Drawing a line in the sand

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Home : 2003 : October : 26

Drawing a line in the sand
By Chicago Teacher

What I did when I had students steal or deface my property (coloring all over my hall pass which was hand-made for me by a friend), or if they stole from each other --- once I knew FOR SURE that the item wasn't misplaced
or accidentally taken --- was I basically just stopped my day until the item was returned or the student confessed. I would put on my most serious face, talk about honesty and tell them that I really just want the item back and that by returning it now (or admitting it) that would show they were taking responsibility and being honest and that any punishment would be lessened if we dealt

with it RIGHT NOW. And then I would wait. The longer we waited, the steeper the consequences would be, and sometimes we waited most of the day. In the meantime, the other students would try to raise their hand to give their opinion of who they thought it would be, but I would ask them to stay quiet unless they were the student who "did it". Only one time did this strategy not work. In that case, I had a pretty good sense of who the student was, so I worked on getting a confession from him individually after that day, but the entire class did have to do the punishments that came from not finding out RIGHT NOW. Those included staying in from recess, doing their classwork as homework, no talking during lunch (I ate with them), writing a paper about stealing and responsibility, etc.
If a student did confess, I would talk to the other kids about forgiveness and the good things about admitting doing something wrong, but I would also punish the student according to the situation and how long it took. They also had to apologize to the class.
This worked well for me, in the setting I was in and with my students. Maybe it would work for you too. Good luck!