I want to know what unsavory characters I’m dealing with here.
I served about 8 days total in detention. The most I ever got at once was 3 days, for getting caught climbing out of a classroom window before class. The worst was when I got in trouble for saying a naughty word on the last day of 5th grade, and they made me come to school ON THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER VACATION (!!!) and sit at a desk all day. I’m still pissed at my dad for going along with that.
My school also had something called in school suspension, which involved sitting in the cafeteria for the entire school day, as opposed to sending the offender home to his presumably dysfunctional family, where he could at least sleep in or get into mischief away from school supervision. That always seemed the cruelest punishment for bored teens. I always thought that, at the very least the school could have the gym teacher or the assistant principal or one of the other pricks on staff force feed them math lessons or Shakespeare or something. But no, they just made them sit there all day.
I can only recall 2 incidents. One was an hour of detention after school in elementary school for bouncing a basketball to a teacher when she asked me to give it to her. (In my defense: I did give it to her.) The second was having to show up to zero period in middle school for intentionally saying my teacher’s name wrong (what can I say, I was 12-13). So I’m firmly between 0 and 1 days of detention; I was a goody-goody.
Never had in-school, but I had a couple of weeks of after school (we got one day of after-school per period skipped, and I skipped two days of school at different points in my career).
I can only think of once, though there were probably more times. I and five of my classmates had to sit in the cafeteria for an hour in silence because the substitute science teacher got a little rattled.
I had after-school detention… err… well… a lot. More timesthan I care to remember, for everything from mouthing off to teachers to getting in fights.
I only ever spent one entire day out of school by the order of the school faculty. That was the day following Columbine (I wore a black trenchcoat and hung out with subversives,) due to a request by my high school’s Vice Principal. I’m sure it was illegal and would have gotten my parents all up in arms had I bothered to tell them, but I rather enjoyed just spending the day hanging out at a coffee shop on a local college campus.
Let’s see…I spent a few hours alone in the principal’s office for a dress code violation (spandex pants).
Soon afterward, I had my locker and purse searched because someone had reported that I smelled like alcohol. I didn’t have any on me at the time, but the blank hall passes that I had stolen from the principal’s desk during the dress code incident earned me a Saturday school. During Saturday school, the boys were all sent out to weed the flowerbed in front of the school, and I was left in the air-conditioned lunchroom to staple papers. Not bad.
I recall one further detention. The school warned the seniors ahead of time not to take our planned Senior Skip Day. So of course most of us went to the beach that day, and all served a day of detention together, where we sat around peeling our sunburns.
I was in detention pretty much every day in high school, but never served so much as one hour.
I worked for the attendance and/or deans’ office, so I was frequently delivering paperwork.
ETA: We had the basic “You’re a screwup. Get out of my classroom” where students would go for one or two periods in the day, and something called TAC or Temporarily Assigned Classroom, which was more like jail. A small windowless room, where the detainees spent the entire day doing absolutely nothing but sitting silently.
I had a favorite seat in detention and actually kind of liked it. Basically, detention was for me two undisturbed, quiet hours after school to complete my homework and study.
I don’t remember, but it was a lot, my whole life. Probably weeks of time over 3 years of high school. Most of it was for attendance (my lack therof), some of it was also for mild troublemaking, like throwing fruit at our mascot statue, etc. I got suspended for attendance issues twice in high school. I hated school my entire life, and dropped out in 11th grade.
But there was a trick at my school: we had 2 magnet programs (I was in one of them), so there was an 8th period for those students, which meant there were 2 detention periods. If you got detention, you told whoever was giving you detention that you had an 8th period so you would get the “late” detention, which was run by the tennis coach, who wanted to go and play tennis, so you would show up, sit for about 5 minutes, then he would let everyone go.
I got one after school detention in the last month of my senior year. It was over something nerdly and a group of us got them. We were “protesting” something or other. We all dutifully showed up and the teacher there just kind of laughed at us and let us leave pretty quickly.
I never had detention. But I did get kicked out of Chemistry lab for getting caught throwing iron filings into a bunsen burner. I had to get an F in the lab part of my grade, dropping me from an A to a B. Other than that, I think I was sent to the Principal’s office a few times, but no detention.
I don’t think any of the schools I attended even had “detention”. To be fair, the only real mark on my record was that I cut one day of school - on Senior Cut Day (aka Senior Skip Day).
I got detention once in 4th grade for guess what? Not taking my sweater off when the stupid bitch nun teacher told us all to, because she had decided it was too hot. Crazy me thought I could make my own decisions about how hot or cold I was, so when she noticed I still had on my sweater: detention. (That’s exactly what happened, it’s not like there was some verbal exchange or anything.)
Twice in high school, and not for doing anything fun. The first time, the school thought I’d ditched a class because the teacher had called out a different last name for me and I didn’t respond; the second time, I’d overslept and missed my first three classes.
My homeroom (20 minutes first thing every morning) for 4 years consisted of myself, Brent, and 20-24 girls. Two of the girls were nieces of the homeroom teacher. I got in so much trouble just for being an ass in there. But the favoritism and passes being handed out by the teacher left and right to excuse tardies by the posse was just ridiculous. So I spent many many hours in detention in her room, but I would just continue my ranting against the injustice of it all that she would usually “kick me out” after a couple of minutes. The last day of senior year she gave me detention for old time’s sake, I showed up and she gave me a cupcake and said, “Thanks for four fun years.” I had to agree, the homeroom was actually one of the most rewarding and education experiences for everyone in that room. It really became the center of the social universe at the school as the brainstorming, planning, fundraising, and organization were outstanding. Members of the homeroom went to the School Board often to change policies, etc. (like the removal of the Channel One TV in the room which is what we were supposed to be watching) So yes it was technically detention but it was rather good natured. Long live Mrs. C!
