This article caught my eye on my Enterprise RSS feed. It is mostly about Middleboro teachers getting laid off, which unfortuneately is everywhere and was almost me until they decided not to cut so much! However it was the last paragraph that caught my eye. We need something better at EBHS. We have suspension, aka a day off, or a Saturday detention where they sit and be miserable. You know what happens if they don't come to Saturday detention - they get a suspension!! I like this in school idea, but I can here admins now saying they have no money for someone to run it. Does anyone have ideas from their schools that work??
In other business, the School Committee was told the “Saturday school” at the high school is being phased out and by fall will be replaced with an “alternative classroom environment.”
Vice Principal Paul Branagan said rather than punish students with detention on Saturday, an in-school program has been piloted, modeled after a successful program in place at Silver Lake Regional High School.
Branagan said students get three warnings then they are pulled out of class and separated for a daylong session in the alternative classroom. Branagan said the classroom will be limited to five to seven students with one teacher and will focus on academics.
Full article: http://www.enterprisenews.com/news/x1602635073/Middleboro-to-lay-off-30-teachers
The school I work at now talked about Sat detention, but never really got the money approval. We do now have in-school suspension. How it works is that once the problem gets severe enough the student is given an in-school suspension. Teachers are assigned the duty to cover during one of their free periods
ReplyDelete( most teachers at our school get 2 free periods of a day) This is where we have problems; some teachers are more lenient than others. Since there is no consistency the issue on having an in school suspension has not been a deterrent.
My previous school had an in school suspension room with the same teacher every day. That was great. Kids did not want to sit in there and do assigned work all day. The teacher was great, he was respectful and firm. I would love to see this at our school but as you said funding is the issue.