A Different Approach to Discipline
A Different Approach to Discipline
Ever since the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania released their analysis on suspensions and expulsions on August 18th, there have been several articles writing about the topic from a variety of perspectives. As a school administrator I've cringed most at articles that suggest that what is implied in the report as well as in President Obama's reforms initiatives for school discipline is that students of color not be held accountable for their misbehavior. That is not what I walk away with from the report or the initiatives. Instead, I hear the call for the adults to have different approaches to school discipline because traditional approaches are leading to the disproportionality that has been documented. I find it concerning that there are 84 districts in our southern states in which 100% of students suspended or expelled were Black. That statistic requires further examination of the practices within those districts. I don't know that any of them serve a population that is 100% Black which would be the only way that I could reconcile the 100% Black suspension or expulsion record but only to a degree.
In my first year as an urban K-8 principal I held seventeen expulsion hearings. The offenses ranged from being in possession of a five inch serrated blade knife to possession of over $1,000 of marijuana (street value) to drinking in the bathroom. The school was a mess and then some. There are many factors that contributed to this environment and I had to change the environment because student safety was most definitely a concern. Over the course of five years as the principal in the school I significantly reduced the number of expulsion hearings and suspension but it wasn't by turning a blind eye to misbehavior, it was by shifting the culture and the adult behavior.
One of the first adult behaviors that I addressed was what is being called race based discipline. Who gets referred to the office is influenced by race, of the teacher and of the student. The story I share most often is of getting a Kindergarten teacher to realize the impact of race in her actions and inactions regarding behavior. The teacher came to talk to me with much angst about one of her Black male students whom I will call James (not his real name obviously). James was dangerous on the playground she told me. He play fights, he hits, he chases the girls and makes them cry. She had tried everything from time outs to working with the parent but was now at her wits end with this child. I promised to go observe him at recess and then meet with her again to discuss interventions and next steps.
I observed James at recess and he did engage in all the behavior the teacher had told me but I also saw what led to his behavior. While observing James I noticed Aiden (not his real name) and Susie (not her real name) played a role in his behavior. Aiden was the one who initiated the play fighting through imaginary swords. His friends would then join him in outnumbering James which then led him to hit to defend himself from too many swords. Susie often taunted James until he ran after her to get her to stop. All her little friends joined in the running, squealing and tattling that James wanted to hit Susie who would then cry and proclaim she didn't know why. I was ready to speak to the teacher.
At our meeting I asked the teacher what she felt needed to happen for James at this point. Without hesitation she stated that James needed to be placed on a strict behavior plan that perhaps included isolating him at recess. She also thought that James should have a Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) conducted by the school psychologist. In fact, she had already started the referral paperwork which she could have to me by the end of the day for my signature. My response to her was that I also wanted a behavior plan and an FBA for Aiden which absolutely shocked her. She said Aiden wasn't dangerous or of concern at all. When I mentioned the play fighting she smiled and told me that Aiden was quirky that way. He was always pretending to engage in Star Wars like play because he was into that geeky, nerdy stuff but he meant no harm. Language for Black boy: dangerous; language for White boy: quirky, geeky, nerdy, imaginative. Outcome for Black boy: Special Education referral; outcome for White boy: none. Yet both engaged in identical behavior.
I then addressed how Susie taunted and instigated James's interaction with the little girls. Again the teacher had nothing but glowing things to say about Susie being a model student who was super intelligent. She even told me that once Susie told her that James had threatened to kill her. When I asked her why she hadn't reported this the teacher stammered about how she investigated it the incident and it turned out that Susie only thought he said it but he really didn't. So why bring it up if it really didn't happen? To prove that James was dangerous? There was a lot of work that had to be done with this adult. There was also work that had to be done with all three children around appropriate play on the playground. However, James didn't need a behavior plan or an FBA or a suspension. He and his peers needed to be retaught the rules of engaging in play during recess. That was what the teacher had to do with her entire class as a next step.
There were also the referrals for insubordination or open defiance. X student (yes, a student of color) is being openly defiant by refusing to stop tapping his pencil even though he has been asked several times. The teacher took time out of instruction to write this referral and send the student to see me in the office. I always asked students, "why are you here?" to which they often replied, "I don't know." The second question, "what did you do?" may also be answered that way or with a firm, "nothing." This openly defiant pencil tapper explained he didn't even know he was tapping the pencil or why this was the only teacher flipping out about it. Dig a little deeper to find out that the behavior was a self soothing behavior which turned out to be the case for the openly defiant male of color who kept titling his chair. Neither behavior should have resulted in an office referral which led to the students missing instruction.
Receiving referrals like this did result in a discussion about self soothing behaviors and how we all do it, even adults in staff meetings. Trust me, teachers were not hanging on my every word. Some of them were even texting or on Facebook during staff meeting but would crucify their students for such an infraction. We talked about how whole schools are using exercise balls over hard plastic chairs because it helps students focus. One teacher shared that she put velcro under the table tops so that students could rub it as a way to self sooth. She didn't have any pencil tapping happening in her classroom. Another teacher talked about tension bands that were wrapped around the legs of the chairs in her room. Helped the squirmy little buggers to engage in learning while also getting some of the pent up energy out.
What about the student who just gets up while instruction is going on to wander around the room? Well, is he/she disrupting instruction? Is he/she a danger to themselves or others? If not, dig deeper. Does this child need to get up to help him/her attend better? What is the overall impact of this behavior to the instructional environment and to the ability for others to learn? Doing this work was not easy and it had to be done over a period of multiple school years.
Work also has to be done with the student body. In year three of my principalship I started telling students that I saw that I was most disappointed that they had chosen to engage in behavior that disrupted their learning as well as the learning of others. We talked about why learning was important, how they would feel if someone stopped them from learning when they really wanted to, what education meant for them and how they could advocate for themselves without disrupting learning. There were students for whom this didn't work but it work for most of them. Reminding them that the 15 minutes they had to spend waiting then listening to me lecture them were 15 minutes of instruction they missed. I had some deep, honest conversations with students who were academically behind their peers about how they were using behavior to mask that they didn't understand what was happening in the classroom. Being "bad" was better than being "dumb".
I will agree that allowing students of color to engage in behavior that isn't pro-social is not the way to address disproportionality in disciplinary data. All students need to learn to sit still, raise their hands, wait their turns, etc. They will have to do this beyond the school setting. What is needed is work with the adults while simultaneously working with the student body. There was quite a bit of adaptive work that we engaged in over the course of several years to change the school culture as well as a variety of existing strategies that we adopted including restorative justice. As we move forward with this dialogue about reforming disciplinary practice in K-12 school it is my hope that we remember to engage in adaptive leadership rather than focus solely on technical solutions.
