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Yes. One day for chewing gum in high school. I loved the punishment.
Suspended for chewing gum? Unbelievable. I can't remember if I chewed gum in high school, but I think they probably just would have told me to get rid of the gum, and if I persisted, they would have given me a detention. Suspension for that is crazy. Even a detention for chewing gum would be really lame.
Last edited by dazzleman; 11-18-2017 at 08:17 PM..
Suspended for chewing gum? Unbelievable. I can't remember if I chewed gum in high school, but I think they probably just would have told me to get rid of the gum, and if I persisted, they would have given me a detention. Suspension for that is crazy. Even a detention for chewing gum would be really lame.
Yes it is stupid. But I had teachers on my faculty who worried so much about this violation...even though half their colleagues chewed gum in school, as well. It was a constant battle, and my answer to them was always the same -- if you're going to worry about such trivial matters, then you control it in your classroom; it's not a matter to take to an administrator.
Yes it is stupid. But I had teachers on my faculty who worried so much about this violation...even though half their colleagues chewed gum in school, as well. It was a constant battle, and my answer to them was always the same -- if you're going to worry about such trivial matters, then you control it in your classroom; it's not a matter to take to an administrator.
You must have run a pretty orderly school if teachers were able to worry about gum as a major,issue. That can only happen in the absence of more serious disruptions, it would seem.
It would be interesting to hear your perspective on the effectiveness of suspension. It seems to me that it's more about the parents' reaction to it than the suspension itself. If the parents don't respond effectively, then it's just time off for the kid, and unless he/she really cares a lot about the academic consequences of missing school time, it seems more a reward than a punishment.
I know my parents would have made it a living hell for me if I had ever gotten suspended. But my school didn't really use suspension much. Their philosophy was that if you misbehave, you're going to spend more time at school, not less. But it was a private school and had the option to expel the kids who were really a problem.
I had a couple of overzealous teachers, who were both in full swing at the same time, in the middle of 11th grade. One was a history teacher who sort of flipped out at our class in the middle of the year. He gave me and some of the other guys detention over and over and over again for the slightest things. This went on for a bit over a month. Then I had another teacher who was a mid-year replacement who thought he needed to start out tough, so he did the same thing. Between the two of them, I got about a dozen detentions during that short period, more than I had gotten in total in the 2+ years of high school that I had up to that point.
I think the dean must have told them that they needed to back off since overuse of a punishment like that ruins its effectiveness and turns it into a joke. That's exactly what happened with me. During that period, I got used to serving detention after school and from that time forward, it never bothered me or acted as much of a deterrent, and I got into a lot more trouble after that (none of it serious) than I ever had before. I was a semi-regular in 9th period (our nickname for detention) right through the end of my senior year after being only a rare visitor in the first 2 years of high school.
Did you care if you got suspended? It seems that suspension wasn't much of a punishment if you didn't want to be in school that badly anyway. What were the consequences at home when you got suspended, if any?
I cared, but not enough to tolerate jackasses. I spent my teen years on a working farm, and I was running the farm by myself at the age of 15 when my stepfather got sick and had to go to the city for treatment. Honestly, the punishment for getting suspended was having enough daylight to get all of the work done before dinnertime - as opposed to my normal schedule of feeding from 4am-6am, going to school, working from 3pm-6pm, dinner, back to work until the light was gone, then homework, sleep, do it all over again. And never getting everything done that needed to be done.
Oddly enough, even with running the farm and getting the occasional suspension, I kept my grades in the A/B range. I wasn't a bad student, I just hadn't learned diplomacy yet. Then again, when I did have leisure time I only had two TV channels to choose from, so I read a lot. Most of the classics that my peers groaned about having to read, I had already been through multiple times.
I cared, but not enough to tolerate jackasses. I spent my teen years on a working farm, and I was running the farm by myself at the age of 15 when my stepfather got sick and had to go to the city for treatment. Honestly, the punishment for getting suspended was having enough daylight to get all of the work done before dinnertime - as opposed to my normal schedule of feeding from 4am-6am, going to school, working from 3pm-6pm, dinner, back to work until the light was gone, then homework, sleep, do it all over again. And never getting everything done that needed to be done.
Oddly enough, even with running the farm and getting the occasional suspension, I kept my grades in the A/B range. I wasn't a bad student, I just hadn't learned diplomacy yet. Then again, when I did have leisure time I only had two TV channels to choose from, so I read a lot. Most of the classics that my peers groaned about having to read, I had already been through multiple times.
You are proof that having responsibilities other than school can help school performance.
You must have run a pretty orderly school if teachers were able to worry about gum as a major,issue. That can only happen in the absence of more serious disruptions, it would seem.
It would be interesting to hear your perspective on the effectiveness of suspension. It seems to me that it's more about the parents' reaction to it than the suspension itself. If the parents don't respond effectively, then it's just time off for the kid, and unless he/she really cares a lot about the academic consequences of missing school time, it seems more a reward than a punishment.
I know my parents would have made it a living hell for me if I had ever gotten suspended. But my school didn't really use suspension much. Their philosophy was that if you misbehave, you're going to spend more time at school, not less. But it was a private school and had the option to expel the kids who were really a problem.
I had a couple of overzealous teachers, who were both in full swing at the same time, in the middle of 11th grade. One was a history teacher who sort of flipped out at our class in the middle of the year. He gave me and some of the other guys detention over and over and over again for the slightest things. This went on for a bit over a month. Then I had another teacher who was a mid-year replacement who thought he needed to start out tough, so he did the same thing. Between the two of them, I got about a dozen detentions during that short period, more than I had gotten in total in the 2+ years of high school that I had up to that point.
I think the dean must have told them that they needed to back off since overuse of a punishment like that ruins its effectiveness and turns it into a joke. That's exactly what happened with me. During that period, I got used to serving detention after school and from that time forward, it never bothered me or acted as much of a deterrent, and I got into a lot more trouble after that (none of it serious) than I ever had before. I was a semi-regular in 9th period (our nickname for detention) right through the end of my senior year after being only a rare visitor in the first 2 years of high school.
Yes. To be honest, we had a rather spoiled teaching staff. They were mostly really top notch in terms of teaching ability, but many had never taught in any place other than really good schools. I was glad that I had spent time in some schools that were not very good. I could give it a little perspective, which many of them could not. And yes, when you worry about stuff like gum chewing as a major offense, it means you've got it pretty good overall.
One of the most frequent things I would hear from parents when students would get suspended was, "You're just giving them a vacation." And my response was, "Whether it's a vacation or a real penalty depends on how you handle the suspension once you walk out of this office."
Yes. To be honest, we had a rather spoiled teaching staff. They were mostly really top notch in terms of teaching ability, but many had never taught in any place other than really good schools. I was glad that I had spent time in some schools that were not very good. I could give it a little perspective, which many of them could not. And yes, when you worry about stuff like gum chewing as a major offense, it means you've got it pretty good overall.
One of the most frequent things I would hear from parents when students would get suspended was, "You're just giving them a vacation." And my response was, "Whether it's a vacation or a real penalty depends on how you handle the suspension once you walk out of this office."
That's what I thought.
Did you have any staff that became overzealous with discipline, to the point where it was counterproductive?
Did you have any staff that became overzealous with discipline, to the point where it was counterproductive?
There was only one case where I felt it was truly counterproductive. Our faculty -- obsessed as they were with discipline -- wanted an honor code for cheating. So they worked on it for quite a while and finally came up with one that was reasonable and acceptable. It went into effect and a few weeks later we had our first case -- a boy whom the teacher said cheated on a test in class. The "hearing" was rather traumatic for the kid, although personally I didn't find the honor code that onerous -- if "convicted" you got a zero on the work, which was pretty much the standard anyway. The boy maintained that he was innocent, but the teacher insisted he saw him ask a girl sitting at the same table for an answer during the test. So he got his zero and it was over...except that it ruined the rest of middle school for him; he became a very bitter young man. Two years later when the faculty was discussing the honor code the teacher brought up that first case and said that she thought he was asking the girl sitting next to him for a tissue!!!!!!!!!!! I about blew up. The teacher maintained that talking during a test is automatically cheating, and I maintained that while it may be breaking a rule, it is not cheating. That cheating has a whole different context to it since you are impugning someone's character. By that time the boy was in high school, and I sent him a letter of apology on behalf of the school, the teacher never relented. There is a little twist to the story, but to discuss it here would be too "identifying".
I sort of blew up the electronics lab in the 11th grade. My school didn't take kindly to that and I got a three day suspension. But I was a hero amongst the other kids who thought "that was the coolest thing" they ever saw.
Details, please.
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