Trish asked MiddleWeb readers to share their expertise in the
areas of supervision responsibilities and discipline. The discussion that
resulted demonstrated the diversity that exists among schools regarding
the important procedures that keep school operating smoothly.
I teach in a Middle School with a new administration and a teacher turnover
these past two years of approx. 15+ new teachers. Does this tell you something?
Anyway, I have some questions about duty schedules and discipline I am looking
for help with. Please help me with the following questions.
1. When a teacher sends a student to the office for fighting what is the
punishment? Seems we had a few teachers send students to the office for
this offense and the students were just spoken to, and they told the asst.
principal they were just fooling around and were let go. This made the teacher
who sent them very upset as he is a 10-year veteran and knows the difference
between fooling and not.
2. How does your school handle a bomb threat? When the students are evacuated
are they "lied to" over the intercom or told that there has been
a bomb threat written in the....room and please follow these directions?
3. Are your teachers questioned by the asst. principal about the reason
you sent a student to the office and is this student called to the principal's
office with you (teacher) so both sides can be presented?
These are the only questions I have for now although it seems many do come
up daily. I am new to this listserve and truly appreciate any help you can
provide.
-Trish
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Carol shared the procedures followed at her school.
Our school has a zero tolerance policy toward any fighting, play fighting
or otherwise. If it was a real fight or anyone was hurt it is an automatic
5-day out of school suspension. If it was not as serious, they receive an
in-school suspension or the rest of that day and at least one full day.
That way we still get ADA.
The students come by and pick up their work from their teachers in the morning.
They sit in the "help center" which is the reception for the counselor's
office. As part of our "step program" an in-house suspension counts
as step 4. They have 4 hours of after school detention and it takes 4 weeks
to earn back any privileges and 8 weeks until they are completely in the
clear.
At the beginning of the year, we spend a class period with our homerooms
going over the finer points of the suspension form and doing role playing
and I make a fool of myself showing them how the little games they play
are enough to evoke a suspension. They sign the back of the form to acknowledge
they understand the rules.
We have never had a bomb threat before but we usually don't give the kids
all of the details until at least the next day if ever. We have had lock-downs
before when there is police activity in the vicinity. Teachers receive a
phone call to lock down. If kids ask, we have standing orders to let them
know that there is a safety concern and that when I know more, I'll let
them know. Later, at lunch or after school, we are told what happened and
what we can share with the students.
-Carol
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Scott addressed Trish's questions.
You commented on your teacher turnover. How big is your building? We have
around 100 for staff/admin/support. It is nothing unusual for us to see
15 teachers leave/retire/change buildings. With 1 principal and 2 assistant
VP's, having 1 change a year is also not unusual for us. (This is not to
say that some of the changes are because of unhappy people)
When a teacher sends a student to the office for fighting what is the
punishment?
If we put it in a write-up then it is handled as a fight. Often the
police are called to then deal with it (it depends on if punches are thrown).
For minor skirmishes, in school suspension is the norm.
One thing that we have been told though, when we send a student to the office
for a referral, it is then out of our hands. It is up to the administration
to decide the punishment. Most of the time the punishment fits the crime,
but sometimes it doesn't. This is frustrating. We often feel that we are
being undermined. But it still boils down to....it isn't any longer our
decision.
How does your school handle a bomb threat? When the students are evacuated
are they "lied to" over the intercom or told that there has been
a bomb threat written in the....room and please follow these directions?
Thankfully, we haven't had to deal with it.
Are you teachers questioned by the asst. principal for the reason you
sent a student to the office and is this student called to the principal's
office with you (teacher) so both sides can be presented?
Our assistant principals will often verify what happened to get more
details (write-up space is not great). Only once in a great while will this
happen with the student present. I have never had the experience of the
administration taking the student's side over mine.
- Scott
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Middle school principal Chris Toy provided an administrative perspective
to Trish's questions.
Trish wrote: "I teach in a Middle School with a new administration
and a teacher turnover these past two years of approx. 15+ new teachers.
Does this tell you something?"
Is the turnover due to folks retiring, or people fleeing their positions?
How big is your school? Without good information it's hard to know what
the situation is.
When a teacher sends a student to the office for fighting what is the
punishment?
When I get students sent to me, what I do depends on several things,
mostly having to do with the quality of the information I receive and the
type of incident.
We have pretty simple, short forms with a half dozen check-offs for infractions
such as bullying, refusing to follow staff requests, rudeness, etc. There's
a check off for recommending a detention. There's also a check off for a
simple time out. If nothing is checked off I assume it's a time out and
send the student to the next class. If a detention is recommended that's
usually what I do. If the student disagrees, I usually tell the student
they have the detention, but that I will talk with the teacher, and IF the
teacher backs off then I will release them from detention. The slip still
goes into my records however.
Teachers know that if they send the student to the office they give up the
decision-making authority with regard to that situation and that student.
On another note, roughly half the time teachers try to get to me before
I talk with a student in order to let the student off the hook. Sometimes
it's mildly annoying to be called unsupportive or inconsistent when dealing
with these kinds of situations.
While it's good to have policies and guidelines, I'm not sure it's always
good to insist on consistency when it comes to adolescents and sometimes
educators.
How does your school handle a bomb threat? When the students are evacuated
are they "lied to" over the intercom or told that there has been
a bomb threat written in the....room and please follow these directions?
So far we haven't had to deal with this. The students know that any
time missed due to bomb threats will be made up. We've had some office drills
with the secretarial staff. We also had a drill with the whole staff on
a workshop day. We used the code word and I had the teachers go through
the motions as if there were an armed intruder in the building.
During the time they were locked down, I had them log onto our email system
and write down their thoughts, concerns, and observations. It worked well.
Without exception they all expressed a heightened apprehension, even though
they knew it was a drill. We had a police officer check every door. It was
eerie to hear doors being rattled in the empty, silent halls.
Are you teachers questioned by the asst. principal for the reason you
sent a student to the office and is this student called to the principal's
office with you (teacher) so both sides can be presented?
I generally do not question teachers who send kids down for routine
distractions. For an altercation, which may result in something, more than
a detention I will question a teacher for details. If there is disagreement
I have interviewed teachers, students, and sometimes parents. Depending
on the situation I will do it separately or together. If there is a situation
involving anything more than words and a shove or two, I call in the school
liaison officer as well.
Hope that helps. Welcome to MiddleWeb list, Trish!
-Chris
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Lori shared her experience.
Fighting gets an in-school suspension-fooling around (play fighting
or not) for the first offense then they are suspended for 3 days for the
second offense and the consequences get worse after that.
We are each told individually for a bomb threat. Two years ago we had 21
from February to May. We have to evacuate for each one and the building
has to be searched, no matter what. The students are told by whichever teacher
they have and the procedures are followed. Problems during the evacuation
usually result in suspensions because when the students know they will have
a serious consequence then they will do their best to avoid the consequence.
Concerning discipline, I have to fill out a form and it is left at that.
IF there are questions it is handled well after the student is given the
punishment for the offense. I can also assign after-school detention or
lunch detention without office approval. If the student is on step three;
they get detention no matter what the offense, defiant, destructive or disruptive.
If it is something like a 3rd tardy, or a third minor disruption in my class,
(minor might be the third time I have to get on a student for being out
of the seat when I am giving instructions-not third in the same day) I mark
the behavior sheet and whatever step the student is on they get that consequence.
Step 1: is a behavior plan signed by the student, their parent and myself
Step 2: is a phone call home, I can make it or I can have the student make
it,
Step 3: is after school detention and
Step 4: is an office referral and for every offense after 3 the student
goes to the office no matter what.
-Lori
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Mary Anne explained how various procedures are followed at her school.
One of the nice things about this list serve is that everyone is always
willing to help!
To answer your questions--
In my school, we discourage any type of fighting. If students are caught
the student is sent to in-school suspension. There is never a question.
Teachers are given a code for bomb threats, although by this time of the
year the kids are aware that "three bells" is the code for a bomb
threat. We get them about once a month. The entire building is evacuated.
Support personnel search the building and lockers then the kids return.
It takes about 45 minutes.
Teachers are assigned two duty stations every day. Mine are before school
in the patio area and seventh grade lunch. I do my duty because I think
it is important for the kids to see us in different situations and lunch
is fun!
Many of my coworkers don't do their duty schedules. They don't feel it is
important. It makes it more difficult on the rest of us.
-Mary Anne
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Naomi addressed staff turnover and discipline issues.
The new administrators have to find their way and the teachers who have
remained have to adjust. I think it is important to let the new administration
know that you welcome them and would like to support them (even if in your
heart you are wary.) See if they can set up some informal discussions.
It is not clear from your description why the new administration is there
and why the 15+ left. In the school I was just pushed out of 40+ teachers
left (staff of almost 100) and 2 new ones have already quit this year. Every
week I have my old teachers calling upset. That administration is disorganized
and does not want to work with them.
I love the fact that listserve members always have so many strategies for
dealing with kids.
As the Assistant Principal who students get sent to, I always try to support
the teacher. I do make it clear that there is no fighting, no play fighting.
We suspended students for one fight this year. For the other fight, I made
a determination that I would work with both boys...get them beyond the anger,
making clear that the fight was totally inappropriate. In this particular
case, however, I felt that the suspensions would lead to further anger and
a division of our 7th grade boys into a long-term problem. So far it is
a week and all is well.
I do tell the teachers that when they send me a student, I will use my discretion
about if and when to return the student to class. I ask them please to accept
the student when I return with them.
It is hard for an AP to make good decisions if they do not have total information.
So a brief note (or check-off as someone suggested) would be helpful. We
always have the student write about the incident and what rule they broke
and what they could have done differently. This is kept in a student's folder.
I think the teacher who is upset should talk privately to the AP. There
is a possible miscommunication or difference in philosophy. Either would
be worth understanding. Maybe that could be a good segue to a meeting and
the AP's views.
-Naomi
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Leanne provided her perspective.
1. When a teacher sends a student to the office for fighting what is the
punishment?
For the most part, for a student's first offense, he/she is put into
in school suspension for two days.
2. How does your school handle a bomb threat? When the students are
evacuated are they "lied to" over the intercom or told that there
has been a bomb threat written in the....room and please follow these directions?
We haven't had a bomb threat in 5 years--since the high school moved
out of our building. I can't recall if the students were told it was a bomb
threat or not, but they were all assembled in the gym while the police and
dogs checked out the building. There were several parents that were concerned
about the kids still being in the school, but it was the middle of the winter.
3. Are your teachers questioned by the asst. principal for the reason
you sent a student to the office and is this student called to the principal's
office with you (teacher) so both sides can be presented?
We have discipline referral forms right in our rooms that we are supposed
to fill out ASAP after sending a student to the office. This is usually
all that is needed by our principal but there are times he will ask a teacher
to come down to the office too. I have found that at least for my 8th grade
team, we have very few students that we have to send to the office since
we began teaming---I don't think I've sent anyone to the office in three
years.
-LeeAnn
----------------------------------------------------
Sharon responded to Trish's questions.
I'm a little late reading e-mail so you may have gotten responses by
now. My response is, "You're kidding, right?" You've got real
administrative problems in your building. Fighting gets a one to three day
suspension in my school. Of course, it is done on a case by case basis.
Teachers should not have to figure out if kids are fooling or not. My principal
supports the staff publicly however may have words (with us) privately.
When we receive a bomb threat, the school is evacuated, the building checked,
and the students file back in through a metal detector brought in by the
district. (I'm not sure of the purpose for this but...) Students are told
nothing about the threat's origin. If we have not figured out who made the
threat (and we have been able to trace it a couple of times) we may ask
students to anonymously report info.
-Sharon
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Trish expressed her gratitude for the many responses she received and
threw out several more questions.
I want to thank all of you who responded to my question on duties and
policies. I thought of three more questions that I would like to ask. We
will be having a staff meeting sometime this week and I would like to be
prepared with solutions to some problems.
1. Where do students go after school and before sports?
Now, we have to hold the students in two cafeterias and part of the gym
with one teacher per each room. Being in control of 75+ middle school students
per teacher AFTER SCHOOL makes it difficult for the teacher and students.
We were told that the students could not be dismissed to come back for game
or practice, as they are still our responsibility. I don't know if this
is a school rule or school law.
2. Do you have office detentions and who is in charge of them daily?
We have a teacher assigned this duty, supervising a group of students who
were assigned office detention for a variety of infractions.
3. Do you have a late bus and does a teacher have late bus duty?
The problem here is that even though there may not be any office detention
students that day, the assigned teacher has to stay and put late bus students
on the bus. The late bus students are those students teachers hold back
for extra help etc. Our school day runs from 7:10 to 1:50. Late bus arrives
between 3:00-3:10. You can probably understand the frustration.
I have two comments for two of the replies I received from the other email
I sent.
I want to thank Carol for her response to these questions and Chris Toy.
The teachers left because of sheer frustration, receiving letters of reprimand
(some weekly) and they just couldn't take the heat. When this happens, my
hair bristles and you better watch out. The unfortunate thing is that some
teachers even took early retirement just to get out and this severely affected
the amount of money in their retirement. I could go on and on for venting
purposes.
I do thank you for allowing me to do that!
-Trish
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Leanne responded to Trishs' new set of questions.
Where do students go after school and before sports?
We have a fairly small school--app. 500 students 5-8, but only 7th and
8th graders participate in organized sports. Our sports teams are not that
large, probably 14-20 at the most and they are their coaches' responsibility.
Teachers in our building are free to leave for the day 10 minutes after
the buses, which come at 2:45.
Do you have office detentions and who is in charge of them daily?
In our building, teams take care of their own after school detentions.
On my team we hold them on Wednesdays and we teachers volunteer to do it.
Some teachers never want to, or have coaching responsibilities and can't.
But we get comp. time for covering them, so finding someone to do it hasn't
been a problem, and we can often work something out with teachers from other
teams to send our kids to their detentions as well.
Do you have a late bus and does a teacher have late bus duty?
We do have several buses that come back to the building. It is complicated,
but let me try to explain. Our MS and HS are next to each other, but the
elementary schools are each about five miles away, one to the north and
one to the south. For some reason, some buses go to the elementary schools
and then come back to the MS/HS and some of the elementary students then
have to switch buses. So MS and HS students could get on if they missed
the first time (they are back in about 20 minutes). But we require that
our students get on the bus the first time. If they miss it, most bus drivers
require them to have a note before they let them get on the second time.
They have to wait in the loading area if they are getting on the second
bus. The few times we have had problems, we have required those students
to sit in the office to wait.
-LeeAnn
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan explained how her administration requires teachers to follow a preset
process of discipline before sending students to the office.
We use a disciplinary referral form. Our principal made it clear to
us from the beginning that if we send a student to the office she was going
to be checking to see if we had "called the parent, moved the student,
etc." p; in other words......what had we already done to address
the problem.
That being said, she also let us know that if there was fighting, that was
HER problem and we were to send those students directly to her. I sent two
students to the office who were shoving each other and yelling and on the
brink of coming to blows. She questioned each student, came back to me later
and asked me again to explain exactly what had happened, and then made the
decision that they both could use a short OSSP.
As far as a bomb threat, or even an "Intruder in the Building"
threat, we used to try and come up with a code for the teachers to be alerted
of the danger - but found that many times we were so focused on what we
were doing in the classroom that it didn't register. For instance, one code
we tried was "Teachers there will be a faculty meeting today at 3:30."
(School is out at 2:30).
Usually you have those teachers who leave at 3:00 - and then those of us
who straggle out at 5 or 6! - so the thought was that it would alert us.
Many of us just wrote down - "meeting at 3:30" and kept right
on teaching (luckily it was just a drill).
We also made the decision that kids are so much brighter than we sometimes
gave them credit for and that the truth is always a better way to model
the skills we want them to have. So now if there is a crisis such as an
intruder in the building we just get an alert from the intercom saying "Teachers
- this is a lock-down situation. Please don't release any students until
further notice." We have had drills and the students handled it beautifully.
Hope this helps.
-Jan
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jan provided additional information concerning suspended students.
Our school has AISP (alternate in-school placement) and that is for
in-house suspensions. There is a full time teacher in the buildings in our
district that warrant it, but in our building we hire a sub to come in for
the weeks we have any students in in-school (it does not happen often. We
are a new school and only have 6th and 7th grades this year. We also have
an awesome administrator and staff who did a great job establishing student
expectations right off the bat!)
-Jan
----------------------------------------------------------
Lori provided MiddleWeb readers with information regarding the technicalities
surrounding in-school suspensions and student dismissal procedures.
After school the students who stay must be staying for an approved activity
and must have a way home already planned. If they do not they will be forced
to make arrangements after their activity as the buses are for those signed
up with the activities. Each teacher keeping students is expected to be
the one who puts those students on the bus as they are presumably still
there anyway as the activity just ended a few minutes prior to the bus time.
If it ends early the sponsoring teacher is responsible for supervision until
the students are on the bus.
In School Suspension students are in an isolation room in the main office
with a study carrel to themselves. We can have no more than 6 in there at
any one time and usually have no more than two. Usually after an altercation,
both are locked away in the same room for some quiet time. The entire office
staff is "responsible" for watching the detainees.
For after school detentions, teachers volunteer (well ahead of time) to
spend one day after school monitoring the detention (usually in their room).
We have to do it about twice a year, maybe three times if you are one of
the firsts to have to monitor it and we have a particularly bad year with
lots of students in trouble. Detention is held every Tuesday and Thursday
and if you do not have students so be it. That rarely happens, however.
-Lori
-------------------------------------------------
Chris responded to Trish's second set of questions.
Where do students go after school and before sports?
We don't have an issue with practices as they begin soon after school.
If there are late games the coaches are responsible for the athletes. BUT,
students may be dismissed to return if they have written permission from
their parents. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
Do you have office detentions and who is in charge of them daily?
We have office detentions by grade level. They happen at lunch/recess
for 50 minutes. Teachers do a rotation, which is determined by the teams.
It works well for a number of reasons. Lunch/recess is a social time and
kids really don't want to miss it, so they "feel the pain" a bit
more. It avoids the after school issue. Other teachers can access the students
for makeup work. It takes some students out of the interesting playground
mix.
Do you have a late bus and does a teacher have late bus duty?
We have a late bus- there is no late bus duty. In order to get onto
the late bus a student needs to have a late bus pass. The only way to get
a late bus pass is to be with a teacher until the late bus.
Glad I could provide you with a way to vent!
-Chris
----------------------------------
Margaret finished off this informative discussion.
To answer your questions:
1. We don't have any time between school and sports. Our students leave
at 3:10, and they go directly to practice.
2. We don't have office detentions. We have a chill-out room for disruptive
students during the day. They are sent there by the teacher, and remain
in chill out until the end of that period.
3. Our late buses are usually on campus by 3:30, and duty teachers stay
until then. If they are later than that, the principal watches the few students
who remain.
-Margaret
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