Discipline and Behavior

“But nobody here listens to me,” Saul lamented as he tried to explain why he was in my office yet again this week. “I don’t know why I even bother to come here.” His refrain is a familiar one in my large, suburban high school. I have a feeling it’s a familiar one in high schools across the country. Our kids are crying out to be heard, and unfortunately, those cries often result in disciplinary referrals. 

Zach was one of those kids that the fifth-grade teachers warn the sixth-grade teachers about at middle school orientation. He was a bully who had been shook up, written up, worked up and written off and he showed up for school every single day. His reputation arrived in my classroom three months before he did, and I was surprised when I first met him. He was a scrawny, short, African-American kid who was dressed to the nines and armed with a killer smile and a street-smart attitude.

Elementary school-aged children get no time to just be, experience their own selfhood, to rest. It’s important for the development of creativity, for mental growth and even for discovering something new. However, from the time most children get up in the morning until they go to sleep at night, someone is hurling demands at them. 

The O’Brien boys were a handful. Apathetic overstates how disinterested in school they were. They wandered in and out of my class, and when I wasn’t teaching, I’d see them aimlessly strolling the halls as if they had no place to be. They were mischievous yet charming, belligerent at some times and cooperative at others. They were also smart, funny and irreverent. But no matter what I or anyone else did, they wouldn’t engage in school. 

Today, I opened my classroom door to a surprise. Diego was back! He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “It’s good to see you again.”

One of the best things about being a teacher is when students come back. Some of those homecomings are more significant than others. Just a 10^th-grader, Diego wasn’t back to tell me about his college life, his career or kids. He was back to tell me that in juvenile hall, where he’d spent the last three weeks, he had found out he loved to write.

The news today brought yet another tragic story of a teen suicide related to bullying.  The world lost a promising young man who had seen his share of teasing—like the time he’d dyed his hair pink in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

But this time, he was on the other side of the equation. He was the bully. Along with two other boys, he stood accused by his elite prep school of harassing a fellow student because of that student’s sexual orientation. The school sent the boy home and pressured him to withdraw rather than face expulsion. 

A new study proves what many already suspected: Your chances of getting suspended in middle school rise dramatically if you are black. 

The study, “Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis,” was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the home of Teaching Tolerance.

Some things that happen in school are just not right. 

It’s not right for a six-year old boy to be handcuffed and shackled to a chair by an armed security officer because he “acted up” in school.

In 1964, my third-grade teacher relied mainly on an air of motherly authority to maintain control over her classroom of more than 50 8-year-olds. But when pushed, she warned darkly of deploying her spanking machine.

Last month, 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez used an erasable marker to scribble on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith,” she wrote, along with, “Lex was here. 2/1/10,” punctuated with a happy face. But neither her Spanish teacher nor the principal at Alexa’s Queens, New York, middle school were amused. They called school security—New York City police officers—who arrested and handcuffed Alexa, and walked her across the street to their precinct, according to the New York Daily News.