school – Starshine Roshell

Santa Barbara School Teacher’s Rant Is All Wrong

Published on February 14, 2022

Starshine Roshell Sets the Record Straight

It’s been a minute since I wrote a column — for a couple of reasons.

Like many folks, I’ve been desperately trying to ferret out some Zen in this frustrating COVIDy world. You know, to find that healthy, elusive balance between “responsibly engaged” and “on the verge of a primal scream.”

Also, frankly, I was sick of my own voice. If our nation has learned anything lately, it’s that we need to make room in our media diets for more underrepresented points of view — and fewer ranting white women.

But then two ranting white women went and #^¢%ed up my Zen.

Is Porn the New Sex Ed?

Published on January 27, 2020

The Conversations You Need to Have With Your Kids. Right Now.

Arizona and Washington are debating this month whether to provide sex education in schools. Colorado’s deciding if parents can opt their kids out of the curriculum. And North Carolina parents are protesting their high schoolers’ sex ed, saying it “encourages promiscuity” and “destroys childhood innocence.”

What none of them seem to realize is this: Sex education is happening. It’s happening. The only question is whether you want it to be accurate, or you’re comfortable with your kids getting their titillating tutelage from Alexis Texas and Kendra Lust on pervclips.com.

The Bullet-Proof Backpack

Published on August 20, 2019

It’s the Tactical Assault Accessory All the Cool Kids Are Wearing

Aaaaand that was “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People, followed by the classic Boomtown Rats ballad “I Don’t Like Mondays.” We’re just two songs into our Calamity-on-Campus 3 o’clock joyride here on K-I-D-Z FM, where the fear — haha! I mean the fun! — never ever stops. We’ll be back, faster than a bullet, with Pearl Jam and “Jeremy” right after a word from our sponsor. Don’t touch that dial! …

[Fade in ad spot.]

“Parents, remember back in your day, when all you needed for a successful start to the school year were some sharpened No. 2 pencils, a bitchin’ Trapper Keeper, and a brown paper bag that you could origami into sweet textbook covers?

“Well, those days are over, my friends.

Theater Kids Save the World

Published on April 7, 2018

Drama Class Prepares Students to Lead a Revolution

Everyone who’s been to high school knows it: Jocks top the student hierarchy. They earn the yearbook’s Most Popular designations and dictate, by their mere arrival, where the coolest after-prom parties are.
But when a group of outspoken, articulate, enraged students galvanized the nation after last month’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it wasn’t a pack of athletes. It was a ragtag troupe of theater kids.

13 Reasons Why Parenting Is Frightening

Published on June 4, 2017

With Wisdom Comes Age … And Fear
Last month saw the launch of two unrelated cultural phenomena that enchanted teens and horrified adults: the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino and the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.
The frothy, rainbow-swirled beverage was mercifully short-lived; ashes to ICEEs, fluff to fluff. But the controversial television drama lives on as the most-Tweeted-about show of 2017.
13 Reasons Why tells the story of a high school girl who committed suicide by slitting her wrists in a bathtub. But first, she recorded audiotapes detailing why she was ending her life and instructed that these tapes be passed around to the friends and classmates whose particular cruelties stung her so badly — the people “responsible for my death,” as she puts it.
The show has experts crying foul. Schools are advising parents not to let their kids watch it. New Zealand created a whole new rating category for it; those under 18 are forbidden from watching without an adult. Mental-health experts say the series — which depicts the bloody death in horrific, drawn-out detail — glamorizes suicide and could inspire copycats. Netflix met the backlash by adding more warnings to the first episode.
But no one listens to warnings.

TTYL, College Kid o' Mine

Published on June 3, 2017

The Joys of Keeping in Touch, via Text, With Your Out-of-State Son Right now, high school seniors throughout the country are receiving admission decisions from…

Dress Codes Unzipped: Are School Policies Sexist?

Published on June 29, 2016

In a nation locked like longhorns in contentious battles over abortion, immigration, and assault weapons … can anyone really still be bickering over spaghetti straps?

Mais, oui, my friends. The struggle is real.

From Guilford, Connecticut, to Lynchburg, Virginia, to Helena, Montana, junior high and high school dress codes are being criticized — and even reevaluated this summer — as students and parents decry outdated policies as unrealistic, ambiguously enforced, and deeply sexist.

Trying to regulate teen wardrobes is a fool’s errand. Most everyone agrees that students should be clothed; beyond that, it gets tricky. Boys’ dress codes tend toward “Don’t promote drinking, drug use, gangs, violence, or racism,” while girls’ codes imply “Don’t … be sexy”: no short shorts, low-cut tops, bare midriffs, thin-strapped tanks, or exposed bra straps.

Most disturbing is the reason given for the girls’ rules: Their “provocative” clothing is “distracting” to other students in the learning environment.

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Published on February 9, 2016

When my firstborn son was a toddler, I used to wonder if he would become a bouncer someday because he was big for his age — and fixated on doors. Opening them, closing them. Letting some in (the dog), keeping others out (the dad). He’d station himself in a doorway and take charge, wielding his power like Excalibur: You? Yes, by all means, enter. But not your friend. She waits out here with the others … until I say.
It was cute unless you were carrying groceries.
Now the tables have turned. He’s standing at the doorway of more than a dozen universities, waiting to see if he’ll be admitted. We’re staggering around in the three to four aimless months (110+ days!) between applying to colleges and hearing back from said colleges. The kid is handling it just fine — but for me, this limbo is anguish.

A Letter to the Bullied

Published on December 18, 2014

I can’t take this anymore. I can’t read one more news story about a child who committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied.

Bullying is the new smoking: The bad kids do it and always for terrible reasons. The schools are wallpapered with posters urging you not to do it. And apparently, bullying kills — far faster, in fact, than lung cancer does.

But I don’t want to talk about bullies, those cowardly cretins who think they can deflect attention from their own festering failures by kicking around someone who’s simply less inclined to be mean. It’s obvious; no one should harass or humiliate another person. But do you know what else shouldn’t happen? Children should not kill themselves. Ever. And that’s what I want to talk about.

This is a message for the bullied — a pissed-off missive for kids who’ve fallen prey to some loud-crowing schoolyard tyrant or cackling klatch of neighborhood creeps.

Are You a Feminist NOW?

Published on June 5, 2014

School’s out, and it’s a good thing, too — because across the world, young women are being kidnapped, raped, and shot to death while pursuing an education.

If that sounds shocking — terrific. I’m glad to know we haven’t yet become desensitized to the violence that female students are enduring. But we haven’t become sufficiently enraged about it, either. And that’s equally shocking. Remember when girls and women could go to school and expect to graduate unharmed? Here’s what’s happening now:

There are 164 Nigerian girls missing after being abducted from their school in April by Islamic terrorists who oppose Western education and have threatened to sell the girls into sexual slavery.
In the U.S., one in five women is being sexually assaulted during college, and more than 50 universities are being investigated by the Office for Civil Rights for mishandling sexual-assault cases on campus.
And here in our progressive, civilized town, six people were murdered when an angry young guy embarked on a rampage to “punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex.” The killer, whose name will never appear in a column of mine, left written rants about waging a “war on women.”

Tag: school

Starshine Roshell Sets the Record Straight

The Conversations You Need to Have With Your Kids. Right Now.

It’s the Tactical Assault Accessory All the Cool Kids Are Wearing

Drama Class Prepares Students to Lead a Revolution