Part of the dilemma for school administrators who seek other strategies in responding to the misbehaving student is that they are often no more equipped than the classroom teacher to spontaneously craft an alternative to punishment.
Their training to be an administrator did not include a more abundant toolkit of responses for student misbehavior than when they were teachers. They are also in the midst of other tasks—just like with the teacher, the student’s behavior is an interruption. They may only have a marginal relationship with the student, or worse still, only know the student from their trips to the office.
A deeper dive into the background of the student and the current misbehavior is time-consuming. And the administrators certainly will need to share with the teachers their non punitive strategies and convince the teachers of their efficacy versus detention and suspensions, but there is no system in place to do all that.
Pulling out the hammer of punishment is at least quick and well-established, if nothing else, and if all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.
The Solution: Develop a Toolkit of Administrative Responses
After establishing the school’s boundaries for which behaviors must be managed by the teachers in the classroom and which belong to administration, the next step is to provide the administration with a diverse set of responses.
What must be made explicit to the school community is that no student will “get away” with bad behavior. All misbehaviors are addressed in ways that meet the students where they are and communicate with them in ways that are most likely to reduce the repetition of those behaviors.
When three students fail a test, we examine the causes of their failure, and each will get an individualized response that supports them in doing better. The same is true when students fail to choose good behaviors because of their concerns, needs, and fears. Every student deserves a response that helps them learn to do better.
The responses must fall into the Three Rs of Discipline: Respectful, Reasonable, and Related.
Respectful: Just because a student has misbehaved, even significantly, does not mean they are now vulnerable to the adult power to shame, ridicule, and intimidate. In the moments when students know they have done poorly and they have been sent to the office for what they are sure will be punishment, our ability as adults to remain steadfast and respectful is one of the biggest lessons they will learn in how to deal with strong emotions. They will also implicitly learn that we want them to remain in our community.
Reasonable: In the office, all the power lies with the adults. We can assign any response we want within legal boundaries. In the absence of a well-prepared set of responses that are supported by the staff, an overly punitive response—such as multiple days of detention—gives the impression of firmness.
If we don’t know what else to do, we assign more of what we can do, even if we doubt it will work. What unreasonably harsh punishments don’t do is provide the student with better tools to handle their issues.
The message sent to the student may be to not get caught next time. In contrast, a reasonable punishment is like a good lesson plan: it is within the student’s capacity to understand and put it to good use.
Related: When a student kicks over a trash can in frustration, and the trash ends up all over the floor, have them clean up the trash. One mantra from the restorative discipline movement is to not focus as much on the rule that was broken as on the harm that must be repaired. So often, the harm that must be repaired is in the trust that was damaged.
Cleaning up the trash allows the student to make right what they harmed and, in that process, to be made whole again. An unrelated response, such as the loss of a field trip or the assigning of detention, does not pull the student back into the good graces of the community, but fixing the harm—cleaning up the trash—allows the student to experience our forgiveness.
Read more with our recent blog Leading with Heart: 5 Quick Strategies for Building a School Culture of Empathy & Responsibility.
MindShift podcast: How to Show Up Better for Tweens and Teens
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Yet another tool to add to your chest:
According to the episode description, guest David Yeager, behavioral science expert and author of the new book 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People shares “strategies adults can use to get into the best mindset for helping adolescents be their best selves.”
We can all use that kind of advice, right?
Resources
Part of this text was taken from Hacking School Discipline Together by Jeffrey Benson. Visit jeffreybenson.org to learn more about new solutions to restorative justice.
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