EP4 Of Sit Down With Marlise(FT. Mr. Baker)

Mr. Baker, an Instructional Coach, discusses the issue of violence in schools and communities. He mentions that while violence in schools was not a problem, there were incidents of community violence that affected the students. He explains that violence often stems from fear and a feeling of having no other options. Mr. Baker also acknowledges the role of mental health and unresolved trauma in contributing to violence. He suggests that providing students with alternative activities and a sense of community can help prevent them from resorting to violence or joining gangs. Overall, he believes that schools can be safe places but acknowledges that the issue of violence is complex and nuanced. Hey everyone, welcome back to Stay Down With Marlene, so today here I'm with Mr. Baker, and we're going to talk about community. So Mr. Baker, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and what's your role at D.A.C.? Sure, I'm an Instructional Coach here at the Dearborn Pest Family. It's my first year here. Before that I was also an Instructional Coach at Chelsea High School for 10 years. Before that I was a teacher at the Brown Middle School for Chelsea for 5 years. So I worked at Chelsea and now I work at Oxford. Since you have worked in different schools, is there any difference that you have noticed? Differences? How? Like, the kids' behavior, the violence? I'll note in all three schools that I was in, the violence in the schools wasn't an issue, but the violence outside of the schools and the community was an issue. Especially when I was at Chelsea High School, for 10 years I was there, we lost not a student every year, but we definitely lost some students too. Either they were injured or even killed by acts of community violence. Not every year, but it did happen every other year. Every couple years we lost a student or two to either a shooting or a stabbing, unfortunately. So like, how did the violence outside the school impact inside the school? Did it cause shutdowns? We had a few shelter-in-place drills. We did run-hind-fight training. Occasionally there would be police activity outside the school where we would have to shut down the school. There was never any community violence that entered the school, but there were definitely activities outside the school that sometimes caused us to go into a shelter-in-place or a lockdown. Just in general, do you think that peer pressure sometimes influences others to look at the violence? I wouldn't say peer pressure does, but I think sometimes feeling like you don't have any other options. I think a violent reaction often comes from fear. So if a student or someone is acting violently, it's probably because they feel cornered or they feel like they don't have any other option or they don't have any other choice but to act with violence. So I don't see it as much of a peer pressure issue as a reaction and feeling afraid, scared, or threatened, if that makes sense. Do you think that people's mental health, or something that they're going through, and they don't talk to nobody about it, and they start changing? Let's give an example, joining gangs and things like that. Do you think that mental health and their own personal problems, do you think that they play a part in that? Yes, I think that's a good question. So the lingering trauma and trauma and unresolved trauma that people have experienced or seen definitely does lead them to be more likely to be depressed, to act out in violence, or to have mental health issues. I think that the issue with joining gangs is very complex, and what I saw from my time at Chelsea was it wasn't even a mental health issue sometimes, it was a meeting a sense of community issue. So there's definitely a mental health aspect to it, and that might be from loneliness. Because a lot of the students that we had were immigrants that would either come alone or had come with a one-family member or were staying with some members that they didn't know. So they found a sense of community sometimes in gang membership, and then that would lead them down the path of violence. So I think those students often did have unresolved and lingering mental health issues related to the trauma or the loneliness or just coming to a new culture or being alone and being a teenager or a young person. And then that also led to them having mental health issues. So it's complex and nuanced, but mental health is part of it, and needing a sense of community is part of it. You have been working in education for so long, like years and years. Do you think that the violence is getting worse, or are they getting any better? I don't know. I honestly don't know. I don't think it's gotten worse or better. I think it's probably pretty much the same. I will say I don't see as much or haven't seen as much in buildings as I've done before, as it happens in the community. I think the school buildings I've worked in have been safe places. Do you think if the kids had other activities, things to do after school, like somebody to talk to, do you think that would help them not choosing the violence path that's the gang? Certainly, yeah, because there would be two or three reasons for that. One is they'd have that sense of community I was talking about. So if you're doing a team or an activity that can be a more positive sense of community, they might have someone to talk to about issues that they're having, and it might lead them to not choose or make a bad choice around either gang activity or violence. So yeah, I think that would definitely help. Okay, so Mr. Baker, that was it. Thank you. I appreciate you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come here, sit down with Marlee, and talk to me. Thank you. You're welcome.