119 Suspensions

That's how many that we've had this year. With 170 days so far and 1600 students or so, I can't believe how low it is. We don't have a school "In-school suspension" or "after school detention" or "Saturday school". So there isn't much we can do to a kid if he doesn't belong in class for a day or two.

I asked my seniors to estimate how many suspensions they thought there were this year so far on a note card each. I wanted to see if their thinking was any different from my own. It wasn't. They ranged from 20 (the lowest) to 1200 (the highest). Most were concentrated in the 350 - 800 range....they were thinking about three a day. Only one out of the 34 of them guessed less than the actual number.


I should know better. I had a kid in my class shine a laser pen into the eye of a teacher across the hall at the beginning of the year. I took the laser pen and filled out a referral form. Nothing happens. A couple of months later he pulls a girl's pants down in class. I send a referral down...nothing happens. I also wrote him up for being a genuine pain the the butt one day because he refused to sit in his assigned seat. Outcome: nothing happens. (I've written four referrals this year - three were for this same kid).

I'm not saying that we need to be suspending kids left and right. But disruptive kids need to be taken out of classes, even if for a couple of days for the benefit of those that want to learn. And as disruptive as many kids can get, I find it strange that our assistant principals as a whole send less than one kid home per day.

Note: I have to give my seniors some credit - they really did think about the problem a bit. These are my "I need credits!" students, and they were asking questions such as the number of students in the school or how many days we've had, and even scribbled some arithmetic on their note cards before handing them to me. If I can remember, tomorrow I'm going to ask my freshman honors kids to answer the same question. I'm sure that they'll guess less than the seniors, but probably more than 119 on average.