California Schools not allowed to ban students, your opinion?

Just having an adult aware of the problem and a counselor who teaches some coping techniques can work wonders. Just hearing an angry kid and helping him understand that he’s not angry at his teachers can help. Calling the cops on the parents of a kid who is getting hit often causes the abuser to rachet down the abuse–at least for a while. A visit from CPS can have the same effect. Sometimes in primary education, the parents really are just clueless. They can be educated. Hungry kids can be fed. Kids with learning disabilities can be diagnosed, and they can get supports. Older homeless kids can be directed to drop in shelters for homeless teens, where they can stay the afternoon and evening before they go to whatever couch they are crashing on tonight. They can do homework, have a meal and shower–which makes them less of a burden on others, and makes finding a couch easier.

Let me tell you how this happens. You have some kid, he’s 12 years old. His mom has been leaving him alone overnight, because she’s dumb and careless. He shows up to school in clothes that are outside dress code–his jeans have a hole in the knee or whatever. He didn’t mean to violate dress code, it’s just in trying to figure out how to get himself up, fed, dressed, and to school. He’s embarrassed that his mom is gone. He thinks others will call her a whore, and if anyone finds out, she’s going to get in trouble. At the door, he’s yelled at by the security person. She sends him to the office. The office is a busy, chaotic place. They tell him if he doesn’t change clothes, he can’t go to class. He freezes. He can’t get home, he can’t call his mom, and he thinks he can’t tell them why.

Now, this is the critical part. If this 12 year old is visibly upset, if’s he’s little, if he’s middle class, if he’s white, and especially if he’s all of those things, there’s a really good chance the powers that be will let it go. When he says “My mom can’t come”, they will assume she’s working. It’s a kinda borderline offense anyway. They may give him a piece of duct tape to put over the hole, and send him to class.

But if he’s black, and especially if he’s dark skinned and BIG, and especially if he doesn’t look upset, they will read that as willful defiance. If he just stands there are looks dumbly at them–petrified, and holding it all in out of pride and fear–they will see that as “fuck you”. They will feel vaguely threatened. They will tell him if he can’t call someone to bring his clothes up, he will have to go to ISS. They will see this as a threat to make him give in, and call mom. He will see it as a way out of the crisis of the moment. He will say “That’s fine”, trying to convey his willingness to comply. He will say it in the flattest voice possible, in order to show he’s not angry. They will take that as “fuck you, I don’t care about school”. He will go to ISS. He will try to do his work, but it doesn’t show up until afternoon. When he does get his work, he does his best, but without directions or support, it’s terrible. He’s bored most of the day. He does meet some other guys, and they seem alright. He’s a little less afraid of being “bad”, and ISS seems okay.

His 6th grade teachers are notified that he’s in ISS. They don’t know it’s for having a hole the size of a quarter in his jeans. They mentally put him in the “bad” kid category, which is easier to do when it’s a big dark-skinned black kid who never talks and holds himself rigid all the time. The work they get back is crap, and they assume that’s because he’s stupid or doesn’t care, because they haven’t really thought through what doing the work without the lesson would be like.

At this point, this kid is fucked. He will never be extended the benefit of the doubt on anything. Everything he does will be interpreted in the worst possible light. He will end up in ISS more and more often for stuff other people get away with. He will start to identify with being a bad kid. He’ll make friends in ISS. They will start to engage in behaviors that really are disruptive. His grades will drop further and further because he’s in ISS often enough (and there are days he doesn’t come to school, by this point) that he feels lost and confused when he’s there, but he’s too embarrassed to ask for help. He cares less and less about school. The powers that be will be more and more frustrated with him because “ISS doesn’t affect him”, so they start suspending him “for real”. At this point, he’s got no chance of graduating HS.

This sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME. I promise you. It’s a huge problem. But again, in America our biggest worry is not helping people, it’s making sure that no one gets away with anything. So better for a 100 well-intentioned children to be suspended and their life derailed than one legitimate “bad kid” learn how to work a system and get away with being a shit.

This is sickening to read, Manda Jo, and 100% true. Shit like that goes down all the time.

One of the hard things for me to learn is to read cross-culture emotional reactions accurately. When a small white girl in the AIG program bursts into furious tears, and when an athletic black boy makes “Psssht” noises and won’t look at me or respond to me, both of them are probably expressing the same emotions; but my own upbringing, my own culture, gives me a different emotional reaction to the behaviors. I really have to monitor myself to treat these two kids fairly.

Oh, me too. Constantly. And it blows my mind that this is even a controversy. It’s so self-evident that this is a problem to me, and I don’t understand how anyone can take the position that kids like this are a small fraction of discipline, outliers, and act like derailing the lives of kids in these sorts of situations is acceptable collateral damage to the pressing need to punish the incorrigible little shits.

Those are good points, and I was too glib when I said “ISS or juvie”. Mea culpa. When I subbed (which was over a five-year period, BTW, not two years as you keep saying) they often sent me to the alternative high school, probably because they had trouble getting other subs to go there. I thought it was a good program. And I support having more interventions to help kids, like washing machines at school for them to keep their clothes clean, plus sending social workers out to help make the family home a more nurturing and stable environment.

However, in the reaction to this week’s Democratic debate, we see how fraught this policy preference can be. Joe Biden was excoriated by one of the editors of TIME magazine for things he said that the editor interpreted as “black parents don’t know how to take care of their kids”. What do you suppose he would make of your “dumb mom” remark? (To be clear, I’m not criticizing that comment, just pointing out how tricky the terrain is: it can be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dynamic.)

Your heartrending story about the 12-year-old boy with a hole in his jeans illustrates how much more precise we need to get here about different types of misbehavior. That type of situation should definitely get the kind of nurturing support you advocate. But anyone who has spent a lot of time in classrooms with teenagers (and this is not about race, by the way: the rural school system I worked in was high poverty but mostly white) knows that there are some kids who are not acting traumatized or withdrawn or anything like that: they are just surly, sarcastic, and disrespectful in a way that gets them and their friends cracking up but disrupts the learning environment. It’s not only not necessarily about race but not even necessarily about class: one of the worst offenders I ever had was a rich white douchebro who was a star football player. Do you really want someone like that not to get his comeuppance?

I would bet good money that the rich white douchebro star football player is NOT getting his comeuppance in equal measures as his poor black non-athletic classmate. That’s because it is about race and class.

What’s AIG?

Academically/Intellectually Gifted.

To be clear, I never meant to imply that ISS is a great idea. Frankly, I’m not sure that there is any truly good solution to the problem of disruptive students. It’s just a solution that’s less bad than either OSS or doing nothing.

I don’t dispute that unfortunate disparity, but can we agree that the kid I’m talking about (and anyone of any race or gender who acts that way) should be removed from the classroom until they can stop peacocking around, making a mockery of the educational process?

The removal needs to be tied to addressing the underlying cause of their behavior. When kids are removed from the classroom, but the underlying issues are unaddressed, their behavior is not going to improve on their return.

Douchebro’s underlying causes are likely very different from those of the kid in Manda Jo’s post.

And how would you address it?

I’ve spent nearly 20 years in the classroom, and I don’t know that “there are some kids who are not acting traumatized or withdrawn or anything like that: they are just surly, sarcastic, and disrespectful”. I imagine some of them are, but all, all too often, the kid I thought was being a dick was dealing with trauma far beyond my understanding. And honestly, I really cannot begin to give a damn if some kid “gets his comeuppance”. He’s a child. Life is hard for everyone. I am not the Hand of Karma. I’d rather 100 little shits get away with it than play a part in exacerbating one kid’s trauma and inequity.

Anyone who thinks they know which kids are just inherently little shits, and feels confident that their own biases are not coloring thier judgment, is being foolish, and it’s a foolishness that hurts children who are already disadvantaged.

There’s a million other things. Most of them start in the classroom, and involve making sure that things never get to that point in the first place. Honestly, the single most effective thing I ever knew was one administrator I worked with who 1) always assumed something was wrong, it wasn’t a bad kid and 2) talked to them until she figured out what was really going on. She turned more kids around than I can count, and her impact lasted years. She was blunt and real and patient with kids and it worked. But there’s a lot of people who are really invested in the idea that 1) inner city schools are all war-torn hellscapes 2) most of the kids are a lost cause and 3) effective interventions are not possible.

No, I don’t think they should be removed from the classroom. I think they should be controlled within the classroom, with effective classroom management–and I think the vast majority of kids can, in fact, be controlled that way. It won’t be pretty, and they may be a pain in the ass all year, but they can be controlled enough that they aren’t damaging the education of others. On the rare occasions when that’s truly not possible, their is a problem that needs to be solved, and removal for a couple-few days isn’t going to solve it.

It depends on the kid.

The star football player may have led a life where he doesn’t get told “no” a lot, where as long as he excels at sports, he’s given carte blanche to mistreat those around him however he wants. If that’s the case, kid needs to be told “no,” and needs to have some consequences put in place for misbehavior, consequences that he’ll take seriously. In an unjust/corrupt social setting, this may prove impossible (e.g., if the principal refuses to allow the kid to be benched or otherwise punished, or if a judge refuses to hold the kid accountable for sexual violence, etc.). However, it’s what should happen.

The kid living in poverty may have the opposite problem: he may have been told “no” so many times, so often, that he thinks the only way to survive under authority is to ignore it. If that’s the case, he needs to get the real help he needs. Again, this may be impossible under a system with a racist administration, or in a town with a racist police force, or even a country with a racist prison complex that’s sent away his dad; but it’s what should happen.

These cases are hypotheticals. What should actually happen will depend on the specifics of the case.

Address the underlying causes.

One other thing: a lot of times, the kid in my story IS an incorrigible little shit by the time he’s 14. But he’s that way because we made him that way, by immersing him in a system that treated him unfairly, showed no concern for his physical, emotional, or educational well-being, treated him like an terrifying animal that needed to be forced to accept authority above all other considerations, and was utterly interested in his side of any story whatsoever.

So yeah, he’s a total ass to some teacher he has two years later. And it’s not her fault. She didn’t do any of that to him, directly. But, at PTerry taught us, something can be not your fault and still be your responsibility. Continuing to suspend him–even if these later incidents, stripped of context, seem to justify the suspensions–is just speeding him to prison that much faster. And it’s gross that adults are so willing to so quickly shift the blame to a child.

I realized I shouldn’t’ve been using the “douchebro” language. I totally get where it comes from, but it ain’t healthy for me to think of any child that way; and you’re right that kids who act that way have a reason.

Well, most of the time, sure. But I’ve definitely seen kids at the elementary level who were being deliberately disruptive to the degree that other kids were going home in tears; and other kids who weren’t deliberately disruptive, but whose meltdowns involved sustained high-volume shrieking, or knocking over furniture, or shouted violent threats against other kids. Removing them at least short-term from the classroom to help them regain control can be, with proper support, a positive strategy. And the rarely-used ISS to get a kid (and sometimes parent) convinced to take the issue seriously can be a valuable tool.

But that’s very different from sending the kid out in the hallway every day for long stretches of time, or suspending them on a regular basis. Those aren’t strategies to help the kid, they’re strategies to avoid addressing the kid’s needs, and they can be very harmful.

You know what? Maybe they don’t. Maybe some just really are horrible people. But I try (and often fail, but I try) to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I am certainly willing to defer to you on what’s appropriate with the littles. Short-term removals (into the hall) can be appropriate on occasion in HS, but I don’t know of a case when I really felt ISS helped. If a kid is truly so out of control he’s making the class unteachable, it should be treated like a big deal–the counselor should be involved, there should be a referral to the school psychologist (if you are lucky enough to have one), the principal should be on it. Just spending the days writing referrals until you can get him removed isn’t helping anyone.

My first ever sub assignment was for middle school boys’ P.E. (yeah, they gender-segregate in that district, which I found really weird). At one point one boy hit another, and I sent him to the office posthaste. Seemed pretty obvious to me.

Before long, his SpEd teacher came marching in, full of righteous fury. How dare I! He’s a good kid, the other boy must have started it.

I had been watching the whole time, and while I may have missed some muttered insult, the kid I sent to the office was definitely the only one to use any kind of physical violence. I was flabbergasted by her anger at me.

Now that my wife is in her eighth year teaching SpEd, I understand and appreciate the fierce dedication these teachers have for their students. But I think a story like this one illustrates how they can get a distorted sense of priorities that doesn’t adequately allow for the rights of reg ed teachers and students.

ETA: FWIW, every boy in the class was white.

It really sounds like your whole set of opinions on school discipline is based on one anecdote, in a circumstance where you truly didn’t know the context (the other kid might have a history of baiting students, for example). It sounds like you are still offended that your authority was publicly undercut. I don’t think any of that is grounds for whatever claim you are making, which, honestly, I have lost track of.

It wasn’t publicly undercut. No one but she and I were in the room. And it’s pretty specious to claim that after five years subbing and four kids of my own going to public schools, a teacher wife, and extensive reading about school reform, that my views come down to one “anecdote”. Why is your anecdote (12yo with a hole in his jeans) valid but mine is not?

As for your “losing track of” “whatever claim [I am] making”, did it not occur to you that I might be engaging in a dialogue and letting it unfold organically, rather than tenaciously piledriving some predetermined agenda? What a thought!

BTW, I seriously doubt that SpEd teacher had the support of the administration. If she did, it could all have been settled down at the office. Much more likely is that this boy had been skating on thin ice due to previous violent outbursts, and she had been trying to keep him under the radar. Yelling at me was her taking out her frustration on what she saw as a proximate cause of the trouble rather than reckoning honestly with either her student’s violent tendencies, or perhaps the overly harsh punishment levvied by the assistant principal. I don’t know what the consequences were, so I’m just speculating—but why else would she be so upset that I sent him to the office? It’s not like I rapped his knuckles or paddled him or something (both of which I consider unambiguously wrong, just to be clear).