Chalkbeat wrote an article that made the connection between suspensions and students dropping out or ending in juvenile hall. I don't disagree with the connection between suspensions and academic failure. However, what the paper did not say is what happens when students are not suspended but instead, have a restorative justice session and gets to misbehave back in the classroom. The result, is he or she affects the otherwise, peaceful classroom where learning and teaching suffers.
Ask any teacher how student academics are adversely affected when a misbehaving student continually disrupts the classroom and distracts the rest of the students with his or her antics. Moreover, misbehaving students are one of the major factors for teachers quitting the urban classroom. Finally, misbehaving students make other students and school staff feel that the school is "unsafe".
Suspensions are a necessary punishment and remedy, not restorative justice, or a warning card. A saying that has stood the test of time "if you do the crime than you must do the time. That goes with suspensions for misbehaving students.
27 comments:
I agree and what I say to any teacher who thinks that suspensions are not the answer is first they are wrong. Second a suspension is not issued against a disruptive student to retaliate against that student, it is simply to remove the disruptive student from the environment so that they don't affect other people 's ability to learn.
One thing that really irks me is when Leftists make the false assumption that suspensions are the 'cause' of kids going to jail later in life.
No, they are correlated. A kid who gets in trouble at school all the time is a kid who gets in trouble outside of school too. The school did not make the kid a troublemaker. Poor parenting and poor cultural values they grew up around did that.
I would be amazed if there were not a high correlation between suspensions and incarceration as a adult. The same mindset that caused the flouting if the school rules causes cruminal behavior later in life. In short, it is not the suspension As a child that causes incarceration as an adult, although it is very likely a predictor of future criminal behavior
All it takes is one disrespectful and disruptive student to derail a lesson, just in time for the Danielson gotcha clipboard to come into your classroom and rate you all ineffectives. The report will sit in your file waiting for 3020a.
It absolutely is. In fact, the ny prison system refers to the drop out rate to determine how many future prisons to build a decade down the road.
A system that does not punish the child is abusive to the child. Punishment is how we learn. It teaches us that society frowns on certain behavior. It teaches us to feel bad about what we did. Of course the punishment should also be proportionate to the infraction.
Theses kids are being set up for failure. Where in the real world is someone going to "talk" to them about how they feel? LOL!!!
To 8:35 - but the mantra now is 'disproportionate' and 'That's racist!" and "Cultural competency."
In other words, the students who act out the most cannot be punished because they are mostly of one skin tone and you - the racist teacher - just need to learn that different cultures 'act' different ways, even though you don't see it, and btw - all cultures are 'equal.'
We just have to shut up and let DeQuan throw books and LaQuisha walk in and out of class because that is how they learn. If you don't like it, then Danielson's will be used to get rid of you! And anyways - 'standards and timeliness' are racist Western social constructs!
Mr. Salerno, that happened to me except that I was untenured. The gotcha observations were the cause of my discontinuance. It just amazed me how the supervisor would deliberately ignore all the students doing the right thing all throughout the lesson and instead "chose" just to focus on that one kid who did the wrong thing only in the beginning of the period.
The racism in these comments is breathtaking. It makes me ashamed to be a teacher in New York City.
This is not an ethnic or racial culture you are referring to. This is a street culture. Street culture should not be an excuse to behave badly and it certainly should not be used to confuse the issue and make it into a race problem. It's street. That's what it is. And not black or Hispanic or white.
i agree with the post, but some of these comments are bordering on racism territory.
we can agree students need consequences but not be racist in how we comment on it!
Not racist. They are merely, as oprah would say, speaking their truth.
Not suspending kids and not correcting their behavior is racism. If a kid is urinating in the staircase (whether white, black, orange or whatever color) and an adult does not address this then that adult is a racist. That adult simply is saying through his actions - this kid does not know any better but to urinate in the staircase.
Any teacher or principal that does not suspend misbehaving students are racists and setting up kids for failure and jails. The highest suspending schools are now white schools mostly on Staten Island according to the last article I read a few years ago.
In my 3rd book which was very controversial titled "Suspend 'em ALL starting with Carmen" caused riots in the black community. However, the Asians did not care. I never said "Suspend 'em ALL starting with Blacks". Why did and why does the black community think suspensions is only for them? Serious question.
Does anyone believe a teacher or a principal will actually suspend a kid based on his skin color? Please...
Now, that Janus has officially passed I am suing the UFT as a union paying member who does not want my dues to go to AMY ARUNDELL I want to remain a union member but want to have say on which union salaried employees my union dues will pay for and will not pay for. The case will be filed early next week under Shady Janus (the J is silent).
By the way, I am only joking Amy. I just placed any name and do not mean any disrespect towards Amy....
sounds like shady is over compensating, but wearing racist goggles can have that effect. the rumor is shady and amy are secretly an imaginary couple that meet at tweed once a week. what needs to happen is society has to stop listening to the small but vocal group of (place your answer here) people who are unhappy with the way life has turned out. 1.get over it 2.get off your ass and start setting the example for your children. 3.not all whites are bad 4.janus is just another distraction
I actually like shadys idea of suing about who benefits from our dues.
I stated and signed that i was staying in the union but now i think i may withdraw my dues as i just remebered myra ettenburg fromn the uft calling me"chicken little" when i complained before danielson was implemented.
Those who are aghast at the comments are think they are bordering on racist, need to examine their own attitudes and reality. For the vast majority of teachers who read this blog, the urban classroom is our home, and we have few or even no white students.
Our current population, augmented by immigration on a never-seen-in-history scale, is black, latino, middle eastern, asian and many other things. The asian kids do not seem to get suspended much - why is that? Are teachers being racially biased in favor of them? The latino students get suspended less than black students but more than south asian students. Is there racism involved?
We see for ourselves that different cultures have different standards of behavior for their youth. We also see having a two parent home also makes a big difference in student behavior. I agree that race is not really a good thing to point out because there is good and bad in every group, but with that said, we as teachers are constantly called racists just for merely asking all students to follow civilized norms in the classroom.
I think this is the bigger issue. If a student is acting out, and he is white and he gets in so much trouble he gets suspended, no one says anything. If a kid is asian and does likewise, no one bats an eye. They assume he is trouble and needs correction.
However, if the kid comes from 'certain' communities, any punishment meted out against him or her is called racist as a basic position from the get-go, no matter how much trouble the kid causes. This is a problem because it forces teachers to overlook more and more bad behavior from certain students to stay out of trouble with the admins, and other kids see him or her getting away with more and more and it snowballs.
I went to an all white school in a small town. Kids got detention and suspended all the time. The rest of us took note and knew there would be consequences. If someone said, "Oh, there's a gender bias because more boys get in trouble than girls' and then policies were enacted to overlook most bad behavior from boys, then respect for authority would erode.
There was a time up until the 1960s or so when black students, for example, achieved more and had few dicipline problems. What happened? Well meaning do-gooder liberal whites started to enact policies that destroyed the black family and then black independence. There, someone had to say it.
Juliette Marinelli
Really? Which poster and which comment? By "these comments" do you mean all of them? And it appears that you are assuming all of the posters were White, and racists. Many educators of color feel the same way, Care to characterize them?
Here's another effect that occurs because of an entire school system's refusal to discipline children in a meaningful way:
It promotes the acceptance of online home schooling. A parent told me that she would be interested in the online school because of bullying. She doesn't want her kids to be bullied in middle school and since the schools don't have any punishment for bad behavior she will let her kids learn online.
Hmm sounds like the DOE helping to shift kids out of public school and into private online school where there's no constitutional protections and less public obligation to the child.
Shady you should read Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. If any white person gets caught doing anything wrong that person is made an example of in order to prove the system and those that enforce it aren’t racist. I got caught smoking a joint last year in the Bronx and was charged with a felony. I was the only white guy in the entire courtroom. Then they lowered it to a misdemeanor which also fucks you for life. It took me a year to get them to drop the charge to a fine. I had to go to court three times a month, every month and take off from work. Cuomo’s office contacted me to speak to him about how marijuana charges are out of control in the Bronx and how it’s ruining lives. It is.
https://www.trsnyc.org/memberportal/WebContent/publications/financialReports/cafr
page 166 is very interesting. look at the drop of tier 4.
@2:10 p.m. - I actually know what you are saying is 100 percent accurate. A teacher friend of mine (black guy but working family man) got caught driving with alcohol in his system. He did not have enough alcohol to be arrested for drunk driving but the police did find about 20 dollars of cocaine in his pocket.
Would you believe in court the first 6 people ahead of him (all drug arrests / whether black, hispanic or white) were going to be given misdemeanors and fines? By the time his turn came up and this was his first offense - the prosecutor told the judge they wanted to charge him with a felony??? WTF? Even the judge said to the prosecutor, "Are you kidding me? You just told the first 6 people they will be charged with a misdemeanor? Go back to your supervisors and think again." True story
This teacher was tortured for over a year in order to have his charges reduced in order to keep his job. I know what you posted is true and it is shame.
@9:05 a.m. I might add "myra ettenburg" to list of people I do not want my union dues to go towards her salary. Myra just made my list. I will email Mike Mulgrown on Monday.
@8:28 a.m. Why are you calling out my son, DeShawn? And by saying DeQuan - everyone knows you mean DeShawn. DeShawn is simply misunderstood and only throws books out of boredom. Plus, in his IEP it clearly states using the X variable stirs up his anger. You could have said 2a + 5 = 10. You could have said 2b + 5 = 10... instead you always choose 2x + 5 = 10. WHY? WHY? WHY? Never use the X variable in math.
Then you want to talk about my son, DeShawn? Please... Do your job. DeShawn is a nice kid. Plus, who cares if he throws a book in class? You think our president, Donald, never threw a book? A black kid does it and you want to flip and suspend. A white kid does it and it is artsy. Please.
Leave my DeShawn alone. You are so lucky DeShawn does not read these blogs.
The worst thing about the criminal court system in the Bronx is how the DA breaks Constitutional law. Everyone is supposed to get a speedy trial within 90 days, but they call you in and if the DA isn't ready they freeze the time until you're called back. One year of having to take off constantly for a joint. I lost my job over it. My brother is a teacher and when I pick him up all the kids are in front of his high school smoking weed and everyone ignores it. I told a couple of kids this school shit isn't real life and you won't get away with your crap forever. They told me, well I won't say it but my bro hauled me off from knocking a couple of the punks out. Good thing I'm not a teacher or I'd be away for life.
I think this issue is interesting, in my school we had something vaguely similar in that only the super skinny girls would wear very revealing clothing and then students and many teachers would say that by enforcing dress codes we were discriminating against certain “body types”.
so as long as the standard is applied equally then it’s not racist to enforce it, even if one group had more enforcemt done unto them due to more infractions
Sorry to hear about your experience. Tenure only means 2 years of a meat grinder until you’re illegally terminated by Danielson. Hopefully you reinvented yourself in the private sector like I did.
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