This teacher went too far.

It’s been an odd few weeks in teacher news. At the end of September, we covered the story of the teacher who banned saying “bless you” in his classroom. While his punishment of taking points away from students who uttered the phrase was unfair, the discipline was not physical.

But recent news of a teacher’s discipline of a junior high student crossed the line and was just, well, plain weird. In Texas, a teacher found a purely strange way to discipline her student for committing a hair code infraction.

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In Britain, many parents advocate harsher punishment in schools

Corporal punishment is not allowed in British classrooms (unlike in the U.S. where some schools still allow teachers to paddle children).

In a recent study, nearly half of British parents thought teachers ought to be allowed to cane or switch children who get too out of line. Seriously, nearly half. Forty-nine percent, to be exact. Perhaps unsurprisingly, only nineteen percent of students thought corporal punishment was a good idea.

It’s not an idea teachers support. Teachers unions want more support for teachers in classrooms, and clearer guidance about discipline, but they don’t want to hit kids.

I don’t know what British schools are like, but it’s hard to imagine a classroom situation that could be improved by empowering the teacher to hit the students.  Continue reading »

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It's not a hotel room, kids.

Remember being 14 and taking the school bus on a long field trip?  And how much fun it was to try to makeout with your boyfriend or girlfriend under a sweatshirt after dark?  I do.  I can remember quite vividly being reprimanded on more than one occasion for getting frisky on a field trip and having to be separated from whomever it was I was attempting to play tonsil hockey with.  So I get that teens have a hard time keeping their hands to themselves when an opportunity to grope each other arises.  But apparently things have changed since last I rode a yellow bus with the marching band, because not only did two Ohio students makeout on a recent field trip to visit nearby colleges, they made it all the way without anyone noticing.

Okay, let me rephrase that.  They made it all the way without anyone in charge noticing.  But apparently several students noticed their peers having sex, and one of them told her mother about it when she got home.  The student’s mother, Saundra Roundtree, then reported the incident to officials at Dayton View Academy, who punished Roundtree’s daughter for not reporting the incident while it was happening.

Um, I’m sorry, what? Continue reading »

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When kids misbehave or even just don’t follow through on their responsibilities, some sort of consequence needs to be administered.  Missing recess, staying after school, even being sent to the dreaded Principal’s Office — these are all common, accepted punishments for such crimes against humanity as talking back to a teacher, running in the halls, or not turning in an assignment.  At Willard Grade Center School in Ada, Oklahoma, a fifth- and sixth-grade only school, they’ve come up with a new and unusual punishment.  Kids are made to spend recess standing next to school building, facing the wall.

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From warnings all the way to expulsion, school teachers and administrators have many tools at their disposal when it comes to disciplining unruly students.   But as an employee at Palmer Elementary School in Denver has learned, none of these acceptable means of discipline involve duct tape. Continue reading »

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