I recall being suspended once (but not why) and detention at least once.
They also sent me to something called “Saturday School”, although I never found what it was supposed to be about because the adult who was supposed to watch over the kids wandered off for some reason and I got punched in the stomach. When I recovered (and the adult still hadn’t come back) I left and walked home, then informed my parents that the only way I was going back was if I was hauled there by force and chained in place. Given that my parents were pissed over us being left alone and me being gut punched, they backed me up; and fortunately some of the girls there backed up my story, so the school decided to back down.
I’ve gotten three detentions, AFAIK, but never had to serve a single one for one reason or another. So I voted 0. One was for cutting the second half of a class (and that was supposed to be a Saturday detention), but I don’t remember for the life of me what the other two could have been for. I’ve been thrown out of class once, too, but that just ended being essentially an extra lunch period for me, so I don’t know what purpose that was supposed to serve.
I checked off that I was expelled, though that’s not technically true. Once, I was officially “invited not to return”, and once, I was told that if I did return, I would be expelled. Yes, it happened twice. And those were two of the best things that ever happened to me, and both resulted in me going to a much better school.
I think I went to the most lenient schools ever. Never punished, never suspended, never got any detention or even knew anybody who did. Of course I was never late, never skipped class, and only talked back to a teacher once which resulted in my father being called in for a meeting with the teacher. The only thing I remember doing seriously wrong was trying to convince an 8th grade math teacher that I had handed in some homework that I had done but forgot to hand in. He insisted on failing me on it but I’m pretty sure I still got an A in the class and he put me on a team for an interschool math competition so it didn’t exactly hurt me. I never even heard of a permanent record until after I was in college.
Well let’s see. I was a good-two-shoe and even I managed to get one from the dirt-bag principal. So our detention was an hour before school which apparently they did because if they had it after school then the jocks wouldn’t be able to compete for the school. (Unfortunately I’m no morning person.)
Anyway back to the detention. So allegedly I was giving it because my locker wasn’t closed. Really, that was it. Apparently mr dirtbag would walk up and down the halls between classes and pull on lockers to make sure they were closed. In theory if it opened up he’d give you detention. The thing was I honestly didn’t trust the guy. Our lockers were locked with a school provided combination lock. The lock also took a universal key in case the school wanted to get in your locker. Suffice it to say I would not have been surprised to find out he occasionally went to a student’s locker, opened it up with his key and put in a note giving people detention just because he could.(He did give me the “I enjoy having the power to screw with people” vibe but I figured he’d never bug me because I was one of the kids that didn’t cause problems and did well in school. Oh well, I heard he got fired for one of his power move stunts.)
So when I went to my locked locker, unlocked and found the note inside say I had detention I was a bit pissed. I did wonder did I really not lock the locker or did he decide he just felt like screwing with someone today and I won the detention lottery. Oh I should bring up one other thing for anybody that’s going to say “You should have been more careful.” So basically we didn’t have much time between classes, 3 minutes to be precise. Yes, that’s 3 minutes bell to bell. So you have 3 minutes when the first bell rings to pack up your stuff for your current class, go to your locker, unlock and load/unload when you need/don’t need, then make it to the next class and have everything unpacked and ready to learn. To make matters worse at least a few teachers claimed they could go over time if they were in the middle of a concept which means often you didn’t get 3 minutes between classes. (They’d often do it too and damn, not every teacher was understanding if you told them you were late because the last class went over.)
Funny thing, ours was a pretty boring school with kids that didn’t cause trouble and the school still did stuff like this.
I was a goody-goody, angelic student who was a joy to have in every class I ever took and every teacher delighted in seeing me walk through the door. I got a detention once for being a goody-goody and possibly once for being part of a group that was accused of going over the head of a teacher to ask the school board president (who was one of our moms…we just thought of her as “Linda’s mom who knows a lot about school rules”) a question about graduation requirements. I was hugely embarrassed by both incidents, partly because I had no idea where the detention room was or what the rules were in there, and partly because my parents thought an overdue book fine of 4 cents was a Huge Deal, so a detention was HORRIBLE!
Oh, and the detention for being a goody-goody? Taught me that some under-achievers really hated us smart, well-behaved kids. Though I suppose technically I did deserve it. It was one of the first beautiful spring days, the school bus had delivered us to school a few minutes earlier than usual, and kids were sitting around on the steps to outside, all the walkers were streaming up the sidewalks, and a couple of us decided to walk down the street about 500 feet to meet our friends who were walkers as they crossed the street from the pathway that lead to their neighborhood. This was technically Leaving the School Grounds Without Permission After The Bus Has Delivered You To School Control…which we didn’t know was a “Thing”. The Vice Principal was out busting the smokers who would goof off on the front lawn of the nursing home next door, and when they got in trouble for going off school property, they cried foul on us and complained that we got preferential treatment, so the Vice Principal had to give us detentions just on, you know, principal. Even though it was the first time we had ever done that, and even though we didn’t even know it was a rule.
