I swear I’ll post something positive soon . . . but right now this is just too absurd. We suspended 27 students yesterday, and I wanted to share the email list because, like I said, it’s just absurd. NOT because 27 is an especially high number, because 27 is kind of average. Oy vey!
Suspension List for Thursday, February 24, 2011
Left the Building without permission . . .
1. AA, two days
2. AM, two days
3. DW, two days
Cutting class, and disrespectful . . .
4. SL, one day
5. LL, one day
6. SO, one day
7. AC, one day
8. LC, one day
9. JW, one day
10. DR, two days
Cutting . . .
11. KL
12. TP (this is backwards . . . the student’s initials are actually PT. good job administrators…)
13. KW
Electronics
14. AW, one day
15. MJ, one day
16. SE, one day
17. KJ, one day
18. NF, TWO days
19. CB, one day
20. ZL, one day
21. FH, one day
Other offenses…
22. AT, fighting, TWO days
23. TJ, offensive to a teacher, TWO days
24. DS, disruptive/threw a desk, TWO days
25. JC, rude to staff, one day
26. RF, rude to staff, one day
27. KD, rude to staff, TWO days
This is, pretty much verbatim, the email that was sent out to the staff members schoolwide. This list of suspensions, while most of them are deserved, sheds just a bit of light on a larger problem that exists not only at my school, but at almost every school in the Philadelphia School District – probably in schools all over the country! What problem? Unenforceable, inconsistent consequences.
What happened to you when you were bad in high school? Detention . . . loss of privileges . . . parent meeting maybe, and in general just shame and embarrassment, right? MAYBE a suspension, for something really bad. Not to mention – when you acted up, it affected your grade!
But these traditional consequences don’t work, either because they’re not an option, or because they have no effect. They’re too late. Why not an option? At an alternative school, for example, you pretty much have no privileges, so there are none to take away. You can’t have a parent meeting when the student a) lives with his brother because he hates his parents or b) the parents work during normal meeting hours c) the parent is just as tired and fed-up with the student as you are, and tells you that he/she has already tried everything, or d) my least favorite, the parent tells you not to waste your time on their kid. Detention becomes problematic for the same reason – you can only hold a student with parental permission, and sometimes that can be downright difficult to obtain. IN addition, who’s going to proctor detention? Teachers don’t have the time built into their schedules, and the word volunteer is a dirty word to the die-hard union teachers, who claim that there will then be a precedent of obligation for the rest of them. We’re working on the detention issue here at my school, but we don’t have it worked out yet.
So what’s left? Suspension. And that’s what we do. And we do. And we do. And we do. And what are the results? Angry, bitter students who are even farther behind in their classes and their work, and often don’t understand why they were suspended because it’s a very inconsistent process. Two students have their cellphones out in class, and only one is suspended despite the fact that I wrote them both up. Why? Who knows. But it’s frustrating all around.
What can we do? If I knew that, I’d be the queen of the education world. All that’s left is positive consequences, which we do have school-wide (kind of) and I do have in my classroom. How are they going? I’ll let you know next week, after our positive behavior pizza party for all the kids who have been doing a great job 
Happy Weekend,
Miss SBT
Posted on February 25, 2011
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