Notes from the Field
Submitted by, Frank Murphy, March 31, 2011
Many School District of Philadelphia employees were appalled recently when they read the comments of Mr. Benjamin Wright contained in part three of a six-part series on school violence being reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer. This particular article elaborated on several incidents in the last two years involving elementary school students assaulting teachers. Wright, who is Philadelphia’s Assistant Superintendent of Alternative Discipline, oversees student discipline in the school district.
According to the Inquirer report, Mr. Wright views violence in schools as being largely a result of teacher ineptitude. He believes that the poor responses of school staff to troubled students “inflame rather than defuse bad behavior” of students. To support this contention, Wright references the case of a pregnant teacher in Philadelphia who was punched in her stomach by one of her nine-year-old students last year.
“Pregnant teachers should know how to protect themselves. ….In this case, the teacher should have given the boy what he wanted at the time and then called for help. If I’m in a school, and I’m a teacher, and I’m pregnant, I make sure I don’t put myself in harm’s way, because kids are going to be kids”.
It is hard to believe that any rational individual would make this comment. To learn that this is the view of any professional educator is troubling. But to consider that this person is responsible for directing and supervising the student discipline process in one of our nation’s largest school districts, is downright frightening.
As a former school district principal, I am very familiar with the complex issues that surround student discipline. Of the many roles that I have played daily as a school leader (supervisor, instructional leader, facility manager, budget director), the one that unequivocally demanded most of my time was managing student behavior. And having acquired most of my skills and knowledge on this subject through first hand experience in a school site, I find Mr. Wright’s comments indicative of how little he understands about child development and appropriate student behavior.
Like other Pre-Kindergarten through eighth grade elementary schools in the city, Meade has a vast range of developmental differences among its children. Given the wide age span of 3 to 15 year olds, I learned early on that there was no one “right” way to deal with the disciplinary infractions of all children. Of course it goes without saying that generally, the best way to avert misbehavior is to provide a rich instructional environment that actively engages students in meaningful learning tasks. However, for some students even this cannot prevent them from acting out in school.
In my experience at Meade, the students who needed serious intervention in the disciplinary process fell generally into one of three groups. The largest group was comprised of students who had blundered their way into committing a serious infraction of the code of student conduct either through anger, foolishness or ignorance. In most cases they were involved in a fight with another student.
This kind of misbehavior was often easiest to resolve, usually in either an in-school or out-of-school suspension. The seriousness of the infraction would determine which of these two consequences I would need to impose. The parents of these students were cooperative people who supported our efforts to maintain a safe school environment. In the cases of most of these students, this was a “once in a school career” occurrence. It might be fair to say in the words of Mr. Wright, that these were the kids who were “going to be kids”.
However, the two other more challenging groups of students with disciplinary problems were those who chronically misbehaved and/or were classified as emotionally disturbed. The students who fit into these categories were small in number but they created the majority of the most serious discipline referrals.
I would repeatedly see the parents of these two smaller groups of children. The parents of the chronic misbehavers were for the most part uncooperative. They blamed other children, the teachers and myself for their own children’s misdeeds. In their eyes, their children were never wrong. Serious infractions of the code of student conduct were regular events for these children.
The parents of children who suffered serious emotional problems often tried to support our efforts at the school. But in most cases, they didn’t know what to do in order to address the problems of their children. Helping them to find appropriate services was a difficult challenge.
The students who needed to be removed from their neighborhood school in order to receive intensive behavioral services or to ensure the safety of the other children in the school, almost all belonged to one of these two groups. The behavior that these children regularly exhibit can hardly be characterized, as kids acting like kids.
I am sure that the bulk of violent, serious incidents occurring annually in the school district are caused by this relatively small number of students. Dealing with these children (and in many cases their parents, who themselves are unable to successfully manage their children’s behavior) is the real challenge for school personnel in combating school violence. It is this issue that must be addressed if we are to maintain a safe school environment for every child. It will require that our leaders demonstrate both the commitment and the resources necessary to accomplish this task.
This level of commitment is not evident in the statements of Mr. Wright. His attempt to place on the backs of teachers, the blame for society’s failure to address the needs of some of our most troubled youth, is a shameless abdication of responsibility. We should expect better of the leadership of our school district.