Discipline

I think one of the toughest tasks in a Principal's day is dealing with discipline. The definition itself even sounds awful:

dis·ci·pline

noun

1. 1.

   the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.

Training people and using punishment? June usually brings a slight spike in retraining needs in our school. As many of you know, our school implemented PBIS just two years ago. At the beginning of this initiative, historical data had over 600 office referrals being handled by the office. This year, to date, we have hit 100. For me, this is still too many, but our RSE-TASC support person (she is amazing!) has reminded me that this kind of progress is remarkable. 

If you believe in old school discipline, you would likely not care for the way we approach it. In our school, we have identified behaviors that we believe to be teacher managed and those that we believe to be office managed. Teacher managed behaviors include documentation of behaviors with Minor Incident Referrals (MIRs). Here are some examples of these kind of behaviors:

Teacher Managed 

□ Language 

□ Lateness 

□ Unpreparedness 

□ Calling Out 

□ Put Down 

□ Throwing 

□ Refusing to Work 

□ Minor Dishonesty 

□ Touching 

□ Tone/Attitude 

□ Cheating 

□ Excessive talking 

□ Student received 3 

Minor Incidents

Teachers hold retraining sessions with students as first line of changing behavior. If a student receives 3 MIRs in the same marking period, those 3 MIRs become an office referral and it is assigned to me or our Dean of Discipline to address on our level. 

We have also identified other behaviors: 

Office Managed

□ Weapons 

□ Fighting or 

Aggressive/Physical Contact 

□ Chronic Minor Infractions 

□ Aggressive Language 

□ Threats 

□ Harassment/Bullying 

□ Truancy 

□ Tobacco 

□ Vandalism 

□ Alcohol 

□ Drugs/Paraphernalia 

□ Gambling 

□ Theft 

□ Electronic Devices 

□ Plagiarism 

□ Technology Violations 

□ Dress Code Violations 

□ Other 

□ Violent Incident 

When an incident comes to me, I probably spend way too much time on it. It likely would be easier and maybe more efficient -- on a short term basis -- to simply pull out the Code of Conduct, slide my eye across the table that lists infraction/possible consequences and then just assign it. But, I can't. I am fortunate to have a Dean that views discipline the way I do and our definition does not come close to the definition found in a dictionary online.

In our school and at this level, discipline is about conversations. It is about trying to understand where the student is coming from. It is also about helping the student to see where we are coming from as adults. We talk over and over with students that being a middle school student is about learning more about your self, figuring out mistakes, and doing better. We try very hard to help the student see the severity of whatever action and try to build in natural consequences where we can. We still assign a range of traditional consequences to students but not without the conversations and brainstorming sessions. We believe that students at the middle school level are neediest in social-emotional support and that some of the mistakes they make at this level are related to the biological development of students in this age range. 

While we have fewer office referrals than before, I bet we spend more time on them now. It takes time to process the incidents with students. Some might say we are too soft on discipline in our building. Others might say, we take too long. I simply do not agree with either statement. 

I think if you asked students we have seen this year, they would say they learned from their mistakes and still felt able to overcome them. I take solace in the knowing we have fewer repeat offenders visiting the office. In our school, we are trying to teach life lessons within a safe and supported environment.

We all make mistakes. In life, it's not about the mistake. It's about how you recover from it and what you learn about yourself. It's also about realizing, and this is especially true at the middle school level, that whatever mistakes you make -- they don't define who you are or who you will be.