School Safety

Case Study on School Safety This paper is about an incident that took place involving an over age student making a school unsafe for others. The student was very violent and did not get the proper punishment to go along with his behavior. The success of the discipline administered, and alternate solutions to the problems will be discussed. John Green is an 8th grade student who is 16 years of age. He had been retained three times twice in the eighth grade because of his standardized test scores. Only after being in school for a month, John came back from his counselor bragging that he only had to take the test this time and he did not have to pass to move on to high school. This was a bad decision by the counselor to tell him that so early in the school year because he was a child who consistently caused problems in school. One day in October John’s math teacher was sick and could not make it to school so she had a sub take her place. The substitute was not informed of the behavior problems John causes. John repeatedly refused to do any school work in that class. The substitute approached John and asked him why he was not completing his assignment. John jumped out of his chair and said to the substitute, “This B must don’t know who I am.” She substitute asked John get back into his seat and to calm down. John became belligerent and said, “You really do not know who you are @^%$# with.” The substitute at this point became afraid and tried to pull the string to alert the office but John jumped in her way to stop her. One of the boys in the class pulled the string and John got so upset that he and the boy started fighting and John broke the boy’s nose and blood was all over the classroom. When John saw the security guards coming he started throwing chairs and desks at anyone he saw. The security guards were finally able to subdue him and handcuffed John while I took the other boy to the nurse. John was placed on a two day suspension for fighting at school. John was never disciplined for being totally disrespectful to authority and the situation was never brought to the attention of John again. Handcuffing John was seen as a punishment by the principal because she said the security embarrassed John by doing such a thing. The punishment was not seen as successful according to the staff and the substitute involved. John appeared to see his punishment as a joke because he had several offenses after that. John IEP states that he becomes violent when he feels threatened or provoked. To start the school or the teacher should have given the substitute prior warning of John’s behavior to prevent her from going through other situations like this. The teacher who is going to be absent should write a note stating her or his behavior students. John probably should be placed in another teacher’s classroom to prevent other situations from happening like this. Actually, it appears as though this is not the right classroom setting for John. “The intent of the SS/HS projects described here was to provide a multi-component framework that schools and agencies used to build services that address the specific strengths, needs, and service gaps within their local community,” (Sprague and Nishioka, 2007, para 6). John is violent the school should create an emergency RTI for John to have him placed in an alternative school setting. This will prevent any other kids from getting injured when he become uncontrollable. John social worker decided to mainstream him because he was very proficient in math. This consideration should be revoked because of this incident. John could have hurt many people in that classroom. In summary, John was a kid with special needs but because of his brilliance in math he was being mainstreamed. Counselors should consult with teachers before making decisions in telling students certain things. The administration and teachers at schools must try their best to protect substitutes from students who can be harmful. John is one of many students who get away with harming other students because of their IEP’s or exceptionalities. One downfall is the fact that the principal thought that John was being treated badly after he broke another student’s noise. To prevent other situations like this the teacher who will absent could write a note to the sum explaining certain behavior students or the administration team should warn the sub.