(Vol. 1, No. 1 - Fall 1996)

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Schools Search for a Balance
Between Discipline and Student Support



By Reagan Walker

A fence encircles Franklin Middle School, serving as a barrier from the congested urban neighborhood around its borders. Signs are posted warning that no drugs or guns are allowed on school property.

Inside, most of the 1,100 students are in uniform and move from class to class in an orderly and friendly fashion. In most classrooms, the chairs are aligned and students are working.

On one day early this summer, the only sign of trouble was a scuffle between two girls in the schoolyard, which quickly drew a response from three adults nearby, who broke up the fight and escorted the students to the office.

From all appearances, educators at Franklin have taken every step to ensure the school is a safe and orderly place to learn. But for almost a year, discipline has been the paramount issue, with the school's staff locked in one of the most common debates among middle grades educators.

"Most faculty here would like a stricter policy, a discipline code that spells out the consequences of each bad behavior," said Principal Shawn Ashley, who has stirred the discipline debate since he took the reins of the school a year ago. "I'm not as comfortable with a cookie cutter approach. I think our first emphasis should be on making school a rewarding place to come."

It's the kind of debate that can consume a school. Discipline can become an end in itself, rather than a means to the end of higher student achievement.

Most parents of middle-school-aged children can attest to the trying times of young adolescence. Take a room full of 12- and 13-year-old students brimming with anticipation and anxieties, and the challenge for any teacher is clear-how do you harness all that energy and keep it focused on academic pursuits?

"You can't teach in that environment if you don't have discipline. I don't care how fantastic you are," says Franklin history teacher Helen Harris. Harris, who has taught at the school for nine years under five different principals, developed her own plan amid the constant turnover. When problems with a particular student persist, she calls parents to come to the school for a conference. But, she says, "I think we need some consistency schoolwide."

What Harris and other teachers have in mind is a code or policy that spells out exactly what the consequences would be for certain bad behaviors. Such a code might prescribe that cursing would result in one hour of after-school detention; a fight would send a student home for a certain number of days.

"It's tough to teach in this school. There's no parent involvement and no sense of responsibility among the students," said math teacher Nan Ongoco. "With a code, students would know every consequence of their behavior."

But that idea seems too rigid and simple to Ashley, who is known across the district for his success at "taming" Washington Middle School, where teachers still testify to his more open, positive approach. During five years at Washington, Ashley succeeded in taking down the school's fences and opening up the gates to the community in an effort to engage parents and get more support.

Seizing the corner ­p; and the initiative

While the fences are still up at Franklin, Ashley continues to advocate openness. When a group of teenagers suspected of being gang members began hanging out on the corner across from the school, intimidating students as they left each afternoon, the new principal's first step was to ask local police to come in.

The police increased their presence for a few days and the gang disappeared. But once the police were gone, the gang was back. So Ashley and counselor Paul Gonzales decided to take another tack.
"There was constant intimidation of our students.

But a lot of those hanging out on the corner lived in the area and had a right to be there. So we thought, let's join them," said Gonzales. Twenty teachers volunteered to join Gonzales and Ashley on the street.

"The first afternoon we went out there, the kids hanging on the corner were taken by surprise. Soon, they didn't hang out there anymore. We turned it into a place that just wasn't cool," said Gonzales. "Faculty loved it. Neighbors on that street came out of their houses and said 'I'm glad to see you guys.' But more importantly, students felt safer."

It's that kind of creative thinking and turning of the tables that Ashley wants to see applied to discipline inside the school.

"Some faculty believe that if we lay out the consequences for every infraction, students will behave
better," he says. "I'm not sure. It's no coincidence that our biggest discipline problems are with our lowest-achieving students. So maybe strong teaching in the classroom that is motivating and engaging is the key."

Most teachers at Franklin want to see students achieve, too. But they argue that clear expectations for behavior and order in the classroom are a prerequisite to learning.

"I believe in rewards. But if you keep on rewarding students for good but they don't see consequences for bad behavior, it will never work," Ongoco said.

Ashley said he doesn't believe bad behavior should go unpunished, but he's uncomfortable with a inflexible code. "In some cases, when two kids get in a fight, you can give them 20 minutes to cool down and then work it out. I don't want to be bound by a policy that says those two kids must go home for two days and miss school."

Ashley has already reduced the number of out-of-school and in-school suspensions by sending the message that the solution to problems can't simply be to get the student out of sight. "We are keeping more students on campus and in class because that's our only hope of teaching them," said Ashley.

Each school finds its own solutions

Each middle school in Long Beach sets its own discipline policies. Punishments can range from an hour in detention to suspensions in school or at home to -- in the most severe cases -- complete expulsion from the system. Expulsions usually occur only after students attend one of the district's "second-chance" programs, such as one at DeMille Middle School.

At Rogers Middle School, principal Linda Moore believes the key to better discipline is to replace the traditional tension-filled relationship between many teachers and parents with a new partnership of equals. Using ideas developed by family-school researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Moore and her teachers are trying to make allies out of parents.

"Parents can help us manage our discipline," Moore says, "but too often schools only contact parents or try to involve them when there's something negative going on -- when one of their children is in trouble.

"We have to convince parents that we're their partners, not their critics," she says. "And that means contacting them when something good is happening. Then, when there's a student problem we need to address, the parents are much more likely to listen and help."

Many parents, in fact, are strong supporters of stricter discipline policies. At a "Middle Matters" community conference last spring, parents made it clear they place a high priority on discipline. But parents gave equal emphasis to Shawn Ashley's point of view, asking teachers to recognize why students with poor literacy skills might act out and urging them to use teaching strategies that excite students about learning.

"We need smaller teacher/student ratios, and lots of support for the variety of learning styles in our schools," wrote one thoughtful parent. "And we need to quit blaming each other."

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