them from finding acceptable resolutions to their children’s problems at school.
Responding to this special kind of parent situation was something in which I had no formal training or professional development. I was well versed in child development, pedagogy, school law, finances, policy development, personnel practices and a variety of other useful management skills and practices. I had many years of experience as a teacher, administrator and instructional leader. But this extensive background still wasn’t enough to properly prepare me to handle the complexity of issues related to these troubled parents. Handling the negative effects of domestic violence on the school climate and individual student achievement were skills I eventually had to develop on my own.
Over time, my growth as an educator and social activist has been informed by the realization that the serious problems confronting parents does affect how well their children will perform in school. When I recognized that the explosive behavior of angry and uncooperative parents was often a matter of their projecting feelings of unresolved personal hurts and problems, I was better able to be of assistance to them. This assistance was critical to helping their children be able to thrive in school, both socially and academically.
Schools that serve their communities well, focus on not only creating rigorous and challenging instructional programs and safe school climates for their students, but also on helping parents to obtain the supports they need to be successful parents.
It is time that educators and society in general begin to work harder at developing a deeper awareness of the serious challenges and problems that confront the parents of some our most fragile students.
It is this aspect of school reality that is not often accounted for in the school reform rhetoric. Student achievement can be adversely affected by a great number of variables, which may or not be within the ability of a school to control. This knowledge has served me well in pursuit of my own school reform efforts. But this kind of knowledge needs to be part of a formalized training for teachers and administrators. Such training initiatives won’t happen until we recognize the significance of factors such as these and make them part of the accountability equation. In doing so, perhaps we can create better solutions for dealing with societal problems instead of blaming teachers and schools.