School principals are called upon increasingly to use alternatives to punitive discipline in situations like these. By claiming that they were just fooling around, the students demonstrate that they do understand the severity of the act of knife fighting and are trying to avoid suffering the consequences. What needs to change here is the school culture, to discourage students from egging on their classmates and for encouraging accountability and nonviolent solutions to conflict. Restorative justice and emotional intelligence training would become top priorities to respond to this violent incident. Suspension should be used sparingly, if at all. According to the Education Commission of the United States (2018), punitive measures like suspension are counterproductive, leading to increased absenteeism, truancy, and dropout rates. Suspensions can also fuel the school-to-prison pipeline (Dominus, 2016). Moreover, punitive discipline is often disproportionately meted out to non-white students (Dominus, 2016; Education Commission of the United States, 2018; NASSP, 2018). My plan of action in this situation would not be to use punitive measures like suspension but to use this as an opportunity to start a dialogue on school culture. I would first address the specific situation, speaking individually with each of the students...
If possible, I would also ask that each of the students speak with the counselor.References
Dominus, S. (2016). An effective but exhausting alternative to high school suspensions. The New York Times Magazine. Sept 7, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/magazine/an-effective-ut-exhausting-alternative-to-high-school-suspensions.html
Education Commission of the United States (2018). Alternative school discipline strategies. https://www.ecs.org/wp-content/uploads/Alternative_School_Discipline_Strategies.pdf
NASSP (2018). School discipline. https://www.nassp.org/policy-advocacy-center/nassp-position-statements/school-discipline/
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