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HABITUAL DISRUPTION
and

ITS CURE

Every school has standards of behavior which are able to endure, even when occasionally violated. However, there are times when it is incumbent to lay it on the line with both students and parents: students who are habitually disruptive, intimidating, name calling, threatening, bullying, unsafe, must choose alternative behavior immediately if they are to continue at your school.

At such moments it is essential that supervising staff act in a straightforward and calm manner. The following procedures are appropriate, and are in no way in conflict with other aspects of Positive Discipline.

• The supervising adult closest to the disruption should handle the incident. Sending children to the front office, while seemingly expedient, usually unloads the problem on a person who has no idea what has occurred. The general rule is: the adult who observes the behavior must deal with the behavior. The school disciplinarian should be employed only as a measure of final resort and council. As word gets around that a teacher "really means it," and can be trusted to follow through on his or her word, disruption will rapidly evaporate. Young people like to deal with adults they know they can trust.
  
• The child should be taken aside and his or her behavior described. The teacher should say, "This is what I saw," or "This is what I heard." "This behavior is not acceptable at our school and before you can continue in regular activities I will need to speak with either your father or mother. Please get one of them on the phone for me immediately." A cell phone is an excellent tool at such times since the call can be made immediately, from classroom, playground or bus.
  
• When speaking with the child do not ask "Why" questions. Children do not know the answer. Ask instead, "Tell me what happened immediately before the behavior I witnessed or heard about." In almost all cases the child will blame someone else for starting the activity. Make sure that all comments and observable behavior are written down.
  
• In difficult situations, where more than one child is involved, all the children will end up blaming everyone else. Few will accept responsibility. This is an excellent time to use the technique described as The Talking Stick. The adults role in this forum is to listen and to take notes.
  
• It is not the job of a school or school personnel to act as a judge and jury. You are not in a court of law. It is your job to communicate to the child that ongoing disruption, in any form, is not appropriate at your school. The child should not be allowed to continue with regular activities until the issue has been settled and the parent/guardian involved. The child can be escorted to the front office and told to sit until the issue can be resolved. The child must not be allowed in school the following day if the issue has not been settled. The disruption and behavior of individual children must not be allowed to disrupt school for an entire class or for other individual students.
  
• If teachers and students can not can not proceed because of a child's behavior, the child must not be allowed to continue at the school. School law usually supports that it is the parent's responsibility to provide for the education of their children, not the schools. Parents of children who are habitually disruptive must make other accommodations for their children.
  
• Explain to the child, and the parent, that the child must make a choice. The child must choose to follow the rules and standards of your school or he/she is going to have to find another school. Now, what is it going to be?
  
• Every school needs very clear rules that tell all students and teachers the behaviors that are required of them. This premise is discussed in detail in "Rules."

These comments are cursory, realizing full well (as a former school director) of the complexities of many situations. I understand how difficult to decipher school law can appear. I know that Special Education may have to get involved. But I also know that parents of children who habitually torment others and disrupt your school must make alternative plans. Your school can not, and shall not, allow a handful of disruptive children to ruin the academic lives of the rest of your students. Your school is not a court of law, a psychiatric ward, a jail. It is a place where children come to be safe and to receive instruction in the fundamental skills and behaviors. Children and parents who choose behavior that is disruptive to this purpose must make an immediate choice: live up to the rules and standards of our school, or leave. It does no one a favor to continue to drag the child along, hoping for a miracle, while other children are being adversely effected and sacrificed to a quasi-egalitarian pipe dream. Do not allow it to happen in your school.

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