Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Swearing
How do you guys handle swearing in schools? I have tried several different methods such as verbal reprimand, referral to administration, and assigning push ups as punishment. Every option seems flawed to me since verbal reprimand will most likely get taken as a grain of salt, administration has better things to do than to spend his day punishing students for foul language, and push ups can be refused. I did have one student refuse to do push ups and I stood there stunned and confused because I cannot force a student to do push ups. Is referral to administration the best solution? What do you think?
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I ask the offending student to stay after class and have a one-on-one conversation where I explain that cussing is fine in their personal life, but in the classroom it's not allowed. You can say it's your policy or the school's policy or both, but in an adult way explain the situation. Then ask them if they are on board and they will almost always say yes. If they refuse to comply, then give them a choice: You can either stop cussing or class or leave the classroom and be counted as an absence.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what kinds of options are open to you, but if you have detention or options for detention that can be effective. At Cove I established two "responsibilities" in my classroom that resulted in automatic detention. First was cell phone use (sight, noise, it didn't matter). The next was profanity. I would just look at them and say "sorry, you know the rules." It rarely happened after one or two detentions were given out in any given class. It's not a really dynamic behavior management strategy, but it was very effective for me.
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