Unfortunately, I have experienced too many times and similar actions were taken by administration or nothing at all. Many schools do not want to report anything that can be used to determine a “bad” school; some acts like homicide or drugs must be reported by law (especially if authorities have to be called in) but for other “minor” acts, it is easy to use In/Out of School Suspensions, which actually do nothing but give students “free time” and do not have to be reported.

Until we get some real ballsy administators instead of politically ambitious ones, teachers are going to be subjected to less and less power to improve their treatment and working conditions.

Maybe teachers should start suing students/parents/administrators for their actions and lack of enforcing the rules….?

Yeah, the buck definitely doesn’t stop at the office.

I’ve experienced my fair-share of adolescent outbursts. I’ve grown some gray hair over the years.

I try to handle the discipline in-house, and stay away from sending them to the office. Nothing worse than sending a kid out, only to have them triumphantly march back with a slap on the wrist. If the kid needs to spend some time ISS or OSS, I handle it directly with the VP after school. That way, *I* can negotiate the consequences. Most recently, I handled it this way when a ninth grader told me to suck him. The VP wanted to give the kid one day ISS. I negotiated a 3-day OSS, behavior contract, and conference. There’s only so much you can do, plus, the kid has to come back and learn — not just your subject, but from the whole experience, too. One day ISS really isn’t an appropriate consequence for the “f-you” incident.

I hope to think that the rest of the class won’t think that they can get away with it. Hopefully, the majority of your students know better. I bet you most of them do.

I think the combination of a poor locus of control, coupled with lots of foul language outside of school, leads to these tantrums. I’ve honed the art of being unflappable, and try to show them a “better way” of expressing themselves. *shrug* My pension’s vested this year. Maybe I’ll find something else to do. Something that doesn’t involve verbal abuse. It does get pretty tiring.

There is this initiative called “no child left behind”, a powerful political tool but a poor teacher’s aide. Administrators are forced to make their teachers tolerate increasingly undisciplined behavior, in order to keep their retention numbers high. Low drop-out rate = good school, right? High number of graduates = good school, right? Riiiiiiiggghht. Very little help there. I suppose the reality is that there will always be some people who are out of control, some who are on the edge(can go either way based on peer pressure), and some who are disciplined. You can’t reach everybody. Reach the ones you can.

At the school I teach at, they would not have even been suspended. I have been called a mother-f’ing-b**** and had the door slammed in my face without a suspension. Then again, I teach in the inner-city, so a lot of things fly here that don’t elsewhere. The longest we can suspend a kid without kicking them out of the school is 3 days. Profanity usually means time spent in in-house (like in-school suspension) writing the school creed many times.

OMG!!! wow… student cursing to a teacher should be an automatic 5 day out of school suspension and a hearing to be expelled out of school, that’s how my old school district dealt with it… if not the message sent to students is that we allow this to happen and its ok… wow…there should be NO tolerance for that…sorry to hear that 🙁

Yes actually I was cussing at the teacher for not letting me have my way

We suspend the kid for 5 days out of school and have a hearing before they can return. Happens again, they are likely gone.

that is absolutely terrible. i am a college instructor, and it happens all the time with adults ( yes, they curse the instructors, disrupt class and much more, and nothing is done to them ), so unfortunately, i am not shocked that it happens in k-12.

I think he should have certainly been suspended for more than a day!