Precious Lives

Stories about kids, guns and how to stop the violence. Precious Lives, created by 371 Productions, is a 2-year, 100-part weekly radio series about gun violence and young people in the Milwaukee area. The series applies a public health lens to each story to help listeners understand the full scope of the problem: who are the victims and the shooters; how are the weapons obtained; and what can we change about the environment that contributes to violence in Milwaukee?

#047 Precious Lives: Kids Who Fight in School Need the Most Care

WUWM 89.7 FM

Published December 8, 2015 at 9:15 AM CST

Marquette University Peace Works runs a cognitive restructuring exercises at Southeastern Education Center, a behavioral reassignment school for students expelled from Milwaukee Public Schools.

You might think you know the student who gets expelled, the one who picks fights, destroys school property, brings in a BB gun, or maybe a real gun. But you probably have no idea what’s really going on with that student.

Southeastern Education Center is an alternative school for middle school aged kids expelled from the Milwaukee Public school system. Technically, it is a behavioral reassignment school. Almost all students have been expelled for fighting. And every kid has something that underlies their behavior, namely chaos at home.

The school is trying to squash violent behavior... Before it becomes a habit, an automatic response something that, if you then add a gun to the equation, could lead to another senseless homicide.