bad kids By cn

Normally, if a child hurts another child at our school, he would be suspended. If a child hit a teacher, the police would contacted andthe child would be suspended pending an expulsion hearing. This is in an elementary school. In the middle school, the police would be contacted, and the child would be taken away in handcuffs. We have actually had students taken away in handcuffs at our middle school (where our elementary kids will go).

Two years ago, there was a fifth grade boy in my class who threatened to bring a knife to school and slit my throat with it. Unfortunately for him (he couldn't just get away with it), another adult staff member witnessed him saying that to me, and she served as my witness when I referred him to the office. The boy went through the process I described above. Another student, a sixth grader, said she was going to punch me in the face. She was expelled for the remainder of the year and went through the same process as described above.

I was grateful that our principal acted on both of these problems in the way that he did. I would have been angry to have been threatened in that way by those two children and had nothing done about it.

Normally, if children are fighting, they are suspended in our school. Children who cause injury to others will also be suspended. As teachers, we are asked to provide behavior modification plans, seek out the parents for assistance, and use a visual classroom discipline plan for all children. Once we document that we are having problems of a severe nature, we can refer them to child study. I actually had to do this last year, and two months after the study process began, I finally got the child out of my room. She went to the class for the emotionally disturbed. Thank goodness!