The Issue We Choose to Fight

    Since my last post discussed the issue of school shootings I would like to comment on the nation wide student walkout which took place shortly after the Marjory Stoneman High School shooting.  In some ways I would also like to link this back to my “Simple Things” series.  The reason for this is my school decided to be one of the few in the nation who decided we should punish our students who wanted to honor those students their age who were killed.  We made a conscious decision to punish students for being willing to make a stand and honor the 17 students who died in the Marjory Stoneman High School shooting.
     We basically do not even have a dress code anymore.  We do nothing to teach accountability or responsibility.  We allow our students to play on their cell phones during instructional time.  We do nothing to discourage students coming to class whenever they please.  Yet, when our students want to go together to stand outside for 17 minutes to honor students their age who were killed in what should be a safe place…now we want to crack down on this behavior.  I must be missing something.
     I was upset by this even though the administration would not tell us what the punishment would be.  I do not care how minor the punishment may have been, even a warning for this was ridiculous when we allow everything else to go unpunished.  I addressed my concerns with a couple of my fellow teachers.  One of my colleagues actually agreed that we had to discipline the students due to liability.  I followed this up with one of our administrators.  According to our administration, we were obligated to give consequences for our students leaving the main building as it is unsafe to allow them outside.  I laughed.  I tried not to, but I really could not help it.     Let me explain.  According to the justification given by our administration we should be doling out consequences to about 75% of our students on every single school day.  We have classes in three different buildings.  So every school day, between every class, we have one-third of our students walking outside of the main building to reach their next class.  They are not escorted.  They are not supervised.  They are simply allowed to go outside from one class to another.  So, according to our new found strictness, we should hand out consequences to each and every student who walks out of the main building to go to class.  Like I said, I had to laugh. 
     We do need discipline.  We need to use discipline to encourage better decisions by our students.  We need to use discipline to prevent disruption to instructional time.  We need to use discipline with common sense (granted it has been a long time since this took place).  We allow our concern of our public perception to run our school systems to the detriment of our students’ education.  We rarely enforce our own policies.  Yet, we take a stand to not allow our students to support others their age who suffered such a tragic event.  We chose not to support an opportunity for our students to have a life experience.  I do not understand why we came to this decision.  I know it was not about school or student safety.  It was certainly not based on common sense.  It was not a decision made in the best interest of our students’ growth.
     Thankfully we had students who stood up and walked out.  They gathered in front of our school around the flag pole.  The irony of this location is it is the most exposed location on our school campus.  The road to our high school goes right past the front of our school.  If we truly cared about our students’ safety, which we clearly do not, this is the last place we would have allowed them to gather.  We, meaning public school systems, attempt to make things so complicated in hopes the community will assume we are doing more than we are.  Why not for once try to accommodate our students who are trying to experience a life lesson moment in support of people their own age?     There was a simple solution to this issue.  Make an announcement informing students who would like to participate in the walkout of a location they can go.  Then allow the students to go to the football stadium which places two large buildings between the students and the exposed road in the front of the school.  The football stadium is easily supervised by a only a few, as it is every Friday night in the fall.  We could have put the 17 minutes on the scoreboard clock.  We could have put the date of the shooting in the “Home” and “Away” score blanks on the scoreboard.  We could have turned this into a very positive event in conjunction with our students.  We could have enhanced a really meaningful event for our students.  We did not.  Instead, we chose to make our students fell as if they were doing something wrong in supporting a movement initiated by 17 kids their age being murdered.