Letters

15th of May 2009, 11:48am

From: Angel Garden

Subject: discipline policy

Date: 15 May 2009 11:48:58 am GMT+12:00

To: Susanne Cole, Mark Thornton, Heather Peri, Sheryl Mace

Dear Susanne, Management and College,

Thank you for your response to my last email, hard copy of which arrived this morning.  I have also had a chance to read the posting in the newsletter dealing with this subject.  You have obviously put a lot of time and effort into thinking hard about how to best support all the children in the school.

Today I have heard two disturbing things while talking to a parent about next week's school trip.  Pauline Marshall told me she saw a child from class 3/4 in obvious distress from some physical incident, coming in for first aid and basically in a right state at the very beginning of the day.

At the same time she confirmed to me, what [R] had told me yesterday, that another child is leaving this class because of such incidents and the general 'bullying', her words, not mine.

This is almost a term and a half after we have started our campaign to change this situation in the school.  sigh. isn't that sad.

At the meeting last week with Mrs Cole and Mrs Cunningham, a clear picture did emerge for me about working with discipline in the school, and  I'm sure you will agree that the two instances I've cited above also illustrate exactly how it is NOT working.  One point, that seems to me to be hugely important and a point of contradiction is that excluding pupils in any way because of them being physically violent, is seen as being violent towards THEM.  We did not have time to go into this in more detail, but in proposing a Zero Tolerance approach, we are obviously crossing a line which is felt to be anti-Steiner in some way, as not supportive of the perpetrator or some such.

One piece of evidence for this was held to be that many pupils have gone through the school who may have caused this or that trouble, but have turned into exemplary and moral adults.  My response is to ask, 'at what cost?'  What about the people who may have grown up with a legacy of being bullied by those exemplary adults?  There was no answer to this.

There is a growing consensus among parents in these classes that the disciplinary procedures should be utterly transparent.  And that we should be kept informed about exactly how they are being implemented.  It is still very vague.

For example

If a pupil’s behaviour continues to be disruptive and inappropriate the College of Teachers may implement formal stand down procedures.

What does this actually mean?  Does it mean 'after all the points in the behaviour support section have been implemented?'  That could take months.  Meanwhile that child could actually be hurting other children every day, and because it is not transparent, the parents cannot protect their children if they are actually getting hurt at school.

Another point is that all these behaviour support initiatives are loads and loads more work for a teacher who is already stretched beyond what most people would put up with by the situation in the class as it is.  How will that  effect her ability to teach?  In some ways, a child who is receiving all this attention whilst not actually being called to account for every single separate incident of 'the behaviour', is getting way more attention that they would have if they weren't doing it, and way more than other children who are still getting hit.

It is obviously good not to simply reject children, or people in general, just because their behaviour may be odious.  But that is not reason not to have a clear policy of no tolerance of physical hurting of one another. 

It is worse than useless to everyone not to reject the behaviour just because of not wanting to reject the child.  Surely the point is to separate the two.  How can that be achieved unless there is a clear message that the behaviour will not be tolerated?  AT ALL.

As I said above, many of the parents are becoming clear that they want to see real transparency as these procedures are put into effect.  At the class meeting next week, therefore, we will be bringing items for the agenda regarding the implementation of these policies and asking the school to create absolute transparency, albeit with anonymity so we all know where we stand.

For example, whoever was responsible for damaging the boy in the office this morning, all parents of the class should know that is happened, what the consequence for that behaviour was and where that fits into the procedural continuum.  That is the only way that they can know that the chance of it happening again is actually reducing and therefore that their children and actually becomming safer.

Whilst only wanting to encourage the school in this matter, if we could actually quantify how many children have been hurt while we have been waiting for this review, it would be a shocking number, witness the fact that another one is now leaving, 

There is obviously still room for:

more urgency

more transparency

and we will continue to campaign for it.  In fact, now that I've realised that a parent was unaware of our struggle by me not wanting to be too visible, I feel terrible about it.   I feel that it is time to become much more visible about this and help other parents, who obviously feel cowed and unable to stand up and speak about it, to know that they are not alone.  Really, I consider that the school's transparency should be achieving this but as it isn't I have therefore offered that parent to forward all my correspondence with the school about this matter so far because all this time, she has been getting more and more hopeless about it and I've been working away, sometimes late into the night to push the matter forward.  That's not good enough.

Let's all work together.

sincerely and with love

angel and steve

ps, still don't have Judith Cunningham's address, please forward.