As a student in high school, my main goal was to avoid getting into trouble; just the thought of receiving detention made me nervous and on edge. I had never been a troublemaker at school and my peers knew that I wasn't about to begin disobeying the rules, but that didn't keep me from being acquaintances with those who regularly were assigned detentions or suspensions. I remember hearing my two favorite trouble makers, whom I felt really were decent guys, talk about striving to get out-of-school suspension because it meant time off of school to stay home and watch television or play video games. These guys often didn't get along with their teachers because they had creative differences. The only teachers I remember them getting along with were the usually male teachers who could be extremely patient and see past the dark clothing and chains. These teachers observed two students who sincerely cared about their friends and were extremely smart, despite the grades they earned. The thing that bothered me the most about these boys was how they wanted to get suspended from school and how I wanted everything except that, or any other punishment. It turns out that we really just had different perspectives of what the punishment that the school served was really meant to do.

In the days of zero tolerance policies and extreme school violence, what is it that students do that is so wrong that it becomes necessary to take these students out of the school environment as a type of punishment? In some cases, students are arrested and put into the juvenile justice system for acts that otherwise would not have been considered criminal, and principals would have previously taken care of. Students who commit what seem to be extremely undesirable actions in the schools are often looking to get out of the educational environment to begin with. They have no desire to be there and view school as a waste of their time. Maybe their grades are faltering and they skip class to avoid a teacher they don't care for, but it doesn't seem that the way to correctly discipline these students for their wrongdoing is to give them exactly what they want. Students whose grades are not passing probably need some sort of remedial help or more time in school, not less (Skiba & Peterson, 1999). These students, above all, need attention. They need to understand why it is that what they are doing is wrong. Sending the student out of school for remediation of these unacceptable behaviors rarely ends up teaching the child, or helping the child understand how to adequately change their behavior and avoid future occurrences. This seems to give students the idea that later if they are looking for an escape from school, all they have to do is make the administration mad enough to kick them out of school for a few days, and it may be as easy as repeating a past offense.

Unfortunately, throughout history, schools have resorted to a spectrum of punishments that range from detentions to in-school suspensions and out-of- school suspensions to expulsions. These punishments have also gone through phases of believing that some other problem was underlying the behavior issue to believing that the child sought out trouble. None of these punishments seems to fulfill its intended purpose for the students who are most likely to receive them. Behavior management systems are so popular that even the newest of teachers, especially in elementary schools, will use what they mistakenly call a reward system to keep students on task. I saw one program recently in a school where the teacher had the each student's name on a magnet in a boat and as a student misbehaved, his or her name (which represented a real person) fell deeper and deeper overboard. With each level they fell, a different consequence was granted, up to having parents called at home. All this seemed to do was tell the children who were 'drowning' that there was no way back to the surface and that the only reason they were receiving bad consequences was because of their own actions. For the students who could not earn their way back to the boat, they continued to disrupt the class, which defeated the purpose of the management system.

Morris and Howard (2003) mention problems with current discipline policies, including detention because of its need to keep students after school, which can create problems for these students getting home when the detention period is over, and out-of-school suspension, which is "an illogical solution, especially for students suspended for skipping class or school altogether" (156). Expulsion from school seems to give many students more time to misbehave and potentially puts the community at-risk, which makes these children the problem of the police (Skiba & Peterson, 1999). Although schools may have a tutoring service for students who are expelled, the tutors often are not trained in the subjects that the student needs remedial help in and do not come to help the student until the end of his or her expulsion. Parents may not be available to be home with their child or able to take them to work to keep an eye on them, and when the tutor comes into the student's home, they do not know the severity of the child's actions, which could theoretically put the tutor in danger. By using expulsion as a method of punishment, the school seems to be giving up on the student and/or giving into what the child wanted to begin with.

Detention also seems to have an adverse effect on getting results from students. Students who misbehave are more likely to have a problem with being in school because they view it as a waste of time or do not enjoy the classes they are taking. Keeping these students after school only makes them angrier and rarely has the intended effect on the student. Punishments occurring from actions observed in the school need to be carried out during the school day and within the school, and should also seek to help the student understand the problem behavior and give them the opportunity to rethink ways to handle the situation in the future (Skiba & Peterson, 1999).

Skiba and Peterson (1999) suggest that one of the best ways to combat misbehavior is to use preventative and proactive measures through teaching. Using rules consistently and regularly reminding students of the rules can help them avoid getting into trouble. When students are able to become a part of the rule-making process, they are also more likely to remember the rules and obey them, which can benefit their character development (Navarez, 2001). If they begin to view the school's interpretation of punishment as some sort of reward, then we are failing to educate students and help them build a strong moral character.

Zero tolerance policies were the trend back in the 1980s and were originally designed to convey to drug users "that harsh penalties would be imposed on all violators, regardless of the severity of their crimes" (Ilg & Russo, 2001, 43). However, as Ilg and Russo (2001) note, now its intentions are to provide serious consequences not only for drug users, but also for students who bring weapons to school or use tobacco or alcohol on school property. The fuel for the argument of keeping zero tolerance policies in place was the continued concern of community members who feared that the use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, along with weapons being brought into the schools, were among the top problems of the school system coming into the new millennium (Ilg & Russo, 2001).

One of the biggest problems with implementing the zero tolerance policies was the length of time that students could be expelled from school. No matter how harsh the infraction upon the rules, students could be taken out of the school for a year or longer, but usually no less. While this might be appropriate for students who are a constant danger to others in the school and community, it typically did not allow administrators the leeway to provide lesser punishments to lesser offenders. It also did not allow for the common mistakes that any teenager could make--good or bad--because it failed to distinguish between the constantly disruptive child and the one who was a good student, but made a horrible mistake (Ilg & Russo, 2001). In my high school, something as simple as getting caught with ibuprofen or aspirin outside of the nurse's office could warrant the wrath of the zero tolerance policy.

Although I do not believe that my high school believed in the criminalization of students, some schools across the country do and have been found arresting students for talking during assemblies or cutting across the schoolyard after hours on their way home. Judith Browne (2003) wanted to make the public aware of the trends in schools that use zero-tolerance policies to place students on a track to jail. Problems that were once addressed by the principal are now being passed on to the police, and actions that outside of school would not be considered a crime are putting students in jail. Browne (2003) notes that in 1999 the majority of the public believed that crime was on the rise among students, when in truth, it was down about thirty percent overall. It seems that the public has helped school districts believe in maintaining zero tolerance policies despite the falling crime rates among students.

The schools where criminalization of students is occurring are typically urban settings. Beyond arresting students for trivial matters, such as "playing cops and robbers with a paper gun" in an elementary school and charging the children with "terroristic threatening," the percentage of African-American students being arrested is significantly higher than Caucasian students despite the fact that they represent a smaller population (Browne, 2003). Browne (2003) notes that in Pinellas County, Florida, where the enrollment of African-American students was only nineteen percent, out of 146 arrests in 2001, about 79 (or 54 percent) were of African-American students. This trend is being noticed in many other schools among African-American students. It is difficult to measure how zero-tolerance policies are affecting Latino students because data has not been maintained.

Unfortunately, because some schools are no longer handling minor offenses, students can start a criminal record at a very young age. Although some cases are thrown out because they are simply ridiculous, others are not and students are either sent to juvenile detention centers or given probation with strict limitations. Missing school without a valid excuse, being late, or missing a class can send the student back to court and even to jail (Browne, 2003). Once this happens, it is very difficult for a student to get back on track, which is sad because these types of mistakes are not typically recognized to such an extreme degree by most discipline systems. Using jail as a punishment for actions that would not otherwise produce a court appearance only gives society a negative view of today's students. If we continue to use this type of system, we are perpetuating beliefs of our students that will only encourage them to live up to those beliefs, instead of empowering students to become model citizens who learn from simple mistakes through sensible discipline.

In-school suspensions (ISS) are one alternative to punishments associated with zero tolerance policies. However, designing an effective ISS program can be a difficult task as noted by Morris and Howard (2003). The goal of the ISS program has changed over the past two decades from believing that there is a deeper problem that needs remediation in students who are disruptive in class to a model that assumes that the students want to cause trouble and that punishment will remove bad behavior altogether.

Besides this punitive model of an ISS program, the 1990s also offered an academic model, which focused on teaching students with learning disabilities basic skills that often led to academic growth, and the therapeutic model, which allowed students to think about why they had received ISS and how they could resolve issues in the future to avoid ISS or other punishments (Morris & Howard, 2003). One problem that I see with this particular program is that students often start this "thinking out" process through writing, which can fail to recognize that some students dislike or have trouble writing to begin with and can unintentionally teach students to dislike writing even more. Using this model would require that the counselor understand the students' likes and dislikes and have a deeper understanding themselves of what may have contributed to the problem that sent the student to ISS. While some students might benefit from writing out their thoughts, others might do better by drawing or talking and they should be given the opportunity to do so. To meet the needs of students, instruction should be individualized and it seems to follow that punishments should do the same so that they serve their intended purpose.

Morris and Howard (2003) raise the question of whether or not counseling has proven to be effective for students who require discipline. A study they critiqued discovered that "groups counseling can reduce truancy, increase attendance, raise grade point average and improve student behavior" (Morris & Howard, 2003, 159). It seems logical that counseling would prove to be a beneficial program to have in place for students with undesirable behaviors because it allows the students to think about why they are acting out and gives them a chance to express their feelings. This model is also indicative of the types of ISS programs used in the 1980s, but also seems to recognize that students who act out are not always doing so because they want to misbehave, but because something else is bothering them and they feel that the only way to get attention and help solve the issue is to make themselves noticed. As students get older, it becomes more difficult to discover the true reasons behind misbehavior; students can be more stubborn, less willing to freely express their feelings, and feel that if they give up the little control they feel they have, that they will be taken advantage of. Therefore, it becomes important to eliminate these barriers as completely as possible by providing each student with an adult in the school whom he or she can trust and talk to because it is felt that the adult is worthy of the relationship and also accepts the student's feelings and is willing to just listen and not necessarily offer advice. It is also important for this adult to let the student know that he or she does have control in life (Morris & Howard, 2003).

Along the way, the question arises: why do schools have behavior problems in the first place? Although in many cases, it does have to do with a student having other problems that they are not sure of how to deal with appropriately, one of the other major reasons schools have so many behavior problems is because there is confusion over what the rules mean. If rules are unclear to students or are seen as being inconsistently enforced, students may be more apt to disobey them (Gaustad, 1992). I can personally relate to this, particularly during my high school career. Our school had a rule that if a student was in the hallways after the bell had rung, they needed to obtain a hall pass from a teacher stating that the student was in their class for some specific reason and therefore it was okay that the student was late to another class and as verification that the student was not just loitering in the hallway. My high school hired hall monitors to specifically handle the job of turning in delinquent students (those without a hall pass) to the office so that they would receive a detention and theoretically learn from the mistake of being in the hallway without a pass. These hall monitors would inevitably ignore me as I walked through the hallway, minding my own business, a few seconds past the bell on my way to band or a study hall (keep in mind that these hall monitors didn't know my schedule and I could have been consistently late to English, math, or some other subject). I noticed on several occasions that they didn't ignore students wearing all black and chains, regardless of whether the student was a usual behavior problem or not. This stereotype kept me away from getting into trouble, but also made some of my friends regular suspects.

There were also times when I would be hanging out talking to my friends in the hallway after taking a bathroom break in the middle of class. I would be caught by the assistant principal, who would ask where my pass was and then send me on my way with the warning of just make sure you get back to class soon. I doubt that many others were let off each time with just a warning. I would joke around and then make sure I got back to class, but it never changed my attitude about loitering in the halls because I never received a detention or any other sort of punishment, when according to the rules, I should have. It may have helped that I babysat the assistant principal's children, but I should not have been consistently let off on that technicality. I think what I learned was that if I acted sweet and innocent, I could take advantage of the system. However, my friends and other students in the school, primarily those that were regularly behavior problems were always walked back to class and assigned a detention. In my mind, there is no justification for allowing some students to disobey the same rule the school punishes other students for. The rule is there for a reason, and everyone, regardless of his or her behavioral past, should be held accountable for adherence to the rule, or else it should be eliminated.

Gaustad (1992) also makes a very important point when she says that the focus should be on increasing positive behavior rather than decreasing negative behavior. Teachers should work to make their lessons meet the various types of learning styles in the classroom so that students are less likely to get bored, which has been shown to increase undesirable behaviors. She also agrees with many of the other researchers I have cited that disciplinary referrals need to be looked upon as a way to help build socially appropriate behaviors. It is also very important for school administration to be visible to the students and to know them. It helps students to develop a respect for the administration and want to avoid disappointing the principal and assistant principal. I was recently observing in a city school where the assistant principal knew every single child who walked through the hallways. This school housed kindergarten through sixth grade, and every single child knew the assistant principal's name and was excited to be able to say "hi" to him as he passed. Although there were still quite a few discipline problems while I was there, every single child was crying when they entered the office to wait for the assistant principal; as they talked to the secretaries, it became obvious to me that they were sad that they were getting into trouble and wanted the assistant principal to "still like" them.

The common characteristic of developing a working discipline program, as suggested by many of these authors, seems to be by taking proactive approach. Problems should be stopped before they can even start by making rules that are clear, and consistently enforced by everyone. Including students in the decision making process has also been shown to be an effective way to decrease the amount of behavior problems within the school setting. When this fails to work (because it surely will on occasion), one additional way to address behavioral problems is to institute a functional behavioral assessment (FBA). An FBA is meant to determine the underlying reasons for the cause of a behavior and to replace that behavior with one that is more socially acceptable, yet still addresses the purpose for which the undesirable behavior was first created. While FBAs are typically used for students with special needs as mandated by IDEA 1997, these programs can also be instituted for students without disabilities. These programs do what ISS or other punishments do not do: they give the student positive support. Although tough disciplinary strategies are often supported by politicians and the public, there continues to be a failure to recognize that it is not always the student's fault that they misbehave. Some students just do not have the necessary problem-solving skills to avoid undesirable behaviors and punishments like ISS or expulsion only work in the short-term and lack the ability to lead to long-term solutions (Gable, Hendrickson, & Smith, 1999).

Theorist Alfie Kohn has writeen a great deal about the negative aspects of discipline and rewards and acknowledges, as many of the other researchers, that there are short-term and long-term solutions to behavior problems. He maintains that much of what is currently done in schools only works in the short term and does not further develop students' skills for the future. Many teachers and administrators are looking for the quick fix to any problem that comes their way and the quick fix often comes at the expense of a long-term solution. In fact, Kohn (2001) states that it is important to engage students "in conversation about what makes classroom (or family) function smoothly, or how people are affected by what we have done--or failed to do" (24). Of course, this takes a considerable amount of time, but in the long term should reduce the number of problems that occur because it gives students a chance to really think about what they did and why they did it, as well as how to avoid similar situations in the future.

Kohn (2001) says that there are five reasons why we should stop giving students praise in the classroom. His list includes:

1. "Manipulating children:" Often adults use praise for their own convenience because it gets children to do what we want them to do, rather than engaging them in a conversatino that helps them to understand why they should do certain things for their own purposes.

2. "Creating praise junkies:" Children become too reliant on getting praise, which often results in a decrease in the occurrence of the appropriate behavior because they are expecting the praise each
time. Students are also becoming too reliant on our judgments of good and bad and therefore and cannot create their own understanding of judgments.

3. "Stealing a child's pleasure:" Using praise can also tell children how to feel rather than letting them experience it for themselves. Children should learn how to evaluate whether what they did was of quality
or not, rather than questioning an adult and asking them to pass a judgment.

4. "Losing interest:" Studies have shown that as children are praised for doing well on a particular project, they lose interest in the project if the teacher or other adult is not continually standing over them giving them praise. This has also happened with students who are sharing or performing other acts of kindness because the praise can fail to recognize the real reasons why a student is extending a hand to a peer.

5. "Reducing achievement:" Children may become too accustomed to receiving praise and therefore may expect it for any type of work they do, whether it is of quality or not. This can happen because the child is losing interest or is becoming less willing to take risks. (p. 24-26)

Kohn (2001) also says that it is the adult who needs to say something nice rather more so than kids need to hear something nice. He continues by addressing how this directly effects misbehavior by saying that if praise works for a child who is acting out, it is really that "the praise is behaving him," (p. 27) rather than the child behaving himself. So what do we use instead of praise when we want children to continue using appropriate behaviors and other good characteristics that they are displaying? Kohn (2001) also addresses this with three things we can do:

1. "Say nothing:" We want children to act a certain way because they feel it is appropriate, so if we say nothing, they will be more likely to continue that behavior than if they receive praise.

2. "Say what you saw:" Teachers can avoid passing judgment by simply recognizing that a student completed a task with a phrase like "You did it" or "You tied your shoes all by yourself." Teachers
can also point out how others are feeling when a child does something generous, such as sharing or helping them to reach something they need. This focuses on how the child feels about what he or she did, not what the teacher feels.

3. "Talk less, ask more:" Ask the child about the picture he or she is drawing or the composition that was just completed. The child will recognize certain aspects of the work that was hard or that he or she felt was done particularly well by helping them to take an interest in what was completed (p. 27).

I think that many teachers already do many of these things that Kohn suggests as ways to avoid praise and it may just be that we need to do these things more consistently. How we address discipline stems back to parents, but a consistent policy within the school might start with the pre-kindergarten or kindergarten teacher and is carried out similarly in each grade level.

Hopefully a similar policy carried out similarly in each grade level will help to decrease the number of behavior problems that exist as students get older. I personally agree with Kohn and much of what he says regarding discipline and giving out praise. It does seem kind of odd that in a world where we think that praise is what some children need to feel better about themselves is something that can actually contribute to their behavior problems in the future. Although his suggestions for decreasing negative behavior (1995) would take time to implement in the beginning, the long-term effects would keep students from engaging in undesirable behavior, thus decreasing the amount of ISS and other punishments that need to be served at the middle and high school levels.

In the article "Discipline is the Problem- Not the Solution" (1995), Kohn suggests that although "threats and bribes can buy a short term change in behavior, [it] can never help kids to develop a commitment to positive values (1)." Kohn suggests that by engaging students in reflective thought, they are more likely to understand the reasons behind issues such as settling down after returning from lunch or specials, or other behavioral issues that will help them avoid repeating similar actions in the future. It seems important to Kohn that teachers acknowledge that other problems may be causing the negative behaviors rather than to assume that punishment is what the child wants and blame the child solely for his actions, without knowing his intentions.

Investigating the trends in current school discipline has helped me to become increasingly aware of the negative effects that zero-tolerance and other punishment policies can have on students. In my opinion, there are five points that should be considered by every school district's administration before deciding to use zero-tolerance policies. First, zero-tolerance policies fail to ask the student why they have behaved. This in itself can be extremely detrimental to the student in the future because the school seems to be seeking to punish rather than to get to know the student. When we do not ask why, we do not know why, and the reasons students misbehave are extremely varied. Some students may seek a detention after school because they are afraid to go home, some may be looking for a way to provide something for their family, and still others may be innocently acting on what they know to be okay at home. When we continue to seek out answers to why a student demonstrates undesirable behaviors, we can also seek to help the
student find alternatives that will help him or her to successfully fulfill a goal without harming themselves or others.

Secondly, zero tolerance policies, when enacted correctly, fail to make considerations for students who are usually behaved, but make a horrible mistake. This also goes back to my first point where the policy can fail to find out why a student misbehaved, which may provide deeper understanding and help to remedy the problem, rather than "letting it go" and waiting for its return. This attitude assumes that the misbehavior was the student's fault and that the child is somehow destined to be a bad kid. When teachers and administrators begin seeing students in this light, they are failing as educators. We should always believe that children can learn and that we are there to help them however we can. Maybe it will take more time to help a child in the short-term, but the long-term benefits will likely prove our dedication to our students beneficial.

Third, there is always the possibility that a student has a disability that is contributing to the misbehavior or hinders the student's ability to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. While many disabilities can be determined when a student is very young, others can be so mild that it is difficult to identify them when the student until the student is older. If even the slightest indication of a disability might be present, it would be to the school's benefit to test the child as a way of assuring that the problem is being addressed appropriately.

Fourth, zero tolerance policies or other discipline plans are often not consistently enforced which decreases students' trust in and compliance with the rules. Simply put, if you are not going to use a punishment system consistently, do not use it. Maybe it is even easier to ask each student who displays an inappropriate behavior to go see a counselor, either within or outside of the school, depending on the severity of the action, because it allows the student to talk through what caused the action, without assuming that the child is genetically programmed to be a problem. At the very least, fewer students would be placed on out of school suspension, and maybe that punishment could be completely eliminated.

Finally, zero tolerance policies undermine the primary responsibility of the school, which is to educate. Who are we educating? What are we educating students in when we send them to the streets rather than keeping them in school? When we send students home because of misbehavior, it appears that we are subconsciously telling them that we do not believe that they belong in the school and are somehow not fit to learn. Allowing students to recognize their accomplishments without judgment and giving students the opportunity to talk with us will hopefully create a more nurturing and comfortable atmosphere that will allow students to express themselves freely and appropriately, or to find alternative solutions on their own that will continue to meet their needs. As teachers, we need to become more aware of the policies and procedures that we are setting up in our classrooms and look at things from a child's point of view. Even when things seem clear to us, children may often be confused or misunderstand our purpose. Things we think are cute or will work with children sometimes backfire and we can not seem to figure out why, but all it takes is a little looking into our teaching methods to evaluate (or re-evaluate) them and make them work for our students.

References

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Gable, R.A., Hendrickson, J.M., & Smith, C. (1999). Changing Discipline Policies and Practices: Finding a

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