Reply to DCPS suspending students and not accounting for it, and now the ACLU is getting involved

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ron Brown high school forbids almost all suspensions and has a much better approach. Perhaps this is a strategy that should be adopted...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/05/dc-all-boys-high-school/102898672/[/quote]

I'm skeptical of ANY school that says that they don't suspend students. Especially, if they have some "new" better approach. Schools need consistency and follow through.  BTW, principals are afraid to perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline so they ignore disruptive students who need discipline and effective socio-emotional supports. How about investing in more school counselors? How about giving students more recess time? How about more field trips? [/quote]

Good grief- READ THE ARTICLE-- [b]counseling is essentially what they do instead of suspensions.[/b] [/quote]

I guess, I'll through in my two cents, I am a former DCPS school counselor. When an administrator or I suggested counseling, parents often fell into two categories: Absolutely refusing to acknowledging they have issues because it is seen as uncool or a "white people thing" to speak to a counselor about your problems and try to resolve them OR the second issue was that families has inter-generational issues and several layers of issues that could not be resolved by the school. Those families often needed a referral for a professional that had the time and exprience to del with that many layers. People need to realize that counseling professionals are expensive and the families DCPS often serves are poor and its likely their gov't sponsored insurance may not cover counseling services. [/quote]

I'll make it easier: 
"Key to Ron Brown’s success, staffers say, is an unusual approach to discipline and team-building, introduced to students before classes began last August, that all but prohibits out-of-school suspensions. So-called “restorative justice” offers victims the opportunity to confront classroom tormentors face-to-face.

If students get into a fight, for instance, they're not suspended, as in other D.C. schools. They must come together with others in their class, in a circle, and talk openly about how the conflict affected them. Even bystanders are expected to take part. Students name names and don’t hold back.

The school’s psychologist and one of its founders, Dr. Charles Curtis, said last August that the confrontational approach is actually protective: “We want to say their names now, while they are alive.”

He said the circle also allows students to confide in others about family difficulties — at least four students lost parents over the school year, and several lost other family members.

Ten months later, Curtis is more devoted to the technique than ever, saying the identity development of young black men is “marred with expectations of criminality, expectations of pathology, expectations of aggression and hyper-sexuality — and all kinds of other stuff that people impose on them.”

The school’s approach: smother students in affection and, if you ask the students, sometimes overwhelming attention.

Teachers and staff inquire about their families. They talk almost non-stop about the future, about planning and risk-taking and second chances. After school, they offer rides home and walk students to nearby bus and subway stops.

“You can see that they actually do care for you,” said Matthews, “they don’t just leave you out in the wind.” (He recalled that at his middle school, uniformed guards, not teachers, patrolled the bus stop.)

The restorative approach actually requires a bigger commitment to discipline than simply sending misbehaving students home to their parents for a few days, said founding principal Benjamin Williams. For one thing, there may be nobody home.

Most of the students, he said, “have really bought in to the idea that suspension is not a consequence for behavior, that they’re going to have to take ownership at some point.”[/quote]

So, it's a good alternative to suspension because someone wrote about it? A lot of these schools know how to put a positive spin mediocre ideas. People see buzzwords like restorative and get excited. I'll believe it when I see it and candidly talk to the students who attend the school. [/quote]

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