Allison Fried discusses student discipline in Courier Journal article

Published by the Courier Journal on October 21st, 2016
Link to original article: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/10/21/choosing-right-discipline-student/92412822/

Allison Fried is currently pursuing an M.S.Ed in Education Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.  A member of the Teach Kentucky 2013 Cohort, she taught Spanish for two years at Valley High School in Louisville. She spent last year teaching ESL and researching bilingual public education while on a Fulbright Fellowship in Madrid, Spain.

Ask any teacher the top-five most demanding aspects of their job, and most likely “classroom management” or “discipline” will end up on the list.

It’s not that discipline is so difficult as a teacher because we’d rather give out lollipops and stickers than reprimands. Rather, it is difficult because we have students with a wide variety of backgrounds and diverse needs; discipline, therefore, is complex.

In April of this year, a new draft of Jefferson County Public Schools Student Code of Conduct instigated widespread teacher protests for being “too lax.” Now a new set of changes, approved in a work session at the end of July, aims to promote consistent and appropriate consequences in the classroom.

As a teacher for JCPS at Valley High School, I had to make difficult classroom management decisions every day in my two years of teaching there. As teachers, we see so many immensely bright students, but many of these students struggle to handle issues outside of the classroom.   According to a recent study done with JCPS students, more than 6,400 students are considered homeless and nearly 6,100 students are being raised by grandparents. In addition, 3,500 of our students deal with documented domestic violence issues, and in the past ten months, more than 3,000 of our students have been referred to psychiatric hospitalizations. So when students misbehave in the classroom, there could be a myriad of impulses behind their actions – and those are only the students dealing with trauma. Add in normal adolescent rebellion, and appropriately disciplining and managing a classroom becomes a very complex and highly-sensitive affair, indeed.

In my teacher training, I remember being told that teachers make more decisions per hour in the classroom than an air traffic controller must make in day. We are constantly assessing situations, adjusting and responding. It is difficult. And while we are trying to minimize suspensions and dropouts, maximize instructional time, maintain a calm classroom and take each individual student’s needs into account – it doesn’t always result in our being fair.

Take, for example, one student whom I had in the classroom, Tim. Tim was a junior, and his father had recently died. This resulted in him taking a very adult role as the only man of the house, and he reacted by exhibiting severe negative behaviors in the classroom. Making animal noises, randomly walking around the classroom, shaking his desk. Let’s just say that he knew how to be quite a distraction.

Although disciplinary referrals were an option, I knew that I could not send Tim out every day if he were to have a shot at passing my class. So I tried everything I could think of to reach Tim. I had alternative assignments set up for him, a behavior plan with his mom, and specific organizational goals for him. I was extremely pleased when he even brought a pencil to class and managed to sit in his desk for twenty minutes. Every little step was an improvement. And by the end of the year,  I couldn’t have been more proud of him when he sat for his final examination and passed with a nearly perfect score.

However, in hindsight, I can look back and see that I was not always fair. I did not treat him in a manner consistent with that of all of my other students. In some ways, this was a good thing – allowing him to sit in a rolling chair in a taped-off zone provided a focus for his energy into tiny movements. In others, it probably instigated misbehaviors from other students when they saw Tim get “special treatment.”

This is one student. One. I can think of so many other examples of students and situations which required complex decision making. The student who was being summoned to custody court cases regularly, and would react with anger to minor redirections. The student who often dozed off in class because they worked from 3 p.m. to midnight every day to support themself and their siblings.  The student who misbehaved because she had taken Spanish before, and wasn’t being challenged enough in a Spanish 1 course.

So many of these students needed different reactions and accommodations from me. But it was extremely difficult to be consistent. And consistency, in a controlled classroom, is key.

The recent changes to the JCPS Student Code of Conduct aim to take some of this on-the-spot decision making from the hands of the teacher, and address the complexity of student misbehavior and causes of misbehavior.

Student misbehaviors are categorized into more specific categories with assigned reactions. To give a possible example – if a student curses at the teacher, they will always be given both a disciplinary referral and a constructive assignment, like writing an apology. If it happens a second time, they will have in-school suspension.  Every time.

Teachers are given a clear guideline on how to react to each separate situation, and the stressful, on-the-spot thinking process is taken out of some of these decisions. This means that even when we have students like Tim, we can exercise our judgement on how to differentiate our instruction – but our disciplinary reactions can be more consistent. And we can focus on teaching each individual student.

It may not be the silver bullet solution, but it seems like a good  beginning. With so many issues to confront in the classroom, and so many students with different stories, needs, and potentials, maybe this one policy initiative will allow teachers to relinquish some of the tiny decisions so that they can focus on the big one: how to best educate our students.