It was before school. I was getting ready for my first hour class, and as usual there were students milling about outside my classroom. Suddenly voices raised and I could tell a couple students were riled up. So I headed toward the door.
At that instant, a pancake flew right by my face.
After I recovered from the mild shock of seeing flying food outside my classroom, I stepped outside. Two students from the class next door were arguing (I couldn't tell you the topic). One --- we'll call him T -- had thrown said pancake at the other -- we'll call her R. After throwing said pancake, T turned and went into his class. I stood with R staring at a pancake on the floor. Meanwhile, other students just casually walked around as if this was a normal thing.
I called to T, "Hey, come out here and pick this up, please."
T: (laughing) "Nah, I ain't picking that up." He walked around the room and stood by the window.
Me: "Seriously? Come on -- you're throwing food. You can come clean up your mess."
T: (still laughing) "Nope."
Me: "Ok, I guess you'll take the referral then?"
T: (yes, still laughing): "Ain't gonna matter -- nothing's gonna happen."
This went on for a few more moments. By this time, the teacher in that classroom is overhearing everything and tells T to pick it up and apologize. "Nope." So I asked my colleague if she would like to write the behavior referral or preferred that I do it. She took care of it. Insubordination. Throwing food. Disrespect.
One would think this behavior would warrant a consequence. Could we as teachers do something more? T refused to listen. Could we have docked his grade? No -- behavior actions are not to affect a student's academic grade except due to the classroom time they might miss. Could we throw the pancake back at him? As much as we wanted to, no. That opens us up to (believe it or not) a lawsuit due to "harassing a student." So the best we could do was refer him to his administrator for disciplinary action.
Later that day, we saw the "disciplinary action." T was to serve a lunch detention. A LUNCH DETENTION.
My colleague and I were floored. Would this do anything to discourage T from acting this disrepectfully to anyone else? Would it keep him from throwing food? Would it convince him to listen when teachers (or anyone else) asks him to do something? No, not in the least. He could basically talk to us however he wanted; all that would happen is a 25 minute sit-down in his principal's office.