Who Handles What? Staff Roles in Managing Student Behavior

In our recent blog post entitled “Use Restorative Justice to Create School Rules: 5 Steps to Get Started,” we cover some actionable steps to start on the road to creating a culture of accountability, collaboration, and empathy in our schools.

But before we can begin to follow the techniques of restorative justice, it’s quite obvious that we need a plan in place that determines what everyone’s role is and when a walk to the office is necessary.

According to longtime educator and consultant Jeffrey Benson in his book Hacking School Discipline Together, sometimes educators and other school staff don’t know when administrators should step in. The nearest adult is expected to act when a student misbehaves, but we all have questions:

• What action is advisable here and now?
• And how long will it take, amid all the other students who need my attention and oversight?
• What about those plans I had for this time?
• Whose job is it to deal with this student now?
• What’s the best way to help this student do better next time?
• Will visiting the principal make things better or worse in the long run?

Too often, we don’t have answers to those questions, even though these flashpoints of stress and tension happen thousands of times a year.

It’s Time to Establish Expectations

Point 1:

The first step in establishing a calmer and more predictable system of interventions is to create a list of behaviors that demand an administrative intervention. Most importantly, every adult in the school needs to know the list. This provides clarity that greatly eliminates uncertainty about whether you are the staff person who must handle a specific situation or if it belongs to the work of another member of the staff, making all these moments far less stressful.

Point 2:

Teachers should know for sure that when they send a student to the office or call for an administrator to come for a student, they will be absolutely supported for doing so.

Point 3:

The administrators need to know that when a staff member refers a student to them, there is no question that they need to intervene.

Point 4:

Of course, students will misbehave at times in completely unpredictable ways, and the adults who are with the students will need to make spontaneous decisions about what to do and who to call, if anyone. Who can predict everything our students will do as they try to manage their frustrations with limited coping strategies? But these situations should be the exception, not a daily test of patience and competence.

Here’s a sample list of student behaviors that require an administrative response:

• Harming themselves or others
• Fighting or other verbally or physically threatening behavior
• Using racist, sexually explicit, or hurtful language, or repeated teasing
• Swearing at somebody
• Vaping, weapons, drugs, alcohol
• Destroying property
• Unreasonable class disruptions
• Skipping class
• Cheating and plagiarism
• Theft
• Major technology infraction
• Ignoring multiple staff expectations to stop behaviors

Ok, So How Do We Start?