School Discipline

I stumbled across this article via Facebook and I thought it was amazing. Click the picture below to be taken to the article. Read the article first and then my thoughts about it below.

The principal actually treats high schoolers age appropriate. He doesn't treat them as inferior people but he also recognizes that they may not have the skills to handle some of the stuff that these teens go through so he provides them the skills to do that. Sometimes in schools we hit the extremes of treating high schoolers like an invalid or too much like an adult, expecting them to process things beyond their capabilities. 

Second, he works with students who have a large amount of trauma in their lives and recognizes that their behavior may indicators of much more than just "acting out in class." The school focuses on that students' behavior indicates something is wrong outside of the classroom and seeks to give them tools to deal with in inside the classroom. Instead of punishing bad behavior solely, they give students tools to deal with when complex, frustrating, traumatizing experiences enter into the classroom (and the future work place). 

Third, punishment was not removed. It came secondary to checking in with the student. I appreciated that the principal looked at students' misbehavior in class as an indicator that something was wrong. Teachers and principals first inquired into that, then punished the behavior. In many ways, it seperates the behavior from the person itself. When a person is only identified by their behavior, especially a negative one, it develops a terrible self image and rarely improves the behavior (which is what happens in much of our pulic school systems today). 

Yes, this was a risk for him to do. His approach to discipline is the exact opposite of what we have seen in schools in our country. There is a clear theme that suspension and other high consequences for behavior go down when teachers, principals, and adults treat students with respect and dignity. I have seen schools that won't need to implement such a striking policy because they already treat their students as such and therefore suspensions are already at a low. But for schools that rely heavily on kicking students out of class at the first sign of misbehavior may have to rethink their discipline policies.