Re: How does your school handle detention?

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Our detentions are once a week, after school for 30 minutes.
Students who are in sports do not get to play that week if
they receive a detention or a suspension. If a student
receives 3 detentions and then get another they get a
suspension. Detentions should affect the students' conduct
grades. If they get less than a C in behavior, I believe
they get kicked off our sport teams, and a C in conduct will
knock them off the honor rolls. Our coaches are very strict
about good behavior and grades during school time.

Two teachers volunteer for detention duty at the planning
meeting previous to the school year. One from the lower
grades and one from middle school. I believe that they are
relieved from morning duties if they volunteer. The middle
school teacher takes the lower grades and the primary or
intermediate teacher takes the upper grades.

Lunch detention doesn't work unless they have to pick up trash
or do something disagreeable as mentioned in a previous
example. In another school I was at, it become a real
breakfast club sort of thing. Pretty soon, nearly the whole
middle school had lunch detention. They didn't mind since
all their friends were there too. They didn't behave in
there either.

Students are either to sit straight up with their hands folded
or they have to write lines. If they misbehave during
detention - they get another one. The parents are given at
least one day notice of the detention. After-school detentions
work pretty well if the child is in sports or other
extra-curricular activities, or if the parent has to make two
trips because there are other siblings to pick up or if they
have to stay and wait for them. The inconvenience encourages
the parents to lean on the kids to behave. I believe kids who
go to the on-premises extended care miss out on snack and
playtime which happens at that time. For the kids who walk
home and are latchkey, or have no other siblings in the school
to be picked up, detentions have less impact, other than
conduct grade reductions. If the parents don't really care,
then the kids don't either. Eventually the kids and parents
who don't care are asked to leave the school if the problem
persists.

At our school, the two teachers who take on detention rather
enjoy it. They feel children need to behave and since they
don't mind being the enforcers the quality of supervision is
consistent. Rotation of detention duties is a bad idea when,
as mentioned in the previous example, some teachers are too
lax. The detention teachers luck out sometimes when there
aren't any detentions that week. So not having to do morning
duty and not having any detentions is a nice benefit. All our
teachers have to stay after school until 3:30, so the
detention teachers aren't really putting in extra time. If
there aren't two many detainees, they can still grade papers
as long as they keep their eyes on them.

On 9/15/10, curiositycat wrote:
> I teach in the middle school division of a K-12 independent
> school. Teachers rotate detention duty. One of our male
> science teachers does a great job being really stern with
> the kids and monitoring them while they pick up trash during
> lunch. Our more "cuddly" female Latin teacher has detention
> duty this semester, and she knows she can't pull off the
> stern, pick-up-trash system. She's wondering how other
> schools handle detention without it being too onerous for
> the teacher in charge. Is just sitting silently in a
> classroom during the lunch period enough of a deterrent?
>
> Thanks!
 

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