done and done

Can you even believe it? I'm done with my first semester of teaching! My grades are in, things are at the print shop for next semester, and I'm ready to leave!

We still have a 1/2 day tomorrow, for finals, but since I already made my flight plans before a crazy man decided to hold people hostage across the street from our school, I have to take the day off. Tisk!

To make a little extra money every now and then, I've signed up to be a detention monitor. At our school we have 3 kinds of detentions, a teacher detention wherein the student serves a detention in the teacher's classroom (I've given about 4 of these and typically have the kids clean my room and then they can leave). Next is a 1 hour referral where the kids sit in the cafeteria after school for 1 hour. Finally is a 3 hour detention which can either be served on a Wednesday or a Saturday.

I have never given anyone a referral (which requires them to sit in the cafeteria) and I don't think I ever will (never say never, right?). Through this experience of detention monitoring I've developed some pretty strong feelings toward it as a practice. I don't think it's effective AT ALL.

Many of the kids are in there because they were misbehaving for a Substitute, or they were tardy too many times, or they had a technology violation. The majority of the kids in detention have either ADD or ADHD, are not medicated, and can't control their impulses. Sitting in silence for 3 hours is nearly impossible for these kids. So then you punish them even more for being "bad" during detention.

One kid, Aaron, who has been in detention a few times since I've been monitoring is particularly problematic. He has ADHD (or at least I'm sure of it) and can't control himself. Yesterday he just so happened to be on crutches (he's broken his foot). I had to literally take the crutches away from him because he couldn't control himself. He told me, "Miss J! You can't take those, I need them!" To which I replied, "As far as I'm concerned, you aren't going to need them for the next 3 hours!" He wouldn't stop talking and couldn't settle down. I finally helped him with his letter of complaint that he had to write for my friend Trisha's class, but he was a nightmare.

I'm on our school's council where we discuss issues around the school that we feel need to be improved. Shelby and I both feel pretty strongly about the ineffectiveness of detentions and have been doing some research to find alternative programs. Let me tell you, NONE EXIST. Or at least that we can find. Certainly detentions are ineffective all over the country, so why hasn't someone started to develop something that actually does work?

These teen aged brains can't make the connection between what they have done wrong and serving the detention. Many times they serve the detention weeks, even months after the incident. I will assure you that these kids are NOT sitting in detention thinking, "Man, I shouldn't have skipped that class 3 weeks ago!" They're sitting in detention thinking about how stupid it is and hating ME for being here (when really I had nothing to do with them being there in the first place).

Alas, until something is presented that will change this, I will continue to be frustrated and kids will continue to be royal pains in the butt.

It's amazingly 12:15 and I'm outta here for the year (2007 that is!). I need to run home and do some massive laundry so that I can pack. (For as excited as I am to go home, one would have thought I would have been packed weeks ago. Rest assured that I wanted to pack weeks ago, but exercised some self control).

I'll see you Ohioans in 48 hours!