Middle School Hallway Police

Parent Cafe
1

<p>My kids are past middle school, but I just found out that the middle schools in our district have taped lines down the middle of the hallways to create traffic lanes. If you are out of the correct lane, you can be issued a “ticket.” So many tickets lead to disciplinary action. If your locker is on the other side of the line, you have to continue past your locker until you reach a “turn-around,” at which point you can turn and go back to your locker.</p>

<p>Oh, and it gets better (or worse) - the elementary schools have outlawed games that produce a winner and a loser. I am not sure what games are left to play…</p>

2

<p>Dad, it sounds like a lot of tardiness has to be going around in that middle school! That might be the funniest (stupid?) thing I’ve read today! Thanks.</p>

<p>Games without a winner? I guess that leaves soccer and hockey available :)</p>

3

<p>Crowded hallways can really be crazy to get through, especially today when so many kids have rolling backpacks. Having the system so organized is a little frightening though.</p>

<p>And I hate the no winner/loser concept in games. Don’t even get me started on that one.</p>

4

<p>OMG that is so funny. “Educators” with too much time on their hands I’d say.</p>

5

<p>Yeah, that’s ridiculous.</p>

<p>Suggest OCS to the middle school-if the student is late, they are sent to On Campus Suspension for the entire period. Or suggest that they don’t allow rolling backpacks unless the student needs them for health reasons.</p>

<p>My school has 4,500 kids and we have no problems with this…there’s got to be a better way than dividing the hallway.</p>

6

<p>That is the craziest thing. And aren’t the hallway police taking up hallway space, or are they suspended from the ceiling?</p>

<p>In our Middle School and High School no rolling backpacks are allowed at all. In fact last year, our high school started one-way-traffic patterns, which made a huge improvement to the hallway jams. Ofcourse, the design of the hallways had some circuits in it, which allowed for this to be successful.</p>

7

<p>At my Ds HS, the kids naturely walk to the right when passing to classes, something most learned in elementary schools and middle schools</p>

<p>it can be dangerous with kids walking all over the place and rushing</p>

<p>think about an escalator, movers to the left, standees to the right</p>

<p>common courtesy, seems at Middle School they need to teach common courtesy to kids and maybe common sense</p>

<p>they also don’t go their locker in between every class and learn to plan what to carry around</p>

<p>I think maybe the line is a bit much, but I totally understand the reasons</p>

<p>Kids fool around, run, horse play, shove, dawdle, etc, and I bet some kids got hurt, or were indeed late to class and it really wasnt’ their fault, they couldn’t pass in the halls</p>

<p>we expect kids to act reasonibly during fire drills, in school lines, they can wait in line at the movies, at the fair, for the bus, what they can’t walk in a civilized manner in a crowded hallway? so a school resroted to a line down the hall, so what…</p>

<p>seems at one school anyway, it is what it takes to get the kids to be civilized</p>

<p>I don’t see the problem with it at all really</p>

8

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<p>In my high school of 900 (I know tiny compared to some but that’s relative) you struggled to get to class on time. Especially if you had class in the north building upstairs and then class in the south building upstairs it was near impossible. That meant you had to go down the stairs, through the main hallway, and then up a flight of stairs. All in 5 minutes. You can’t expect civillized lines in that kind of situation. Some students have to go one class down while others have to go to the other end of the building in the same 5 minute time.</p>

<p>Also, we weren’t allowed to carry backpacks in school anyway. That eliminates that issue.</p>

9

<p>We’re allowed to carry backpacks because only our highschool seniors get lockers. </p>

<p>Besides, like I said, at a school with 4500 students it’s going to be chaos no matter how you organize things. Hence why we love OCS…really gives kids that incentive to get to class on time. ^_^</p>

10

<p>Your HS has 4500 kids in in it!!!</p>

11

<p>Principal at our suburban middle school tried the “traffic lines” in the hall after winter break a few years ago. Parents got wind of the traffic violations for crossing the lines, and the tape was removed by spring break. Kids laughed at the idea of traffic lanes and tickets. It was a shortlived disaster. </p>

<p>It’s funny now to remember how silly the whole thing was…</p>

12

<p>Yup…all the high schools in our district are pretty much 4,000 roughly.</p>

<p>It really isn’t necessary…they’re probably blowing the issue way out of proportion.</p>

13

<p>My daughter’s middle school went beyond the tape thing. They inlaid red tile strips on all the halls, one on each side of a VERY WIDE HALL and required students to march lock-step on those lines. When I was volunteering in the school, I was expected to stay on the lines, too. I stopped volunteering. Sorry.</p>

<p>I think it is ridiculous. Kids don’t learn manners by being ordered to walk in a straight line, make no sound, touch no one. Little true learning comes from just following someone else’s orders. All my daughter and her friends learned was to despise that middle school and the behavior police who ran it.</p>

<p>My son attended a small but crowded independent school, housed in a very old, decrepit building. Narrow halls, kids bumping into each other, chaos. They all got to class on time, no one got killed. There was a happy, noisy feel to the place in between classes. I volunteered there all the time. The differences between those schools could make for a dissertation.</p>

<p>School is not supposed to be prison.</p>

14

<p>“little true learning comes from following orders”</p>

<p>fire drills…and I too volunteered at my Ds school, and at first thought hmm, strict with the lines, but after a bit, saw that for safety reasons, it was a good idea</p>

<p>chaos in middle school isn’t such a wonderful thing…</p>

<p>There is a middle ground between total anarchy and some control</p>

<p>those are the kids that push and shove at the mall, and crash into my mom, because they have disregard for others and if you think little comes from following orders, what can i say, why tell them to wait their turn, why tell them to not shove, why give any orders if it doesn’t teach</p>

<p>“Little true learning comes from just following someone else’s orders.”</p>

<p>that is just one amazing statement-- do you not tell your kids to eat with their mouths closed, or is it just a suggestion, do you not tell your kids to look both ways, or is it just a suggestion, do you tell your kids to not fool around in the car, or is it just a suggestion</p>

<p>sometimes chaos is not a good thing and learning to have a bit of self control and maturity can go a long way in life</p>

<p>When my D got to her HS, she came home one day and said some senior yelled at her and her friends for blocking the hall…D was incredulous…how dare those Seniors tell her what to do…well fast forward 4 years, and she comes home telling me she did the same thing with some obnoxious freshman boys who thought bumping into people was fun in highschool…and you know what kids do?</p>

<p>they shove EACH other to actually push a 3rd person and then go, oppsy, its a way of being mean while trying to make it look like an accident</p>

<p>fave trick of the middle school set</p>

15

<p>what you TEACH kids is that you walk to the right, as often as you can…and it is amazing how that works</p>

<p>also no stopping in the stairwells, at corners, or standing in the middle of the hallway. </p>

<p>if people walk to the right, traffic moves…sometimes a bit of orgnization, a bit of courtesy goes much further than pushing and shoving your way through</p>

<p>what you find is kids stop in the middle of the a hall way to chat, or whatever, and thus people have to move around them, causing log jams, if students just thought about each other, everyones lives would be easier, guess that is too much to ask</p>

<p>also kids tend to walk 2 or 3 or 4 abreast, blocking the walkways, and hallways, they do this to look cool and its frankly an agressive way of getting attention…</p>

<p>there is no need for chaos, if that is acceptable, then when they get to HS, etc., they have no clue how to behave…because not much more was expected of them since elemantary school, why should HS be any different</p>

<p>and am NOT saying have traffic police, but to expect so little of our students is really sad</p>

16

<p>Um…it’s middle school.</p>

<p>Do you guys seriously not remember what it’s like to be in middle school? You don’t care about being polite in middle school, a lot of kids haven’t even gone through puberty yet. Now I understand why you’re kinda miffed about the daughter in high school, because those kids really should have a better sense of courtesy. But you can’t go to either extreme.</p>

<p>My school has never done anything like what you described, and no one ever gets hurt walking down the hall and almost everyone gets to class on time (the ones that don’t either have a pass or just don’t care about being late).</p>

<p>In fact, none of my schools ever did anything except for OCS. Sure the halls are crowded, but it actually taught me how to be able to move in a crowd. We’re all really good at it now, and honestly I think knowing how to maneuver in a large group of people while being able to stay with the people you went in with is more useful than having to spend my time walking in a straight line.</p>

<p>Ack. That was at post 14, not 15. Sorry for any confusion.</p>

17

<p>Oh I remember middle school, and we walked and talked and had fun, but we ALSO stayed to the right, is that such a horrid thing?</p>

18

<p>Did I say it was?</p>

<p>No. I’m just saying that you’re all acting as if mass chaos is going to break out at every school that doesn’t force their kids to walk on the right side of the hallway. And I’m just presenting another point of view because like I said, none of my schools ever did that and we’re all fine (we have fights occasionally, but what HS doesn’t?).</p>

19

<p>And I am saying many issues will handled if kids are taught to stay to the right… it is really amazing how it work…it also depends on how wide the hallways are, locker arrangements, the behavior of the students, etc</p>

<p>it is not such a bad thing to teach kids some decorum in middle school, hormones or not, fascinating that people want to excuse behavior because of puberty…guess if you going through puberty, eh…oh, you got hormones, have at it</p>

<p>during puberty and such is EXACTLY the time to work on self control, its the danger times of life, when poor decisions are made, bad choices, and its up to parents and teachers to say, whoa, kids, reign it back in, not just go, well, its hormones, have at it</p>

<p>I have noticed this idea that well, the brain doesn’t development fully until they are 25 or whatever, so…so, what, we wait until they are all grown up before we teach them boundaries, and one place to start in in large groups at school</p>

<p>Do you think having manners and such happens from thin air, the manner fairy? or something magic happens when you walk into the HS doors?</p>

20

<p>What issues is teaching them to walk to the right going to solve other than making school even more like a prison than it already is?</p>

<p>I think it’s very sad that our children aren’t being allowed to be children anymore. It’s like we hit middle school and BAM, time to grow up and be mature all the time.</p>