Systems of Discipline

I teach at a school where each of the students needs, for one reason or another, a second chance. The reasons vary. Sometimes it's academic or emotional. Sometimes it's addiction recovery. A lot of them, however, have made incredibly poor decisions that either poisoned their social scene or got them kicked out of their previous schools. Regardless, many of these kids benefit from more than the usual watchful teacher eye. Not because they are bad kids, but because our presence (and intervention) becomes like an external reminder to check their behavior. The hope is that the external check becomes internal over time.

It doesn't always work and the kids are kids...they don't often appreciate the interference until much later in life. This system is rough on the teachers too. We monitor technology use and conversation. We have to account for the students' locations and issue and maintain a two tiered discipline documentation system. The only way for it to work is to be consistent and sometimes it feels more like being a warden than an educator. We educators get a bit ground down and have little time to take care of the more normal teacher duties like grading. It takes time, but for whose kids who are essentially good people but impulsive, it can have great results despite the flaws in the system.

I had the opportunity a couple of days ago to see a very different type of school. At this school the kids maintain their own discipline. The teachers don't watch the students the way do and seem to inherently trust them. The kids walk the halls without passes and show up for classes on time, for the most part, without the use of bells. The students seemed more mature and more relaxed. They were still kids though. I saw inappropriate technology use and kids cutting up in class but for the most part this didn't seem to require teacher intervention. It was an interesting experience.

Now, I have to acknowledge that the two schools deal in some very different student populations. The kids at my school often don't know how to disengage or deescalate social situations and they engage in activities impulsively instead of thoughtfully which leads to academic issues. In some ways they are not capable of self-moderating which is how they ended up with us. However, I also sometimes wonder if the reason that we spend so much time in discipline conference is because we have so many rules. Truly, our student handbook looks like mish mash of legal precedent gone awry. We can't do without rules, obviously, but it could be less complicated and confusing. It often feels like we can't just say - "Hey, look that interferes with your work." Instead, we have this tome that we cite page numbers out of.

It feels adversarial.