School discipline: A very quick and totally inadequate teacher primer



March 26, 10:27 PM · Add a Comment





No discipline, no school. The first responsibility of every principal is the safety of students and staff. So it stands to reason that classroom discipline and school order must be established before anyone can expect learning to take place.
Wrong.
Square One: The first thing to be established at the beginning of the school year is one-on-one relationships between teachers and the students. Young people do not walk into the building on day one intent on mayhem. They have high expectations too. Learn their names, get to know them; just remember you are not their friend, you are the teacher.
Square Two: The second thing is to fill up the teaching hour, the school day, and the campus atmosphere with academics. Teach the full period starting on the first day; leave no time for hi-jinks and drama. If you give 25 Harvard professors enough free time, they’ll get into trouble.
Square Three: If positive relationships cannot be established and students disrupt learning, make the parent call and give the family the chance to make things right. Do not wait until the fifth student felony to do it. Call early, call often; if a student improves, the parent would love to know that too.
Square Four: If the menace continues, lower the boom and smack ‘em with the discipline code. But application has to be unemotional, rational, and above all else, fair. The first level of discipline is the classroom teacher, not the principal’s office.
Re-read square one: You cannot punish, admonish, correct, or chastise someone you don’t know unless you have police authority. The reason parents get away with the many mistakes they make in child rearing is because their children know that mom and dad love them. Okay, I cannot expect teachers and students to fall in love in September, but I do ask them to do what is necessary to earn the respect of their new students. Kids are smart, and for the most part, reasonable. New students give teachers an adequate length of rope to see what they will do with it. Don’t hang yourself.
Re-read square two: Just before the Christmas break (excuse me, Winter hiatus) I asked a first year teacher of freshman English at an urban high school that was 90% black and Latino why it was she had never sent me a discipline referral. The petite, female, Caucasian, University of Wyoming graduate looked at me and said: ‘We don’t have time for trouble, we’re too busy.’ Bingo! This lass taught well-prepared, engaging lessons from the second the bell rung to start class until the bell rung to end it. She was teaching, the kids were learning, and they loved her for it. Kids can spot a phony.
Re-read square three: In problematic schools parents are often unsupportive, possibly even hostile as many lower socio-economic adults were themselves difficult students. Still, do not miss this step; you might be surprised; besides, it is your job.
Re-read square four: Yeah the old 80/20 rule applies here too. Eighty percent of the discipline referrals come from twenty percent of the faculty. Over, and over again. Many teachers get through the year with few conflicts. Others are complaining about the students before Labor Day. But then, they were angry all summer and didn‘t get over it.
I think I became a principal in part to avoid the teachers’ lounge. Ask a teacher friend about the acid verbal vitriol spewing from some teachers during their free periods. It is first directed at their students, and later at the principal for not laying waste to the students when they demanded it. If you don’t like kids, do everybody a favor and quit.
As a teacher I had two rules. The first was not to stop me from teaching. The second was not to stop another student from learning. Kids get it. If you mean it, and you enforce your rules fairly, they cooperate. Oh yeah, it helped that I was also a pretty good history instructor that taught lessons appealing enough that some students who were not enrolled in my class would ask me if they could sit in on my classes during their study hall periods. Principals can help you become a better instructor, but no one can make you like kids.
As a principal, on one hand I was forced to administer the Code of Hammurabi while on the other, the Supreme Court continually tied my hands with directives on what I could not do. And if teachers did not agree with my decisions, they took it out on the kids. Bad move, because if the kids don’t get you, the principal will. (if he or she cares) Its our job.
Schools are not difficult to run, if you’re logical and can juggle dynamite. There are a lot of moving parts inside the building, if you ignore any one of them, you’ve complicated the task. Furthermore, all the parts are not equal. The kids come first.