Today, two students were suspended for leaving campus and coming back with marijuana in their possession. The students left campus and went to an apartment complex across the main street that the high school is on. The owner of the apartment complex notified the school that the students were loitering in the area smoking. Toward the end of the day, the students cam e back to their last hour of the day, and at that time, the school detective and my mentor pulled them out of class and took them down to the office. The difficult part of the situation was that these two students were former athletes of my mentor. Either way, my mentor and the detective searched the students. They found one student with a small baggy of drugs, and the other had nearly a soft-ball sized amount. Both students were suspended for possession, but if there was evidence that they were distributing the substance to others at school, it would have warranted immediate recommendation for expulsion.
My mentor shared an interesting/frustrating discipline case today. Two female students got into an altercation, one receives special education services and the other does not. Originally, he was going to suspend both girls for 5 days, but when he coordinated the punishment he was going to give to both girls, he checked with the special ed. director. It turns out that the special ed. girl has confrontational behavior as a manifestation of her disability. Because of this, the girl could not be suspended, but the non special ed. girl was.
Of course, the laws protect this student, but the real problem came when the special ed. girl taunted the other girl about how she didn't get suspended. Once the non-special ed. girl's mom found out about this she was furious. My mentor couldn't explain to her why the other girl wasn't suspended because of privacy laws. He just had to apologize and take the chewing out. It seems that one of the key skills of an administrator is the ability to listen to upset people vent at you, all while not getting upset yourself. Staying positive and remembering how you would feel if it was your own child is the preferred strategy shared with me by my mentor and our head principal. My mentor had an issue with a staff member that was being somewhat difficult in providing extra materials to a student that was placed on homebound status because she had broken her leg. Traditionally at Grand Blanc, homebound is something that has been taken lightly by teachers in the past. Mostly due to the fact that teachers are asked to leave work in the office for students and then it is usually never seen again. However, in this case, the student contacted the teacher to try and get some supplemental information such as lecture notes, and the teacher replied saying she should "look in the book, it's self explanatory." My mentor received word from a counselor that this was going on, and then reached out via email for the teacher to provide the student with as much as possible so they can be successful while out of school. The teacher has yet to respond as this just happened yesterday and there was a snow day today. Needless to say, my mentor was frustrated with the teacher, and feels that they are being lazy.
This situation sparked a conversation between my mentor, another assistant principal, and myself. I was trying to play devil's advocate for the teacher due to the fact that we are constantly asked to provide work for homebound students. Additionally, some of the homebound teachers that are responsible for coordinating the pick up and drop off of work are not as devoted as they could be. My mentor and the other principal argued that the success of the program doesn't matter, the teacher still needs to provide whatever they can to the student. I totally agree that professionals need to be accountable, but I tried to describe what the viewpoint of the teacher would be (I have had extra work created for me by the homebound program, with no fruit coming from it). The perception (which becomes reality) of homebound students by teachers is that they are kept on the books to get the FTE money, but most of these students cannot or do not complete work that is given to them. I think the teacher originally told the student to just read the book and answer chapter questions because of the history of the program. I tried to suggest this to my mentor, in order for him to ease up his frustrations and speak to the teacher personally and let him know this student is different and that we are working to improve the program. My mentor said I'm an idealist, and that would cause me frustrations and stress in the future. I agree with him, but I just like to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to a situation that leads to a difficult conversation. Today at the end of school three girls got into a verbal shouting match in the hallway. The teacher that brought them in described the event as an altercations short of a fight claiming the girls were in her face as she tried to break it up. All three girls (two against one) were questioned by my mentor administrator Chris, and the student adviser Kevin. In hearing their stories it seems that both groups of girls had a falling out over a boy and emotions ran high in the hallway. In addition to teacher and student statements, school security camera footage was reviewed to verify that no battery took place. Because none of the girls touched one another, and the video didn't seem as if it would escalate any further, all girls were given a 2-Day in-school suspension due to hallway disruption. Had anyone fought it would have been a 3-Day out-of-school suspension or worse depending on the severity of the fight.
Today a girl hit a teachers car in parking lot after school. The student left without leaving a note. The only reason we become aware of this is because a parent in the parking lot witnessed the incident, got the plate number and called the school office. Once aware, we checked surveillance video, but the video was not detailed enough to prove the girl did it. We went to the teacher's classroom right away to notify her personally of what happened (she is a sweet lady who wasn't that upset when we told her it was just a small scratch). We decided together that the student would be called to the office the next day in order to determine the truth of the situation.
The next day the girl was called down and immediately confessed to what she had done. She said she was not sure what to do and needed to leave. Evidently, to avoid insurance rates rising, the girl's parents are going to pay to have the teacher's vehicle fixed out of pocket. This was a small event that required quite a bit of detective work. It seems like there are many instances like this in the life of a school administrator. Luckily, the girl admitted right away that she did it and there was no fight over who was responsible for the damage. Yesterday, my mentor was notified that a student wanted to talk to him. When he got her in the office, she told him that she was feeling like committing suicide. (Right now our school in in the middle of a suicide awareness campaign called "The Yellow Ribbon Program") The girl said that she wanted to hurt herself because she was being bullied. Of course, my mentor immediately started asking her more details and was able to get names of students that were doing it.
He called the two boys down and began questioning them about it. The two boys said that the same girl had been posting things on twitter about them, like saying they were gay. After hearing the boys side of the story he went back to the girl and asked her about this and she admitted to it. He then warned her not to make any contact with the boys (and had already said the same to the boys). He sent to girl to the counselors office to speak with them about the thoughts she has been having about hurting herself. Finally, my mentor called the mother of the girl to explain what had happened. The mother was very upset about the boys bullying her daughter (unfortunately, she didn't have as much concern for the fact that her daughter would think about taking her own life). It seems like all cases of student misconduct have two sides and no one is ever innocent of any wrong doing. Of course, that is not always true, there are students who are attacked for no reason other than being different, but in most cases students are not free of at least some guilt. Today I'm subbing the whole day for my administrative mentor. All administrator's are out of the building except for the dean of students and the athletic director. Administrator's are getting trained on the district's new evaluation tool, so they all need to be together to calibrate their observations. The other administrator sub has a master's in admin and has subbed frequently before. We had an interesting discipline referral to deal with that was leftover from the end of the day yesterday. A special education student was refusing to do classwork and became defiant with a teacher. The student was completing work for a class other than the one he was in. After the special ed teacher told him to put it away, he refused, and then she took it from him and RIPPED IT UP! I couldn't believe that a teacher would do this. She also stapled the ripped up work to the referral. The student handbook disciplinary recommendations state that student defiance yields one day of in-school suspension. The mother and student came in this morning to discuss what happened, but the teacher had not called home yet. The mother wanted to speak to the teacher, but we hadn't yet so we told her that she was in class and got the mother's phone number for the teacher to call. The student was given the day of ISS, and the mother was okay with this and was supportive of our decision. I am not aware, or privy to any disciplinary action that may happen to the teacher, but if I was an administrator here, I would write the teacher up for acting such a way toward a student. Even if the teacher is frustrated, tearing up a student's work is NEVER an option.
Today my mentor shared with me that he had to investigate an incident where a male student hit a female student. It seemed pretty cut and dry, right up until it came time to suspend the boy. His grandmother is an attorney and came into the school to question my mentors judgement. She claimed that the other students who witnessed the event were all friends of the girl and that her grandson was being wrongfully accused. She also questioned the validity of my mentors due diligence in the investigation of the truth.
Dealing with difficult parents, and in this case grandparents, is the most difficult part of being in education. It goes to the next level when you are an administrator, and you have to be called into question regarding the details of a student's punishment. What is the difference between a 3 and a 5 day suspension. You just want to tell the parent, "we wouldn't even being dealing with such details if your child would act right in the first place." These students and parents are our customers, and we must ensure they are learning. Good order and discipline are part of that. Lesson = Have your ducks in a row, so when a parent or guardian lawyers up, you're not caught off guard. This is the first blog post regarding my clinical practice experience as a high school administrator.
What a doozy it is! Bottom Line Up Front: After a week long covert investigation (I had no idea), our school administration found out a contracted security guard was viewing child and adult pornography via a thumb drive on a school computer. The announcement was made yesterday evening by our superintendent. (click HERE for the superintendent's message.) This is just insane! Especially considering that over the course of the day there were two other incidents in Mid-Michigan of criminal sexual conduct in schools. One in Mt. Morris where a male contracted janitor was having sex with a 16 y/o female (click HERE for story), and one in Bay City where a female support teacher was having sex with a male middle school student (click HERE for the story). My mentor had a ragged look to him earlier in the week and explained that he was dealing with some ridiculous issues, but couldn't share more. What a leadership challenge. At the end of the day, you are responsible for knowing what is going on in your building. Parents want their children to be in a safe environment. How do you prevent something like this beyond hiring screenings that didn't turn up any prior deviance? |