"Behavior is a Language"

The title of this post comes from a middle school teacher being quoted by Claudia Rowe, a member of the Seattle Times' editorial board. The title of the op-ed is Student discipline: Are schools equipped to handle behavioral extremes?

This op-ed in the Times absolutely circles back to a key question I have been asking - what is public education and what should it do? Districts are being asked to do many things beyond the academic. But there are not enough dollars to do all the things outside of academics. Something's gotta give.

In the last 12 months, students from the Seattle, Renton and Highline school districts have been charged with crimes ranging from assault to murder, some of which happened inside school buildings.

Rowe goes on:

If you are a person who believes, as I do, that no child is born a killer, the obvious question is what are we doing wrong? Kids’ lives outside of school shape their psyches, but blaming families leaves us with the same problem: disconnected young people with no vision beyond the moment. Prior to the crimes with which they are now charged, all three students had been suspended from school, which raises an unavoidable question: Does punitive discipline work?

It appears that punitive discipline means suspension/expulsion. I know many districts have tried/are using restorative justice?"Here's an interesting chart for each.

My understanding is that many districts are trying to have someplace for the student to be when suspended so they can try to keep up with classwork.

From the Hechinger Report, an article on punishment:

Punitive school discipline is rampant in the United States, whether it’s corporal punishment or, much more commonly, suspensions. Students lost more than 11 million days to out-of-school suspensions during the 2017-18 school year, the last federal count, and they spent many times that number in in-school suspension rooms, kept from the classrooms where their teachers were teaching. Black students face more than their fair share of this punishment, as do boys.

Teacher burnout is at record highs, and surveys continue to show that educators believe student behavior is worse than it was before the pandemic. With everyone in school buildings stretched to their emotional limits, some districts across the country have been suspending students even more.

Critics point out that punitive discipline doesn’t teach students the skills they need to behave differently – like how to manage their frustration when the bell rings and they’re still working.

Reducing suspensions has become a national goal, but some schools have cut corners, simply removing the option without changing much else, and thereby leaving teachers overwhelmed.

I think one key to this question - like the homeless situation - is that there are different degrees of misbehavior. The Hechinger Report has a detailed explanation of options to help students self-regulate. But they also don't mention how much class time would be needed to help regulate one or two students. 

Here is the case that Rowe talks about. She gives the example of a middle school teacher in Renton who was given a new student who was labeled as 6th grade but the teacher has 7th grade. She was told it might be better for the student behavior-wise especially since the student didn't know the other students in her class.

Hartung wasn’t worried. She loved Dimmitt. She was accustomed to kids who presented a challenge, and she relished getting them excited about the future through her career-and-college-prep class.

When the girl said she wanted to die, the teacher called the office. The interim administrator talked to the girl and the teacher and said he thought the girl was gonna be okay. You can guess what happened next.

She referred to her teacher by another person’s name, then beat Hartung so severely that an ambulance was called, along with the police.

Hartung suffered a concussion, black eye and other injuries. Her student was charged with assault.

 School discipline was always a loaded topic. The vast majority of suspended kids are low-income youth of color, and a data analysis I did in 2015 showed that certain students were disciplined again and again, suggesting that the intervention does little to change their behavior. It is associated primarily with an increased risk for dropping out.

One issue not mentioned, that I myself have seen, is the damage to the other students in the class. What can a student be thinking as they watch another student beat their teacher? I recall one student in the kindergarten class I volunteered in whose parents took their student out after one of our high-needs students cleared the classroom. I couldn't blame those parents for their decision. (I have another post that will also be about the issue of one student's needs versus the rest of the students in the class.)

And apparently COVID changed much in students' lives and that stress has come to schools.

“I think the situation is as dire as it is because we lost a lot of connection points,” said King County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jamie Kvistad, who reviews school-related crimes that land in juvenile court.

“We ask our schools to do so much — provide education, exercise, food, art and music, mental health treatment. But a school can’t be everything to every student. There has to be parent involvement. There has to be community involvement.”

Another view:

“You cannot expect a teacher to address the root causes of violence and do relationship-building when they have 30 students and an academic pacing guide that allows for no more than a few minutes of so-called social-emotional learning,” said Renton Education Association President Julianna Dauble. “You cannot overcome trauma or generational poverty simply by holding a class meeting.”

When I called the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, I heard about threat assessments and safety plans and multitiered systems of support — a stew of policy-speak that is legions away from the reality of a suicidal 12-year-old willing to kick a grown woman in the face.

The comments are interesting reading with the themes of "take them out class if they can't behave" and "where are the stories of kids who did get suspended and turn things around" and

One comment:

These difficult students need to be separated from mainstream students. Their plight may be unfortunate, however allowing classroom disruption does not benefit anyone involved. Catering to disruptive students, continuously, trying to get them back in the classroom, sacrifices the learning environment for the other students.

 Another comment:

Having taught for 20 years at the middle school level, I witnessed schools having fewer and fewer options on how to discipline students. Kids aren't stupid, they saw there were fewer consequences for acting out, so more and more of them ignored the social norms and rules we have. Throw in a pandemic where kids lost both the structure and social interaction most people need and you put schools and teachers in a really tough spot.