Many school systems have a way to change student behavior. Oftentimes, the discipline students receive is either too little or too much. The school discipline system is supposed to teach kids who misbehave to learn from their actions and improve as a student. Suspension or detention allows students to stay home for a couple of days, come back again, and start causing another issue. It’s similar to putting them in time out; once they can move, it starts over again. 

How Can This Issue Be Solved:

I understand that these solutions will not work for everyone but they can help schools improve the overall student behavior. Keeping the classroom positive and fun is one of the good parts of school education, but there need to be some strict rules for the students to follow. 

Preventive Discipline: Teachers should explain the expectations and rules in their classroom, and the disciplinary actions if students do not follow them.

Supportive Discipline: It is common for classrooms to have students not follow rules. The next solution is to give warnings to the class and show students the right way of doing things.

Corrective Discipline: If a student has failed to follow the supportive discipline, the next solution to improve their behavior or actions is in school suspensions and detention.

Getting to know your students can help the way students view you as a teacher. Assuming a student is bad will only make them dislike you more. 

Have enough rules or class standards so that students become less stressed with them. These rules could be no phones out until you are done with work, keep the class volume at a medium, be respectful to one another, and talk to your teacher to let them know about late work and make a deadline.

Student Responses:

I am not the only person who thinks there needs to be an improvement in our school. Other students at Pentucket agree that there needs to be a few changes. Student responses will remain anonymous when they’ve given their answer. 

 “I feel like teachers and staff need to be more proactive, and maybe even a little bit more strict when it comes to students and their lack of disrespect.”

 “Locking the bathrooms does not prevent drug use, there is no point to breakout room classrooms in the hallways if we can’t use them because we are “out of the teacher’s sight.”

 “Penalties for being late to class are unfair because hallway traffic makes punctuality impossible, and guidance counselors should be used for guidance not handing out punishments for skipping.”

“I believe that there should be some sort of consequence for students who make the bus driver’s job much more difficult than it already is. Some potential solution I see that can resolve this is that the bus driver could call the kid’s legal guardians.” In addition to this thought, this interviewee added, “I believe that middle schoolers could be disciplined better for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, they always seem to crowd the halls, be annoying, get in my way, and do everything possible, knowingly or unknowingly, to annoy the high school students, teachers, and faculty.”

“I feel there is a severe lack of discipline at Pentucket. I know it’s difficult for staff to keep tabs on hundreds of kids, but in the past few years, I’ve seen my peers around me having less and less respect for not only teachers but other students as well.”

I understand schools are doing the best they can and should not get the entire blame, but to fix the problems, we need to come together and share our thoughts and opinions. Not all of the students will be affected by the changes but it will influence the discipline currently in place, and it will help strengthen standards and structure for students and teachers.