OT - School Discipline Day

Yesterday marked the first time I have received an Incident Report for an altercation involving one of my kids. To make it a banner day, I got one for each of the boys.

Now, in both cases our kid was the victim, but the differences between the two reports reveals the inanity of trying to use a single administrative procedure in dealing with the acts of children.

The first report had to do with Gilby, who is in the first grade and is as sweet and sensitive as can be. He was playing with his friends at recess and the pocket on his sweatshirt got ripped. Normal stuff that happens with boys and physical play. I was greeted by the Chairperson of the school and Gilby's friends who apologized to me. Seems to be an somewhat over-the-top response and I shook both boy's hands and let them know that everything was fine and thanked them for their apologies. Gilby wasn't sad or mad and even told the boys that "my Dad can use a string and fix it" (Cheffo's gots teh skills!).

Complete administrative overreaction.

On the flip side, the report involving Kevin was the 17th such report involving violence for the offending student since March 2nd, when he was allowed to return to school after being expelled for similar behaviour.

17 incidents of violence in less than two months!

That boy wasn't made to apologize to me (which I expect would have been far more effective than the two days of recess that he has to give up) and there is no reasonable plan to remedy the situation going forward. The same old administrative routines haven't worked and, I would suggest, have likely contributed to his bad behaviour. Somebody is going to get seriously hurt.

Total administrative failure.

Maybe it is time to get this kid some help ... or his parents some help ... or at least keep him from wreaking havoc on the other kids.

Administrators need to learn that kids are not appliances and that the rubber-stamp-and-form approach is just silly -- the kids understand that -- why can't the adults ?