I hate writing referrals. I work very hard to avoid it, for several reasons:
- If I write a referral quickly, it may be passing my problem off to the administration too early, instead of taking the correct steps to deal with it myself.
- It may send a message to the student that he is being "flushed" away, instead of at least listened to, however crazy, disrespectful, wrong-headed he is. And we all know what you are if you get flushed.
- Referrals written by teachers who jump to writing unsupported referrals (for small offenses they should be handling though intermediate steps) carry less weight on the desk of the administrator, who may even develop sympathy for the referred student ("I know, Grover, she's crazy: I'm just going to write 'Counseled student' on this, and you can spent the rest of the period in in-house suspension. Just try not to set her off anymore, okay?").
The third reason is very important. I seldom write a referral before the second semester begins and that is a fact known by everyone. So when I do write a kid up, and provide justification (give the administrator specific information to use, written on the referral), that kid damn well better get a punishment.
More referrals during second semester because the teenage angst thaws with the daffodils in the spring.
Don't get me wrong: there are certain behaviors, notably continued disrespect, that jump right from a detention to a referral, and they're merited. If the kid is unmanageable, he's unmanageable, so here's you ticket to see the Old Man in the Office.
It's the same way with my affect in the classroom. I'm very patient with kids' behavior, and I provide a little margin room for them to be goofy kids. But when they see my expression change, and my voice firm up, and all the other small signals, they read it clearly, and I usually get immediate results. If I ever have to raise my voice, or keep a class after the bell to mini-lecture about their behavior, it means something to them, because it stands out so distinctly from my everyday smiling, glad-you're-here-kid affect. Teachers who raise their voices a lot, or are dramatic, or cuttingly sarcastic, who use these methods as the normal fare of their classroom interaction, quickly lose effectiveness, because kids tune them out (or down). The teacher (and I might suggest, the parent) who cries wolf is soon ignored and discounted.
Not I: when I raise an eyebrow, I usually get results, because the eyebrow isn't lost in the background noise of other emotions/demonstrations.
As Riff advises in West Side Story:
Boy, boy, crazy boy,
Get cool, boy!
Got a rocket in your pocket,
Keep coolly cool, boy!
Don't get hot,
'Cause man, you got
Some high times ahead.
Take it slow and Daddy-O,
You can live it up and die in bed!
Boy, boy, crazy boy!
Stay loose, boy!
Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it.
Turn off the juice, boy!
Go man, go,
But not like a yo-yo schoolboy.
Just play it cool, boy,
Real cool!
I'm the adult: he's the yo-yo schoolboy. It's my job to model maturity. I can't indulge my anger, my frustration, my indignity, except in measured doses designed to let students see the results of their mistreatment of others. Even then, I need to be in control, and meter it out. And when I do it right, that may be the most valuable lesson presented to them that day.
