Erica Jacobs: Disciplining Students: ACCKK!

My favorite commentary on discipline in the classroom is a cartoon by Sandra Boynton titled “The little joys of teaching are without number.” The wise owl at the teacher’s desk is looking out, with a resigned Jack-Benny-like expression, as students sleep, dance on the desktops, and talk to friends in the desks behind them. Touche´.
 
My favorite personal classroom anecdote dates back decades to my first year of teaching. Martin, a frisky 9^th grader, took advantage of my five minutes in the teachers’ lounge between classes to hang thirty chairs from the ceiling, each carefully wedged between the metal frames holding up acoustical ceiling tiles. When I returned from the lounge, I had a decision: go ballistic, or burst out laughing. I chose the latter.
 
Yet discipline is necessary in the classroom—for other students as much as for misbehaving ones. Even in Fairfax County, near the top in the nation for family income and test scores, shenanigans are daily occurrences.
Therefore the goal should never be repression, contrary to the teacher stereotype with a ruler. A quiet classroom is often an uncreative one. I’m sure many of the wealthiest CEOs in the nation were once class clowns. Misbehavior often goes hand-in-hand with hyper-activity and intelligence.

 
I was scolded for talking to my neighbor in middle school, and my son was told by his second grade teacher, “you OWN the punishment corner!” But those teachers never indulged in prissy condemnation, and I’ve tried to incorporate that quality in my own classroom. A teacher who understands that disruptive behavior is not a personal attack, and not a reflection on the worth of that student, is one who has a chance of changing that behavior.
 
No school is without disciplinary issues. In my four years at the nation’s top high school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, I observed students who cut class, and arranged with students from other classes to meet in the hall to exchange answers on homework due later in the day.
 
The cleverest and cruelest infraction there involved a teacher who was often oblivious to others. In the few years she taught at TJ, students routinely invented a class member to confuse her. They would hand in homework by the phantom student, have that student “take” tests, and revel in her reaction when he didn’t show up on the roll. That ridicule was mean-spirited and very unfunny. (On the other hand, the teacher should never have been teaching in the first place.)    
 
Misbehavior often takes place at someone else’s expense, and that’s why it can’t continue unchecked. But teachers need to make a decision whether to embarrass students by calling them out publicly, or find a way to speak to them privately. Usually students will admit to their infractions if spoken to one-on-one in the hallway or at a teacher’s desk, and learning can then continue uninterrupted.
 
Discipline and a nurturing classroom don’t mix easily. Yet, like doctors, teachers must vow to “do no harm.” Usually that means acquiring a delicate touch with discipline—a technique that allows students to save face even while they recognize their infractions long enough to make a change. A sense of humor helps, too.
 
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. Email her at [email protected].