DISCOURTESY CONSEQUENCE: DETENTION OR A REFLECTIVE …



DISCOURTESY CONSEQUENCE: DETENTION OR A REFLECTIVE ESSAY Bleich

The point of this policy is not simply to punish and deter students who have a lapse in respectfulness, but to help them think analytically about their own behavior, to help them move toward developing a more self-confident, honorable, and principled basis for their social interaction with others.

If you are discourteous, or if you are late without a pass, you will be required to serve detention after school on that same day (if it’s a Tuesday) or on the first Tuesday after that day. During detention, you must silently read or write for thirty minutes. No postponements of detention are allowed. However, if the teacher is ever absent on a day when you’re scheduled for detention, then your detention is to be served, instead, on Tuesday of the next week.

You are free, if you so choose, to write a reflective essay instead of serving detention. On the other hand, if you are assigned detention and don’t serve it – for any reason, even absence – then the choice is gone, and your only option is to do the essay. Furthermore, your parent(s) will be contacted, by phone or by letter, and the situation will be explained. Then the reflective essay is due on a Tuesday, one week after the missed detention. The essay must be put in the wire basket before class begins on that day. If you should be absent on that Tuesday, the essay is due on the day of your return.

Each essay must also have an additional sentence (or more) in the top margin, written by one of your parents

(or your guardian) with his or her comment about the situation. Be sure, therefore, to write in a tone that will not shame or embarrass you when your parent reads the essay. Also, please remind your parent to include – after the comment – his or her signature, the date, and a phone number at which to be reached during the day.

Discourtesy includes any self-centered behavior – showing a lack of concern for your classmates, for their education, or for your teacher. Examples of such behavior include: 1) Talking while entering the room, which is a time when you should be silently focused on thoughtfully starting the drill, 2) Talking or whispering – instead of being respectful and attentive – while another student or the teacher is speaking to the class, when silence has been requested, or when a silent scholarly atmosphere is appropriate, 3) Being unkind to a fellow class member, or

4) Talking too loudly during group work and thus making it difficult for members of other groups to easily hear one another.

This is your warning, for the whole school year, about discourteous behavior. Inappropriate behavior will result in detention without further warning.

For a reflective essay, you must write at least 300 words (typically two full sides) on one of the topics listed below. Typing is not permitted. Be sure to write (or hand print) slowly and carefully so that your teacher (who will definitely read it) can easily understand every word. You may choose whichever topic you wish, unless you’ve already written about that topic in a previous essay. If you believe that your behavior could have been better, please try to be self-critical in your essay, and discuss how you can be more courteous in the future. Above all, be honest.

Please head your paper with our standard heading, and use your chosen topic (from the list below) as your title. Remember to start a new paragraph each time you begin a new idea. Divide your writing into at least three paragraphs.

If you are assigned detention twice (or more) during the time leading up to any particular report card, you will automatically receive a conduct comment on that report card.

To be acceptable, an essay must: 1) Be written with a roller ball pen, 2) Be original, with no copying from the writing or published work of anyone else, 3) Have no repetitive wording or repetitive ideas, 4) Be in your best handwriting, easy to read, and neat, 5) Include three paragraphs or more, each indented about one-half-inch,

6) Be properly headed and titled, 7) Have margins on both sides and on the bottom (no writing in the last three spaces), 8) Be of sufficient length, 9) Have a sentence-long (or longer) comment by your parent, with signature and phone, and 10) Be put in the wire basket on time.

If a student is discourteous more than once from one Tuesday to the next, detention can be served for the first incident. For each additional incident, a completed essay – with parent comment and signature – must be turned in. In other words, a student can never owe more than one detention, but can owe more than one essay.

You will not be asked for the essay when it’s due. Please just put it in the basket. It’s primarily your responsibility to remember what must be done and when. You are never to work on one of these essays during any of your classes.

If you don’t serve detention and then don’t turn in the essay when it’s due, you will be referred to the department head or Grade Level Administrator. In such a situation, you will have to turn in two essays on the very next day.

TOPICS FROM WHICH TO CHOOSE:

1. Giving Greater Consideration to the Needs of 15. Social Relations in Our Class

Other People Than to One’s Own Needs 16. Why It’s Wrong to Talk If Someone Else

2. Teenage Problems I’m Having Is Already Speaking

3. Suggestions for How Students in Our Class Can 17. Respect

Get Along Better 18. More Wisely Foreseeing the Results of What I Do

4. What My Teacher Must Think of Me 19. Something Is Bothering Me

5. I Wonder 20. I Apologize

6. How to Earn My Fellow Students’ Respect 21. An Open Letter to My Class (To Be Read Aloud)

7. The Way Students and Teachers Should Really 22. Must I Be a Clown to Win Social Acceptance

Treat One Another and Friendship?

8. Reasons for Getting Started on My Drill 23. What I’m Really Like on the Inside

Silently and Quickly 24. Classroom Courtesy in a More Perfect World

9. What’s Been on My Mind Lately 25. How I Behave at Home Compared to the Way

10. Ideas in Music Lyrics That Relate to My Sense I Behave at School

of Acceptable and Unacceptable Behavior 26. The Type of Person I Am and the Type of Person

11. Ideas in TV Shows That Relate to My Sense of I Would Like to Be

Acceptable and Unacceptable Behavior 27. My Feelings about Courtesy

12. Plans for the Next Five Years of My Life 28. I Respectfully Disagree with My Teacher

13. If I Were the Teacher 29. Here’s What Happened

14. The Ways I Expect to Change as an Adult 30. Free Topic

[Discourtesy Consequence Rev11-05]

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