Dr. Gonzalo Bacigalupe, president of the American Family Therapy Academy, a professor of Counseling and School Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a Newton parent, offers a harsh indictment of the Newton Public Schools handling of recent suicides and school stress on WBUR’s CommonHealth blog.
Despite the communal expressions of grief, this past Monday, the day of the funeral of Roee Grutman, many of his classmates, friends, and acquaintances … did not participate in this important event because most of the school kept all academic activities unchanged, including, for example, midyear exams.
..and Bacigalupe criticizes the schools for not seeking more parental input…
I’ve seen that parents are not regularly asked for their input. More opportunities for parents to interact meaningfully rather than just hold speed interviews with teachers once or twice a year could be valuable.
Be sure and read the comments following Bacigalupe’s column as well.
Very thoughtful column. I find it especially sad that the school didn’t facilitate kids being able to attend Roee’s funeral without missing midterm exams.
This is terrific. So honest and insightful. The one thing I’d disagree with though is that the kids do find the time to socialize — they binge drink on weekends to blow off steam.
He is right. I heard the same comments by many NSHS parents yesterday – Central Administration is Not listening to parents concerns. They think by having Berkowitz from Riverside there to talk it solves all the problems. They think by having a meeting and opening the doors of the school for an hour or two this week for the kids solves the problem. It doesn’t.
The High School Culture in Newton make kids believe that unless they are taking 4 AP or Honors classes. play an instrument and multiple sports they will not get into a college and then when they dont get into Harvard or MIT but into gasp – Tufts or Northeastern or worse UMASS Amherst the kids are even more depressed because they are a failure for not getting into an Ivy League school.
When my freshman came home and told me that unless she started taking all honors courses sophomore year she’d never get into a good college, I asked her where this was coming from – teachers? guidance counselors? No, “everyone just knows . So-and-so started SAT prep in middle school, so I’m already behind.”
Yes, this kind of thinking permeates certain levels of the high school culture in Newton – just like it does in other high-performing public and private schools across the country. But to simply point fingers at the school as the source of this mindset is unfair, when so many kids are coming into high school already thinking this way due to the pressure – consciously or unconsciously – applied by parents and family. It’s reinforced when all the talk is about a handful of “name” colleges. My kids’ pediatrician told me she was amazed when she moved to the Northeast – listening to people here, she said, you’d think there were only about 3 dozen colleges in the country, not the millions that actually exist.
But, please, let’s not oversimplify this tragic situation. Too many people are projecting their own issues with the school system and/or society as the “reason” for what has happened here, when the reality is that there is never a single reason or solution.
Tricia – I agree that it’s a multifaceted problem and no one person’s/institution’s fault. It’s not all coming from the schools. However, the schools are contributing to it and could be helping instead. If kids are getting unreasonable messages, it would be good for the schools to be actively counteracting them. We can’t change each individual household. But we can ask that the high schools tell the kids healthier messages, starting in 9th grade.
I think that most of us agree that pressure is an issue that needs to be addressed at Newton schools. However, the notion of school pressure being linked with these three tragedies is, as far as we know, unsupported by fact. Knowing this, it is somewhat mind-boggling to see people continue to conflate and flog these issues. It is misleading at best.
Further, as a parent of NSHS students, I find the depiction of what I experienced with Roee’s service to be very different from what has been described here. Students were made aware of the service, and were allowed to attend the service. This, of course, was the call of the parents, not the school. The principle also made clear that parents should attend the services with their kids, which was sound advice. I saw that there were also NSHS faculty and staff members in attendance. Returning to school, my kids worked with their advisor and teachers to re-arrange their schedule as necessary.
I have found NSHS staff, not immune to the heartache of these tragedies, to be very supportive and responsive during this very difficult time. Going forward, I do hope that people are factual, fair and responsible with their comments on this matter.
As a Newton South parent, I strongly agree that students who wished to attend the memorial service should have been able to do so without worrying about academic consequences. That said, I found Dr. Bacigalupe’s comments a bit over the top in a couple of areas.
First, Principal Stembridge emailed parents on Saturday (I received it at 6 PM) that the service would be on Monday. I do not know if he could have informed us sooner – others may have known about it sooner through other channels. Regarding students attending the funeral, he said: “Should your child/children want to attend the service, we highly encourage you to go with them.” I suppose he could have said “and they should not worry about any tests or other assignments they might miss” but he did not. Obviously, he did not have much opportunity to communicate with his faculty before issuing such a statement, so perhaps that played a role. However, my wife and I took his statement to mean that students who want to attend the funeral should do so, and we told our child that.
Also, there were no school-wide midterm or midyear exams occurring that week (Dr. Bacigalupe’s statement did not say school-wide, but I think some commenters jumped to that conclusion). Individual classes may have had an exam called a mid-year exam, but my NSHS student was not aware of any (after all, we are 1/3 of the way into the third term; a class having a mid-year exam now is likely behind schedule). My child had a routine chapter test in a class that conflicted with the service. However, my child did not know Roee well (had never spoken with him), and chose to not attend the service. My child would have found it MORE stressful if the school or teacher at the last minute had postponed a test that she was already prepared for. About half the students in this class missed this test (in an AP science class, for what it’s worth) and made it up the next day without incident as far as I know. So it seems that many students were able to work with what they were given.
I’m sorry for Dr. Bacigalupe that the school did not come up with a solution for the funeral service that worked for his family, but he does not speak for all families.
Regarding his and other commenters statements about stress and the schools’ role in that: yes – I agree that there is too much homework and students spend far too many hours outside of school on their homework. The teachers at south have a great deal of autonomy and the school cannot simply dictate how much homework they give. Not to mention that the same homework can be 15 minutes for one student and 1 hour for another – not just due to ability, but also personality (perfectionism, etc.). There are no easy solutions regarding homework. The school DOES try to “slap down” teachers that try to give homework over (or schedule a test for the day after) a homework-free weekend but I’m sure there are still violations.
The renaming of course levels that was announced recently may help slightly. The “easiest” courses are now labeled “college prep” (which they are). However, we have started visiting colleges with our child, and we have been told by college admissions staff “if your school offers a lot of AP classes and you don’t take any of them, we will wonder why” (note they do not say take as many as possible, but…). Parents and students need to learn and understand that colleges outside the top 25 or top 50 or top 100 are still good schools and one may be the perfect school for them. The guidance counselors can help with this, but outside of the amount of homework, I think that most of the stress comes from within the student or the family.
Bill, thank you for that post. As a former NNHS parent, I am often confronted with reports that describe a school that I have never seen!! Rumors and half truths abound, and our public schools are often the target. I am glad to hear that NSHS has been supportive at this most difficult time.
The characterization of the school culture in the Dr’s article is not consistent with what I have seen. There is pressure, but as commenters to the article have opined, it seems to come more from parents than from teachers or the administration. Whether or not the pressure individual students feel was a factor in these deaths is not something we can know for sure, so making that assumption and running with it does not sit well with me.
I’m a NNHS parent. While the curriculum is challenging, the options for students to make up missed tests (something that happened to my son recently for a wholly unrelated reason) or be able to miss sports (for example) to attend the optional “X-Block” for extra help are abundant.
Your experience may vary, but though pressure exists I don’t see it as a universal issue.
Bruce’s post was good.
First, from his name, I’d guess that Roee is Jewish. Jewish funerals typically occur pretty soon after death, the next day for very observant Jews. So, the school couldn’t give a long advanced notification. Second, I’m guessing that there are like 1000 students at NSHS. Not all and probably only a small minority might want to go to the funeral, and the principal seems to have opened the door to them being able to go. It’s a sad thing, but it is part of life, and death, that occasionally someone dies of an illness, a car accident, or a suicide. I’d think it’s better if the kids learn how to cope, rather than drown in analysis and recriminations and blame, when this kind of infrequent thing does happen.
There probably is a lot of stress, but the parents should be the ones to guide their kids to know that they don’t have to get into one of the top ten schools in the east in order to succeed in life. Let’s not blame the schools and the teachers for everything. We need to look at ourselves, at what we are doing that is destructive and at what we can do better.
Does anybody else see the irony in people saying that we want Newton schools to be as good as they used to be but they can’t be too stressful?
That’s the trap we’ve gotten ourselves into. We want to be the best but being the best comes at a price. Being the best requires that people be competitive, and competing is stressful.
We — those of us who live here — have created this situation. (And by this situation, I do not mean the recent suicides. I mean the way the suicides are resonating with kids. That’s where the dots get connected.)
Gail Spector — I’m not understanding your messages. You posted a headline saying “when are we going to talk about stress in Newton high schools?” after a high school aged kid died, suggesting a connection with other similarly aged kids that died recently; giving suggestions that schooling was a factor. What are you now saying with respect to school standards?
It might be fair fir Newton SC to spend some money on the question of “why “, but if the study concluded family factors, outside trauma factors, etc., this community isn’t going to like the City going there… So what so we do?
If there is evidence of issues in schooling, I would ask what changed in the last few years. Is there something?
@Hoss: I have tried to say several times that I am not suggesting that these three suicides were connected to school-related stress. We can not know that. But is it entirely coincidental that I posted this thread after the third suicide? No. It’s no secret that Newton high school kids are under a lot of stress. I’m saying this is a good opportunity to talk about the issue. In addition to talking about how to support the kids in the wake of the tragedy, we should talk about what is on their minds. If you are friends with any Newton kids on Facebook, you’ll see how many of them have asked or responded to the question, “What’s going on in Newton?”
I am not looking to blame anyone. There is absolutely no point in doing so. I am simply suggesting that we ask ourselves some questions.
Gail – I think that’s a false conundrum. There is evidence that you don’t need the massive amounts of homework kids are getting in order for learning to take place at high levels. There’s no evidence that a kid taking 4 AP classes is learning more than one who takes 1 or 2 and then has courses that challenge them to think and learn that aren’t APs (indeed, there’s reason to question the value of APs, but that’s another discussion).
And being excellent doesn’t mean having kids think that if they don’t get into an Ivy, or if they go to a state school, that means they’re failures.