If you are employed in any type of school system, take a moment to read this.  I came across this article on Sunday by Julia Steiny entitled “Suspending students only makes a bad situation worse.”

We need students to learn…learn when they are in school.  There is no doubt that they won’t learn anything if they are taken out of the learning system because they didn’t follow school policies.  We don’t necessarily expect them to stay on track with their studies when they are on suspension.  So is suspending students a bad thing?  Is it bad to punish them and remove them from the school environment?

Schools really have the obligation to: eliminate disruptions for the benefit of the rest of the students; be consistent with school policies relating to behaviors and consequences; reinforce those students who thrive and contribute to not only themselves but to raise the motivation level for their peers.

Steiny writes, “Suspension is a holdover from seemingly-efficient factory-model schools. Defective products are rejected from the assembly line and considered “acceptable casualties” until the number of “casualties” exceeds acceptable and forces the assembly line to stop and solve the problem.”  I say if you are just kicking students completely out of the system, her interpretation is accurate.  If there is another program in place between school and no school then it depends on the program being utilized.

My point here is that there are extremely good programs, off campus programs for students who need to be removed from their homeschools.  They are specifically geared towards the behaviors of these students and also incorporate academic into the mix.  The goal is to get these students back into the mainstream with a different outlook and life skills to help them cope with the situations that got them suspended in the first place. Programs like this are in place to deal with these students, their reasons for suspension, the appropriateness of their behaviors and actions, and the reinforcement of good life skills to help them get through those situations in a better way.

I don’t think Steiny should generalize this topic because steps are being taken to ensure that these students are still given the opportunity for success.  It’s not bad across the board…how about celebrating those programs instead of just complaining about them.