And is there something in anything that I have said that leads you to believe that I advocate permitting disruptive behavior? This is what makes me crazy in these discussions. There are two options–kick the kid out or allow disruptive behavior. That is just silly.

BTW. Somebody left a Detroit paper in the break room this morning. Long article on how crime rules the streets in Detroit and how law enforcement is becoming less and less effective. Hard to think of a public school being completely invulnerable to the myriad influences.

Some parts of my neighborhood really DO Hallowe’en–decorations, costumes, all that. My block not so much–but I do like sitting out front with my bucket of goodies. This year the first callers approached down the block at dusk. I heard them coming. Their language was foul, they were large and I wasn’t expecting them to be trick or treaters. When they were almost to the house, one of them whipped a mask out of his bookbag and put it on. I said something to them, along the lines of, “oh, you are trick or treating–you better watch your language.” I also reminded them that there were lots of little kids and and they needed to watch how they talk. They left with their candy, saying “yes, ma’am.” Point is–they had good home training. Most of the low-income, minority kids in my neighborhood have learned at home a formality and respect for elders that exceeds that of my own home culture–or many more middle class kids. On my street, I am ALWAYS referred to as Ms. Margo. Because kids get in trouble for calling adults by their first name. Personally I am a first name person–and in most settings where I worked with kids this has been appropriate. But I have learned consistency with home culture in providing and accepting the Ms.

This doesn’t mean every parent is stellar–as I can also guarantee is the case in more middle class neighborhoods. But the fact that so few people see the home training and culture that is there is a problem.

I gather ours is one of only a few high school buildings doing PBS. I’m not on that particular committee, but we do have people in observing us all the time.

While there’s some overlap with IEP students (mostly those with ED), it isn’t about them at all.

Not a cure-all, but has been pretty effective in cutting hall misbehavior, fights, tardies, etc.

That’s not to say, Margo, that schools can’t have an impact on student behavior; they clearly can, and they should be expected to have rational and consistent ways of guiding students either to encourage mature behavior or to remediate unacceptable behavior. But PBS, for most, would represent undue intrusion on the lives of students when a better alternative is for them to get the guidance they need at home.

Anon–one year my daughter’s school had a PTA President with a serious type A personality. She set herself a goal of having a parent volunteer in every classroom for every day of the first week of school. I got a phone call, and since I had elected to run my vacation over into the first week of school, I was available to show up in my daughter’s first grade classroom. I got to watch something that I might not have otherwise. During the first part of class, the teacher had a number of bookkeeping tasks to attend to (attendance, lunch counts, etc). So, she started off with some seat work that they were to do, and instructed the class that when finished they were to select a book from the shelf and engage in free reading time silently at their seat.

The first child finished did so. The next few, however, took a bit longer, started chatting with one another, drifting off, etc. I watched while every instinct in me said to issue a reminder of what was expected–but the teacher missed it. Meanwhile the children were eying the teacher. Her words had given them a clear message, which her behavior was now belying. What did she mean? Should they follow her words, or were they free now to wander the room and have conversation as her behavior was implying. Eventually the classroom was very noisy and children were in places other than their seats or at the book shelf. And the teacher started to yell angrily. The class was out of control and so was she. I am certain that she thought that they were being bad. I would say that they were being misled–not that they didn’t make choices, but that the wrong choices (which tended to be self-reinforcing) were allowed to move forward until there was chaos.

Developing those instincts (knowing when to stop behavior before it derails completely) and expecting such actions to have an impact comes partially from experience, partially from reflection on what works vs what does not, and partially from believing that one’s actions will have an impact. Without this, I have seen well-trained children from the best of families go far astray. With this, I have seen children with minimal “home training” eager to do right.

This is a serious misunderstanding of PBS. In fact, Sugai points out that in an environment that where PBS is regarded only as special planning for kids with behavioral challenges, those kids are nearly doomed to failure if the rest of the environment is not also addressed.

Mr. Aubrey–perhaps you would be so kind as to address the proven disparity, along racial lines, of the severity of responses to identical behavior. This is a real issue, whether you want it to be or not.