Parent Interview- School Violence: Project

Parent Interview- School Violence: Project Description

The subjects of this project include two parents who have children in the public school system in urban Los Angeles. Both parents have children attending the same high school, the level at which one might expect school violence to pose the greatest threat to children and parents. The first parent is a fairly young single mother of one child. The mother is 31, and her daughter, aged 15, is a high-school freshman. The mother is African-American, and her daughter is of mixed ancestry, half African-American and half-Mexican-American. The father has been intermittently involved in the daughter's life, but is currently incarcerated. The other parent is also relatively young, a 38-year-old African-American father of a 16-year-old son. The father is married to his son's mother, also an African-American woman. They have two other children in the home, a 12-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter.

Has your child been affected by violent behavior?

2. Has your child ever been involved as a perpetrator or a victim of school violence?

3. Does your child exhibit any of the following warning signs of violent behavior: loss of temper on a daily basis, frequent physical fights, significant vandalism or property damage, increase in substance use, increase in risk-taking behavior, planning or threatening to commit violence, carrying a weapon, or hurting animals? (APA Help Center).

4. Do you feel that school violence or the threat of school violence has impacted your child's educational opportunities?

5. Do you feel as if your child's school is violent? Please explain why you do or do not feel that way.

6. "Does your child's school focus on academic achievement?" (Lassiter).

Does the staff at your child's school have a basic awareness of safety issues?" (Lassiter).

8. "Does your child's school involve families/parents in meaningful ways?" (Lassiter).

Does your child's school involve students in preventing school violence?" (Lassiter).

10. "Does your child's school teach proper behavior and discipline?" (Lassiter).

11. Has your child ever been the victim or perpetrator of bullying, regardless of whether there was violence involved?

Parental Perception of the Impact of School Violence in Urban Los Angeles

Demographics

This study focused on interviews with two parents whose children attend Venice Senior High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In the 2008-2009 school year, the high school has 2773 students. The vast majority of those students, 1859, are Hispanic. 270 students are black, 395 are white, 212 are Asian, and 58 come from other ethnic backgrounds. Venice High School is in a safe-school zone, and provides substantial opportunities for parents to be involved in the educational process, though they do not get the desired response in the parent-center. Violence is a significant problem at the high school. The school experiences numerous gang problems, and there have been shootings on the campus. Most significant, one of the shootings, which resulted in the death of a student and occurred in 2006, was linked to racial difficulties between black and Hispanic students.

The first subject interviewed was a 31-year-old, African-American single mother of a 15-year-old daughter, with no other children. The father, a Mexican-American, has been intermittently involved in the daughter's life, but is currently incarcerated. The father has a history of gang involvement, as does much of the mother's extended family. The daughter self-identifies as African-American and primarily associates with other African-American children. She is a slightly-above-average student with good attendance and who plans to attend college.

The second subject interviewed was a 38-year-old African-American father. He is married to the mother of his three children. The oldest child is a 16-year-old son who is a high school sophomore. The two other children in the family are a 12-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter. The father was tangentially involved in gang activity as a youth, but turned away from that lifestyle and currently works as a pastor. He is involved in a prison outreach ministry, where he actually encounters many alumni from Venice High School.

Interview Summary: Subject One

1. Has your child been affected by violent behavior? Yes, she has seen violence in the home and was beat up by a boy she dated at the beginning of the school year.

2. Has your child ever been involved as a perpetrator or a victim of school violence? No.

3. Does your child exhibit any of the following warning signs of violent behavior: loss of temper on a daily basis, frequent physical fights, significant vandalism or property damage, increase in substance use, increase in risk-taking behavior, planning or threatening to commit violence, carrying a weapon, or hurting animals? (APA Help Center). No, but she has experimented with some drugs and drinks at parties.

4. Do you feel that school violence or the threat of school violence has impacted your child's educational opportunities? Of course. If she didn't have to worry about safety, she could spend more time on her studies.

5. Do you feel as if your child's school is violent? Please explain why you do or do not feel that way. Yes. Gangs and kids have been killed there. It's a horrible school.

6. "Does your child's school focus on academic achievement?" (Lassiter). Sometimes.

Does the staff at your child's school have a basic awareness of safety issues?" (Lassiter). Yes.

8. "Does your child's school involve families/parents in meaningful ways?" (Lassiter). No, they don't pay any attention to what parents have to say, and they don't take our concerns seriously.

Does your child's school involve students in preventing school violence?" (Lassiter). Not that I can tell.

10. "Does your child's school teach proper behavior and discipline?" (Lassiter). No. It's not their job to discipline anyway. These kids come from homes with no discipline- how are the teachers supposed to deal with them?

11. Has your child ever been the victim or perpetrator of bullying, regardless of whether there was violence involved? I think every kid bullies people and is bullied when they're younger, but she hasn't been involved in anything like that since maybe 6th grade.

Interview Summary: Subject Two

1. Has your child been affected by violent behavior? Yes, I make sure he's affected. I take him with me to my prison ministry, so he can see what happens when people choose that kind of life. I took him to that student's funeral in 2006, even though he wasn't at the same school, so that he could understand how death impacts people.

2. Has your child ever been involved as a perpetrator or a victim of school violence? Yes.

He got in a fight in elementary school, and he's been pushed by some kids in high school.

3. Does your child exhibit any of the following warning signs of violent behavior: loss of temper on a daily basis, frequent physical fights, significant vandalism or property damage, increase in substance use, increase in risk-taking behavior, planning or threatening to commit violence, carrying a weapon, or hurting animals? (APA Help Center). He's a teenage boy, so he's got a temper, but he never losses it. I wouldn't tolerate any of that other behavior.

4. Do you feel that school violence or the threat of school violence has impacted your child's educational opportunities? No, not really. Yes, he goes to a high school with a bad reputation, but the school offers real educational opportunities. We live in a rough area with lots of gangs. He's not in any more danger at school than he's in hanging out in the neighborhood. He's doing very well in school. He's actually been approached about being on the schools' Academic Decathlon team next year. I think educational opportunities are there, as long as students are willing to seize them.

5. Do you feel as if your child's school is violent? Please explain why you do or do not feel that way. Yes. The gangs and the underlying racial resentment help make it that way.

6. "Does your child's school focus on academic achievement?" (Lassiter). Yes.

Does the staff at your child's school have a basic awareness of safety issues?" (Lassiter). Yes, but they also have almost 3,000 students. I don't think it's realistic to expect them to be able to monitor every student. I go into prisons and see the contraband they smuggle in, and schools can't be expected to have the same type of security as prisons.

8. "Does your child's school involve families/parents in meaningful ways?" (Lassiter). The parents who want to be involved.

Does your child's school involve students in preventing school violence?" (Lassiter). Yes.

10. "Does your child's school teach proper behavior and discipline?" (Lassiter). Not really. On the one hand, they have a zero-tolerance policy, which can lead to some absurd results. On the other hand, when students are really dangerous and frightening, they oftentimes lack the ability to remove that student or punish him accordingly.

11. Has your child ever been the victim or perpetrator of bullying, regardless of whether there was violence involved? A few times. He is still harassed for being a nerd and for my speaking out against gangs, but he's a big kid and the kids seem to think I'm pretty connected since I'm in touch with these jailed gang-bangers, so they mostly leave him alone.

Interview Analysis

Frankly, the first interview was disturbing to conduct. The parent, a young woman who had been a teenage mother was raising a daughter who seemed almost destined to follow in her mother's footsteps. Although the interview questions, themselves, did not elicit information that would lead the interviewer to that conclusion, the mother was very open about her own life experiences. She got pregnant at 15, when she was a freshman in high school. The father of her child was an adult at the time, a high-school dropout who had been involved in gang activity. He was incarcerated for the first time during her pregnancy, and has spent the last 15 years in and out of prison. He has been involved in robberies and other gang activity, and was a suspect in a murder, though there was not enough evidence to charge him with that crime. When he is not in prison, the mother often allows him to stay with her and her daughter. The father has been violent towards her on repeated occasions, though she minimizes both the severity and frequency of the violence. The daughter has seen her father pistol-whip her grandfather, which is the crime for which he is currently incarcerated.

Unfortunately, the daughter seems to be following in her mother's footsteps. Although the interview did not discuss sexual activity, the mother volunteered that she is aware her daughter is sexually active and that she has already been treated for one sexually-transmitted diseases, leading the interviewer to the conclusion that she is not practicing safe-sex. Her first significant boyfriend beat her up pretty severely, and, though the daughter broke up with him, she refused to contact the police and has discussed the possibility of reconciling with him. Although the mother seemed confident that her daughter was bright and described her as a good student, her grades are in the A-B range, and her mother did not indicate that she did a substantial amount of homework or spent time studying. In general, the interviewer had the impression that the daughter was coasting through high school.

The mother felt that her daughter's school was a violent and dangerous place, a reasonable assumption given that there have been multiple shootings on the campus. However, she seemed more concerned about the violence at school than the fact that her daughter had grown up in a violent home and had been assaulted by a boyfriend. Moreover, she was very matter-of-fact when discussing the fact that her child had experimented with drugs and regularly drinks alcohol at parties. This was a very interesting point, since she talked about children coming from homes without discipline, but does not appear to have made attempts to discipline her child and dissuade undesirable behavior like early-teen sexual activity, unsafe sexual practices, and substance use. The mother indicated that the school did not listen to parental concerns, but was not involved in any of the parent activities in the school. However, she characterized herself as an involved parent, because she had attended a community meeting with school officials after the last school shooting. She talked about her daughter being distracted by safety issues at school, so that she could not concentrate on her studies, but did not discuss any alternatives.

In contrast to the first interview subject, the father who was interviewed seemed very involved, not only in his children's lives, but in the community as a whole. Rather than simply discuss the issue of school violence, he took affirmative steps to make sure that his son was aware of the consequences of violence, not only taking him to the funeral of a slain student, but also taking him to the prison to talk to people incarcerated for violent behavior. The father acknowledged that the son's school was a violent and dangerous one with a substantial gang problem. However, the father also seemed to feel that a dangerous environment would not be an excuse for his son to be involved in violent behavior. In fact, though the interviewer had the impression that the family had the means to move outside of the neighborhood, the father seemed committed to raising his children to rise above their external environment.