Update 10/28/2015: A girl tossed across the room like a rag-doll, nearly breaking her neck, by a school police officer in Richland County, SC, USA. Incidents like that are often the result of NO GOOD place to place a disobedient student in that circumstance;
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When I was a boy I was wild and uncontrollable, and I have
disturbed my share of teaching and learning classroom time for others, in my
adventures in public schools. At ten years old I had knocked out a school teacher
and had to be placed in a school for students with behavioral problems in
another county. It was called the Mark
Twain School,
in Montgomery County, Maryland,
(closed in 2008) and it incorporated all that was known about teaching to bad
behaviors. "Quiet" rooms were at the entrance areas to each school,
the middle school where I was, and the grade and high schools in that one
building. The Quiet Rooms were two rooms near the secretary's desk, off a main
hallway paced by a teacher or an assistant principal. Like the Middletown
room portrayed on television news, they were barren concrete block plain
painted walls, with room enough to pace, with a school desk to sit and do
school work. Back in the 1970s I deserved to be yanked out of class and asked
to spend some hours in the Quiet Rooms, and the kids in my class especially
deserved for me to be yanked out. Separating me from the classroom was about what's'
fair to them, not about what was fair to me. The rules were simple in
the rooms "chill out." Doors were never locked. Punishment for coming
out is more time in.
It is way overboard to chastise an educator for the
innovation of the safe and timely use of these rooms. I would trust most well
intentioned educators, in choosing what is best for the entire classroom, in so
choosing to utilize these necessary rooms for Hellions like me to sit and chill.
These rooms actually save taxpayer money and time! When the disruptive
influence is away from classroom, normalcy convenes and that's what we pay for
and expect to see!
