Chatham County suspends about 17% of its student population at least once in a school year. In 06/07, about 6,700 kids were suspended from schools in Chatham County--or about 40 per day.
I let that number waft around my head for a minute and did a quick calculation--assuming our school system isn't all that much different than any others in the state and there are about 1.6 million public students in GA--all of the schools in the state are suspending about 1,500 kids EVERY SINGLE DAY across the state.
That's about 270,000 kids being suspended in a year--more than the entire population of Savannah.
But unlike other scholastic indicators like the SAT, ITBS, and graduating rates, we aren't that bad. The state of Indiana suspends about 1,700 kids per day. And that's a NORTHERN state with more than half a million less public school students.
8 comments:
We could lower that drastically by bringing back corporal punishment. Some of the things kids are suspended for are just plain stupid. And, many of the kids WANT those 2 or 3 days off. My sisters step kids (not in chatham) used to invent ways to get suspended, but it was all dumb stuff.. throwing paper on the bus, throwing a pencil in the classroom. I saw take em in the hallway and whoop their butts. I got paddled. And I can still recall each paddling in detail. Like the time I was "unlady like" and jumped a mud puddle with the boys, straight to the principals office for 5 licks. Damn that hurt. To this day I don't jump mud puddles. Or the time I was so hyper in class I was disrupting everyone for 3 classrooms. That paddling took place in front of the class at the blackboard. No ritalin required.
I got 3 licks in 7th grade for calling Dickie Betts an unkind derivative of his name.
I remember having to sign my own disciplinary form that I had indeed been paddled.
I remember being fairly quiet after that.
That's an astounding number of suspensions. Do you have any data regarding the types of offenses?
Discipline or lack thereof is what will eventually push me out of education.
I get a chair thrown at me and my referral is torn up in front of me. I am threatened and called a c... by a nine year old and my referral is ignored. I have a ten year old laying on my floor in the middle of class and he refuses to speak or get up. I call for an administrator. I'm told he'll be right down. We continue class and ignore him. Tired of being ignored he rolls around until he is under another student's desk. I check my email...the secretary has sent me a msg. that the Adm. is not busy--he is ignoring my call. Several more minutes have gone by so I call the Adm. again. Be right there is the reply. Ignored further the student postions himself where he is rocking the other student's desk. This time I take my cell phone and take several pictures of the boy on the floor and go to the phone. I told the Adm. if someone wasn't in my room in three minutes to remove the student I would take the rest of my students to the hallway for class, and I would publish the pictures on my blog. The Adm. was there in less than one minute.
Discipline strategies and procedures implemented in a proper manner work with 98% of students. It's the 2% that cause the major problems.
Re: corporal punishment....I agree that it works but it's very hard to find an Adm. who will use it these days. My system allows it if the parent signs a form. Even with the form, however, an educator's career can still suffer when a parent sues...the form doesn't keep a law suit from happening and the media splashes the arrest on the news but rarely files a follow up story showing a law suit was thrown out or went the educator's way. It's simply not worth throwing your career away for.
Paddling is against BOE policy in Chatham.
You are aware of the GA law that states a teacher can remove a child from the classroom, right?
Unless you are running kids out of you class wholesale, I don't understand your administrator's reluctance to help out. I mean I can, but it's more of a wrong person for the job situation than a policy.
One of the more recent policy changes in NYC has been to suspend children, but they are not allowed to stay home during those days. They must go to a district suspension center or another school for those days. They'll sit in a SAVE room, and be forced to do work--typically large amounts of reading, writing and math. It's cut down on suspensions drastically.
It is not unusual to hear of campuses where teachers are not supported by administration. Such a needless shame! We do know that often the problem is that the principal or assistant simply do not know what to do. (Go to www.disciplinematters.com)They often WANT to do right but feel paralyzed. It is sometimes just a lack of skills. Where do they learn these skills? They rarely receive any formal training in student behavior management. AND, then so often they do not develop tools that are effective (Consequences - so important that students always be held accountable). I suggest help from some people who go all over to help campus administration develop skills to become competent, confident professional discipline leaders - www.disciplinematters.com
My God can't you just teach thease children something? Paddling? - it's medieval. Suspending 17% of students? - it's rather pointless. What is going on in american education? I just don't understand. If you can't make your students respect you, you shouldn't be teaching.
Making students respect you sounds coercive, eh?
What would you suggest?
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