Under pressure from the Obama Administration and approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio, there is a new, more lenient discipline policy for disruptive students in the New York City Public Schools. No longer can principals suspend misbehaving students without DOE Central approving the suspension. Instead, the new policy is to set up "Restorative Justice" meetings to encourage the wayward student to mend their ways. No longer can a teacher remove a disrespectful student from the classroom but must endure the student harassment and classroom disruptions.
In some schools, the administration has gone so far as to set up peer courts and restorative justice circles instead of discipline, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Worse, the misbehaving students quickly realize there is little consequence for their bad behavior and feel free to continue or even escalate their misdeeds at the expense of his or her classmates and teachers. The result is an out of control school.
In school after school I have heard horror stories about students threatening or cursing at their teachers with no punishment. Sadly, these administrators simply tell the teachers that the student has a difficult family life or their IEP allows for such behavior and they must be compassionate and forgiving. The result is the student continues to disrupt the classroom and the powerlessness of the teacher to enforce discipline results in a chaotic classroom. Is it any wonder that many of these schools cannot retain their teaching staff?
Added to the lax discipline code, is the continued micromanaging of the classroom teacher who no longer has complete control of their classroom. In too many schools, students arrive late to class since the administration requires the teacher to let them in , take their cell phones out when they please with little fear of the phones being taken away, and add that to the well founded fear that any altercation with a student can result in the teacher being subject to discipline and even termination discourages the teacher from enforcing classroom discipline.!
In addition, the teacher is subject to frequent observations from administrators, thanks to the punitive teacher evaluation system and the data mining requirements imposed by the DOE results in unnecessary and excessive paperwork and adds to the stress in the classroom.
The lax discipline policy combined with the hostile classroom environment makes an already stressful occupation even more so. Already there are fewer perspective teachers entering the teaching field and with teacher control being continually eroded, it will only get worse.Its a disaster waiting to happen.
Restorative Justice is working great at my school. Sitting in circles is accompanied by nonstop cursing and daily fights. A student called me MF. It is charming.
ReplyDeleteI have it on every lesson plan under development:
ReplyDelete"Student acts up. Stop lesson. Get in restorative justice circles.
This should count as groupwork and shows teachers flexibility in addressing student needs.
Anonymous 8:56- that comment made my day. I'm thinking of using that in my lesson plans under "differentiation".
ReplyDeleteYou know things are bad when a 14 year old says to you "You know what's wrong with this school? No consequences for anything". How do you even respond to that?
What's the point of the circle? Like a death ring for the students to fight in? A death ring for our careers to die in? Let the problem kid kick everyone in the circle? Just curious.
ReplyDeleteReason # 101 I love being an ATR. Kids go right to their phones as soon as they see me, quietly texting,gaming,checking and updating thier social media status, totally self-absorbed. Gone are the days of the paper airplane, spitballs, and playing 20 questions with the sub. Long live technology in the classroom!!And best of all, administrators are fine with use of phones in the classroom,asa long as it's not the teacher.
ReplyDeleteI was taking a look at the daily news articles featuring "crisis in NYC schools" - an entire spread doing what the daily news does on a daily basis and that is to blame schools and teachers. However, the DN did include comments and when I checked it there were 37 comments. Interesting enough just about all of the 37 comments noted that the DN did not include parents and home as the most important factor and not the schools nor the teachers. Most comments note that they see kids now on subways and in the streets after school and the kids are all crazy slapping each other, cursing, fighting and much worst disrespecting people anyway from the subway to the food stores and capped off by the McDonals fiasco. Amazingly so many people commented about how the DN missed out on focusing on poverty, parenting and respect but rather focused on the teachers and schools. I believe most new yorkers really know that the main problem with education is poverty and parenting but trash publications such as the daily news keep pounding teachers and "failing schools". No wonder this crappy excuse for journalism is going out of business losing millions every day....who the dang is going to read this crap??
ReplyDeleteThe McDonalds fighting scandal has put light to the type of students that roam NYC halls and classrooms. Can anyone imagine what is going on these days.?? Wow, the so called reformers have got to be kidding me and lest anyone think that teaching in NYC is a easy job well then look at Mickey Dees people. Imagine having these kids walk into your classroom shouting gucci and rihanna..yo---NBA basketball...so now we have these people who want us to be held responsible for thugs in the classrooms....How is it this society has gotten upside down. NOw, with the new discipline code, even more power is given to the thugs as the genius leaders want us to keep the disruptive kids IN THE CLASS!!! Are you kidding me... Which way is up? Please don't tell me to look at my feet
ReplyDelete11:15 is so right!! All we get as ATRs is are you the sub - and out come the phones!! Do you think I care -not at all 1 get quiet and passive kids - not my problem - I am certainly not taking phones!! - unless ! want to go out on line of duty!! not a bad idea!
ReplyDeleteThe inmates are running the asylum. We have a group of kids running the halls on a daily basis. They stop by to visit various classes and it is hard to get rid of them. A security guard informed me that he refuses to deal with these hall walkers because the principal does not enforce any discipline in the school. Yesterday a girl in my class was pretending to lick the window in my door for the entertainment of a boy standing in the hallway. Girls sit on each other's laps. It is difficult to determine if students are more disrespectful to adults or to other children.
ReplyDeleteRight on cue, Chaz- two minutes after your post, Voila! Up-Skirt Photo of young lady teacher at John Dewey HS. Liberal, apologetic policies and Apple Inc., perfect storm for NYC Schools. Know what I say? Why just allow phones? Bring on the VR Goggles, the Apple Watch, heck, why not issue each NYC high school student their own personal Drone?
ReplyDeleteDaily News article today talks about how the south bronx is NYC's worst performing district....DA not kidding dick tracey i believe poverty and poor performance go together but what the hell does the daily going out of business lose millions every day know
ReplyDeleteAnd the hypocrisy is that when someone walks into an out of control classroom the teacher is written up and said to be incompetent to control a class!
ReplyDeleteand ATRs are even in a worse situation when their Field Supervisors drops in to observe them in this sea of mayhem.
ReplyDeleteby the way where I Michael Mulgrew. He does not teach so he does not care
ReplyDeleteIt is a myth that students shrug off a suspension and even seek it out in order to be out of school. There are students who find suspensions meaningful, and who return from the experience with a realization that they did something majorly wrong. I've seen it first hand.
ReplyDeleteLet's call RJ what it really is: Direct pressure by Obama's DOE on public school districts to lower the suspension rate for African American students. Period, end of story. So lest they face a 3-year or more inquisition (literally) by the OCR, what really matters to district officials is providing data that this is happening. So the numbers they can hand over to the Fed's matters more than ACTUAL classroom control, or the ACTUAL safety of the students and teachers. Since they're not in the classrooms themselves, it is that much easier to abdicate their professional and moral responsibility to support teachers efforts to manage their classrooms through the enforcement of reasonable discipline policies. From that cowardly position, hiding behind closed doors at the district office, it is convenient to default to blaming the teachers for classrooms run amok. Everybody--ESPECIALLY the teenagers who deserve and need the discipline--knows RJ is a joke that has no logical "teeth" to effect real change, so for the sake of avoiding discipline for the few bad apples in every classroom, the irony is that the ones who suffer the most under RJ are all the other great AA kids who just want a good education, and more importantly a school safe enough to guarantee they can finish each school day without being robbed, insulted, bullied or physically assaulted. It is stunning to me that teachers dutifully go to work each day under these appalling conditions. They won't tolerate it forever though, and when everyone realizes no amount of money is worth six periods x 185 days of disrespect and
ReplyDeleteclassroom chaos, there will be no more quality teaching professionals left in the system.