So a kid breaks the school rules by say, ditching class, and what do we do? Suspend them for 5 days.

Oh, that really teaches them.

Maybe back in the old days being suspended from school carried a stigma but for oh-so-many of my kids, when they get suspended, it’s like a vacation for them.

Sure, maybe they get in trouble at home. Perhaps their mother is angry at them or what-not… but what we’re inevitably doing is making a problem that much worse by keeping kids out of class.

I say, when a kid violates the rules and earns a suspension, what they should really earn is School Boot Camp.

That’s right… you have a major infraction, that means more time, not less at school working on your deficiencies of both character and academic ability… and you are going to be forced to contribute to both your own benefit and that of the campus at large.

Obviously, we are talking Saturday School here. (BTW, immediately we have a deterrent. Right now, being threatened with a 5 day vacation/suspension is not any kid of deterrent with teeth at all. But make a kid give up weekend hours and you’ll see a newfound respect for campus law.)

Instead of 5 days worth of suspension, I say we given them a month of Saturdays, from 8:00 – 3:00.

The “suspension time” would be divided up into two categories. Personal enrichment and campus beautification.

I’ll start with campus beautification. That’s a euphemism for grab a freakin’ broom, buster… you are going sweeping.

And wiping.

There’s gum to be scraped, graffiti to be removed, trash to be picked up and bathroom sinks to be polished.

You violate the rules of this community, you need to step up and improve the ambience of this community.

That’ll learn ya!

But there’s gotta be academic work, too. Clearly, there is often a link between low academic skills and behavior issues. How about if the suspended student’s learning profile was taken into consideration and if, for example, they showed a lack of proficiency with pre-Algebra skills, they were afforded the intervention needed to help them raise their mathematical abilities?

I know. Too sensible. Send ‘em home, let ‘em meander and pretend we all don’t ultimately pay for it later on once they are uneducated adults.

When you think about it, school suspension makes no sense.
A kid’s time could be used so much more productively to forge character as well as academic aptitude.
A month of Saturdays is a much better approach to trying to snap a misbehaving kid into shape.
I say SCHOOL BOOT CAMP!

I just got spit on. That’s right, spit on. By a student.

And no, they did not catch them.

See, this Saturday we are going to have a campus beautification day. Our school has been hit by a flood of graffiti as of late and the truth is, we need more than just the custodial staff to improve the campus environment.

So the administration or ASB or somebody came up with the idea of having a campus beautification day whereby we get the students, the staff, the parents, the community to come and paint and plant flowers and so on. Me, I am even planning to bring my 3 year old daughter down to help out.

So, in order to really “sell” the idea to my kids, I planned a whole lesson around this day. We wrote and chatted about graffiti, about why kids tag up campus, about the implications for those “good kids” who don’t want to be known for attending a “ghetto school” (their words, not mine) and so on.

And then, in order to bring a little more of the the lesson home, we took a walking tour, as a class, of campus.

Our school is an open-faced three story building designed by architects who absolutely had NO IDEA how to intelligently plan for an urban campus. There are nooks and crannies, blind corners and “hiding spots” everywhere. The school’s design plagues our school security personnel like mad.

Anyway, while standing in front of a “COMPITAS” piece of gang script — it must be a 15 foot piece of tagging in one of the central corridors of school — I was leading a thoughtful discussion with the students on the destruction we saw before us.

It was a fantastic lesson. 100% engagement from 100% of the kids in my class with plenty of vigorous debate as to the reasons for – and the implications of – what we saw in front of us.

That’s when a kid from either one or two stories above (I don’t know, I never saw him) spit on me. Right in the middle of my lesson.

And to boot, I was wearing a white shirt. Crisp, clean, bright. It’s ruined.

I can’t even begin to express how badly I feel/felt. Makes me want to quit. Literally, it makes me want to walk away.

I think everyone has a breaking point and the fact that I while I am out of class working to bring a lesson to life in a way that is unique, meaningful and important to a HUGE group of kids and… well, I get spit on by kids that are ditching, well… is that what teaching is today?

Is this the humiliation a person has to endure?

Is this some sort of symbolic event that I am too freakin’ stupid (or thick) to be able to read the tea leaves on?

Is this really what my job is?

You wanna know how the budget cuts impact our campus? We have less security which means we have more kids roaming free which means that we have less control over campus which means that teachers who actually do come to work and try and give their all to the kids get spit on.

Tough day. A day when I saw/see/feel my breaking point.

We all leave our jobs at some point. Retire. Move up. Move on. This is not the way I want to go out but at some point, enough is enough.

They are paying me 3% less money this year to do more work than last year. And next year they are about to offer me up to 12% less money to do even more work next year. But are those the things that break me? Well, they push… no doubt.

But I am 43 years old. Does retaining a bit of personal dignity not, at some point, matter?