Printer-friendly versionI don’t remember exactly what instigated it, but something had made Cashanda mad. She positioned herself—and her desk—right smack in front of the board. She was defiant. Her physical placement made it impossible to continue my lesson.
I was a second-year teacher. She was a student in special education because of her tendency toward aggression. I told her to move. She refused. I repeated my instruction. She yelled back. She may have cursed.
At that time, I hadn’t developed the tools I now have for de-escalating defiant students, so I used the intercom to call down to the office. I told them I had a student who needed to leave the classroom and go to see the disciplinarian. She was disrupting class and was impeding my ability to teach.
A few moments later, the disciplinarian, principal and an on-campus police officer arrived at my door. Cashanda rolled her eyes, pushed her desk and stormed out of class.
Despite a number of incidents like these, I adored and respected Cashanda as a student. She was quick-witted, observant and visibly self-determined in every way aside from controlling her anger. She was a foster child, switched from house to house numerous times in her 13-year-old life. She had already attended an alternative school and, like a surprisingly large number of my students, already had a probation officer. She wrote great poetry about empowerment and railed against black-on-black crime. She knew about it. She’d lived it.
When the police officer and company showed up at my door, I felt a knot of disappointment. While it’s true that she left the class relatively peacefully, and my class was able to continue, I was frustrated that whatever had made her so angry was being left unresolved. The reason she walked out without a fight was that she couldn’t risk another arrest. Students did routinely get arrested at my old school, especially African-American students.
It’s troubling that we’re treating children in schools so much like adults are treated in prisons. Children are being arrested for misbehaviors that could instead be mediated in the office of a principal, counselor or social worker. Students are being branded with criminal records at a young age. It’s part of the school-to-prison pipeline. When we treat kids as criminals instead of as children who need to be taught how to do better, we are giving up.
I’m glad to now work at a school that handles discipline in a drastically different way. We serve low-income kids from violent neighborhoods. Many come from households where food, electricity and a sense of safety are unreliable. We have a good handful of Cashandas, whose life circumstances have impaired their ability to control their anger. But this school doesn’t choose to employ a police officer on campus, and there isn’t any need for it.
We are firm but fair, and treat our kids as just that: our kids. We believe it is our responsibility to raise them right, to teach them rather than punish them. And the opportunities to do this are everywhere. Each time we have a conversation instead of simply issuing a consequence, we build the capacity to connect with a student in a meaningful way.
The school-to-prison pipeline is certainly systemic, but we can begin to combat it each day with small interactions in our classrooms. It is our duty to do that.
Craven is a middle school English teacher in Louisiana.
Comments
I would be interested in
I would be interested in hearing how this school deals with repeat/chronic individuals who choose to disrupt the education environment. Choices (good or bad) have consequences......
I would like to receive more
I would like to receive more information concerning teaching tolerance in high schools.
With respect, you're assuming
With respect, you're assuming that their behaviors are choices. Perhaps that's not always true for all kids.
What if your child made a
What if your child made a choice that was against your philosophy or practices, do you throw them away, call the police, the judicial system and have them removed? Most likely not, you dole out consequences and give them a chance to be back part of the family. I don’t think the author was saying let them go without consequences; I think she was saying too often students of color are placed under arrest as the first option.
You say the school you work
You say the school you work handles discipline differently- How? I work in an elementary and have never had a massive problem, but certainly minor ones. What is done to defuse situations and get cooperation?
Check out the Reclaiming
Check out the Reclaiming Youth International website and the Circle of Courage. Our program has the C of C as it's driving philosophy and all staff have been trained in Life Space Crisis Intervention skills. It has meant a huge shift in attitude about trying to understand that students have emotional baggage and until your school helps them with that, no learning will take place.
Are schools equipped to
Are schools equipped to handle that? Schools are being asked to do more and more and to take over the responsibilities that should be handled by the city government. Schools do not have the expertise and are not given the resources to address the many social problems poor and inner city kids have but we are expected to do it any way. I teach in an inner city school district where the mayor has decided to attack the teachers' union instead of trying to solve serious gang violence and juvenile delinquency in the city. I believe he has been recruited by the local chamber of commerce to help bust the union.
My stance always has been and
My stance always has been and always will be, mixing cops and kids has never had a positive outcome. Especially when the mixing is between low-income and minority students. In a middle classed or wealthy school environment where the student may get caught smoking, using drugs or bringing a weapon on campus, if any discipline takes place at all, it's usually done so internally. With no police involved. Sometimes not even a report to the board of education is filed. However, in low-income and especially minority schools, a student is more like than not to be suspended, even expelled sometimes at just the whim of the word of an SRO, a teacher or principal or even the school janitor who has taken a dislike to the student for whatever reason. More often than not the word of the person(s) is often exaggerated at least and actually fabricated at the most. A poor minority child may get suspended for arriving to class one minute after the bell rings. Where "another" student in that same school, but is of a different race and class, caught with a knife in the classroom, openly cleaning his nails with it and the knife isn't even taken away. The student wasn't suspended and the incident wasn't even reported to the principal by the teacher. These are the inconsistencies of discipline in America's schools today when it comes to class and race. These inconsitencies also determines how a chid/student acts and interacts in school and society, sometimes throughout his/her life.
All of life is a balance.
All of life is a balance. And the "Casandras" of the world are often short changed. But She has no right to disrupt the education process, which is the very means we hope to reduce the number of "Casandras" in the future. I work in the City of Detroit whose public school district routinely graduates only 25% of those students who enter as high School freshman. Even assuming you can deescalate the situation, how do you recover the 5-10-20 minutes it took to do so.
Clearly, our foster care system has failed your Casandra and others like her in that it has failed to provide her with a safe and secure place where she could live and work out the anger that gets expressed in the classroom. I think in the context of the incident you described it is best to remove the child from the classroom as soon as possible to minimize the disruption to the educational process but also to remove Casandra from an audience for whom she could display her defiance. Once removed, she can then be dealt with to address her specific complaint giving rise to the particular incident as well as be support in what I hope are ongoing efforts to address the underlying anger.
I am a foster parent and it
I am a foster parent and it is true that the Foster Care System fails in many cases to provide nurturing, safe homes for children in foster care ( foster children do not exist) The obstacles and hardships that the people who are" willing" to provide care are many and diverse. Would you consider providing that home? We must attempt to meet the needs of children who have been rejected by biological family and a faulty educational system. The school should be providing aopportunities for academic and personal growth for the generation that will be leading the world.I am so sorry that the programs for what the "leaner will learn" that day is interrupted for 5 to 20 minutes ocassionaly by children who are attempting to escape potentional mental and emotional madness by inconviencing teacher's schedules. If you routinely graduate only 25% of your entering 9th graders, is it really the kids? Obviously their primary and basic needs are not being supported. How can you possibly remediate under those circumstances. Education must encompass the entire child.I am also an educator for the past 25 years.I have seen it all., Been there, done that, yet I rise still educating and parenting. Congratulations for remaining in the fire.
While I agree with much of
While I agree with much of what Ms. Craven has said, I also believe that there is a point where some students need to face more serious consequences than what can be done in school. As another reader has already asked, what do you do with the repeat and chronic offenders, particularly when they are making the school environment unsafe for the other students, i.e. with regards to violent behavior and drug dealing. There comes a time, I think, when the good of the majority outweigh the "educational rights" of one or two. Wouldn't you agree?
Our society is so quick to
Our society is so quick to give up on our children and cast them aside as "throw away" children. As a veteran educator with many years of experience in public schools with diverse populations and circumstances, I have found that we often lose sight of the BIG picture! School is about the students and meeting their needs. To me that is educating the whole child (emotionally, physically, intellectually and otherwise). Positive relationship building between students and adults in the building can help thwart some of the repeat negative behaviors that are displayed by troubled students. Children just want to know that we care and they don't know that just because we teach!