Dennis kept talking to his neighbor so I asked him to change desks. He responded with “a string of profanities” and was asked to go to the Dean’s office. He never arrived.

Eduhonesty: We call this “abusive language” and “defiance.” I assure readers that the whole class was riveted to this interchange by the end. In an ideal world, a security guard escorts Dennis to the Dean’s office, but sometimes security is too busy to arrive quickly (Frankly, I’ve experienced a number of times when they never arrived at all.) so I’m pretty sure I just sent him out the door, referral in hand, to staunch the flow of curse words and get the class back on track. I’m not allowed to leave the classroom for liability reasons. I most likely asked some other teacher to watch his progress down the stairs, if anyone was in the hallway, but somehow he made his escape before he reached the Dean’s office.

He got one hour of in-school suspension for cursing me out, a fairly typical penalty. I could have raised a ruckus about that, but we were all clear this boy had some real emotional issues. A coworker once said that he thought this student would be the one to shoot up the school if it ever happened. I did not disagree. That boy entered school angry every day. The social workers were unable to help much. He reacted much better to men than women — but the available social workers were all women.

The saving grace to this situation — this is a sad, sad post — was that Dennis missed an enormous amount of school. On a good day, he stayed home.

I don’t write many referrals compared to some of my peers, but I have collected a fair number over time. In the next few weeks, I plan to change names and some details as I lay out the problems these referrals highlight. I started with “Deirdre” in the previous post.

Eduhonesty: A referral may represent one student but it rarely represents one learning loss. Deirdre did little harm to the classroom environment when she skipped, although she’s a bright girl and her contributions would have improved my class, but most of these referrals represent time lost from learning for the entire class. Any time the disruption box is checked, which is most of the time, the entire class lost learning, not just the student who I referred to the Dean’s office.

She skipped a lot of classes this year. Because this was her senior year and she had already been admitted to a state college, no one did much about this skipping. Teachers wrote the occasional referral. Deans talked to the girl. But in a school desperate to get students into any college, a school where entry into community college earns you a big blown-up poster on the hallway walls, Deirdre was a success story. Counselors talked to the girl. Teachers talked to the girl. She went her own way, regularly turning in late assignments in a school where the penalties for late work are minimal to nonexistent.

Eduhonesty: I’m hoping it all works out for Deirdre. She’s a smart girl and when the bar is raised, she may be able to adjust. She is going to be slammed up the side of the head by the academic requirements coming at her, though, and this girl has a poor work ethic. She was able to function in high school without a better one. Will she adapt in time? She will have to get herself up next year and will have to make it to class without nagging from concerned authority figures. She will have to make herself complete assignments on time.

Those big-money majors? I am guessing they are out of her reach. The rigorous demands for engineering and computer science majors are likely to be too big of a shock. If she survives college, she’ll probably end up in a social sciences major. We did not do right by this girl, but teachers knew better than to mess with this willful student. She had a lot of attitude and the administration loved Deirdre. She needed a firmer hand. Instead, the authority figures in her life endlessly told her not to do something she already knew she should not do anyway.

Let’s hope college works out better than I think it will.

We are not all equal.

A classroom is not a democracy.

It’s no surprise if kids don’t understand this fact, though. We negotiate too often. We allow class votes too often. This sharing of power has become embedded in our culture. Some parents let the children pick where to go to dinner, which is perfectly reasonable if parents make it clear that this choice is a treat, not a right. Parents let their children walk out of the house in outfits that barely cover the essentials, wearing fabrics so sheer that any coverage may be moot. Parents encourage children to question authority, often without realizing they are doing so. They argue with the principal over dress code violations, sometimes in front of their child.

“If you need to go to the bathroom you go don’t worry what the teacher says,” they tell their child in text messages that break the no-phone-in-the-classroom rules.

Eduhonesty: This post is for parents. If you make it clear that you will back your child regardless of the rules he or she has broken, that child will not follow the rules. After awhile, your child will be regarded as difficult. What happens afterwards depends on staff, rules and administration. I can tell you that teachers tend to give more attention to less difficult children, whether they ought to or not. Administrators tend to believe the worst of difficult children, even before the facts are in.

Adults are still in charge and most of them realize this. Children benefit from understanding they need to follow the rules, even rules that may not make sense to them or sometimes their parents, rules such as the one that forbids skin-tight pants. Learning to obey rules helps prepare students for future life. Picking and choosing rules to follow can only be a loser for a child, and in the long-run for a parent. It’s a short step from rejecting the school’s leggings rule to rejecting a parental curfew. To a child who learns it’s OK to disobey one adult, after awhile all adults may come to look pretty much alike.