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Welcome to ANI in the air talk about Tuesday where I talk about something
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related to Sudbury schooling. So today I thought I'd ponder the question are we
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ageist? So basically we have a variety of students of different ages and we do
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have expectations that are different for the different age groups. We have a
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certain sort of foundational level of expecting to follow our rules. Everyone
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expecting to show up for JC when they're either in a case or on the team.
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Expecting to show up to school meeting. In other years we expect them to do
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short time you know and and generally we have this expectation of them complying with you
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know the you know what school meeting has decided. We expect them to kind of
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participate in it if they care and expect them to be honest and expect them to be
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able to keep themselves and others safe. So you know that's true of all ages but
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then there's you know if a five-year-old makes a mess in the sunroom you know
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that feels like something well we address with JC and so forth. If a 12
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year old makes that same kind of horrendous mess that feels a very
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different thing. I mean we'd still go through JC but our our patience with the
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whole thing would be much more limited than with the younger students. So I
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guess is that ageist and I guess I would say yes. I mean there's a certain
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understanding of you know where people can be you know that's really kind of
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like a developmental stage right. I've seen it many times where young students
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are engaged in something then it's almost like they were never they were
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never there they're they've switched to something else and they moved on. That
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happens with older people even adults but it seems much more frequent with
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young kids and so we have a certain tolerance of it and so you know our
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pathway we don't change our rules but determine whether a rule is broken it's
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really just the first step and then you know there's actions and then they're
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seeing whether they comply with the actions whether they change their rule
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breaking etc. There's also a feeling I think that with the young ones it can
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often be you know I mean there are limits to our patience with what they
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might do but on the whole we're willing to give them a much longer runway so you
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know that's just yeah we just think it's more appropriate we just have a
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different notion of what's going to take it you know that warnings and just
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coming to JC a lot of times will get the message through to them more than some
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sort of something more severe we don't really like to do severe stuff with the
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older ones we tend to just think that they are understanding what we're trying
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to communicate and they're being willful when they don't do things and it's that
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kind of willful defiance that you know we have a real problem with so you know
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I think I think it's you know I mean I guess on the other hand if we well so
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there's also the possibility and we've had this occasionally when a somewhat
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older student seems to have behavior and actions that are more in line with
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someone who might be five and but they're dangerous because they're so
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much bigger you know you know ten or eleven year old pushing someone around
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particularly pushing a five-year-old around this is very different than a
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five-year-old pushing someone around or pushing a five-year-old around right like
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there are these differences that really do matter and so yeah I think we just
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but we're we don't I guess the thing we don't do is say that you know kids of a
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certain age can't do this or that generally speaking I guess we do have an
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off-campus policy that has you know like a five-year-old has to be someone 15 or
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older you do have those things but they're pretty rare and you know in
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general we do take the attitude that young kids perfectly capable of
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governing themselves and following what we need to see happen in the school and
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you know so like we don't think a seven-year-old needs to be watched
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anymore than a 15 year old they both have reasons to be watched and then
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there's a lot of good reasons not to watch either of them closely like when
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left to their own devices they both will get into some trouble but not too much
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trouble that's just the nature of the exploration of growing up how that
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happens it's different the young ones run around a lot and make messes a lot
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the older ones talk and laugh a lot more and delve into topics that I don't want
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to hear and you know that's their world so you know it's they're just exploring
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all the reaches and yeah I don't know guess I've kind of drone down long
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enough but well have a good one and I will see you when I see you