What Do You Hear When a Student Says, “I Got Suspended?”
Two days ago, my husband and I were catching up on one of our favorite cable network shows called “The Chi.” I will spare you all of the juicy melodrama that keeps me watching and the nostalgia that I feel when I see images of my beloved hometown flash across the screen. But I do want to talk about a particular episode that caught my attention in Season 4, Episode 3, titled “Native Son.”
In “Native Son,” Jake and Kevin receive a consequence issued by their school for a few inappropriate behaviors. The consequence happened to be a suspension.
Here’s a bit of context about the situation:
The two students are Black and attend an affluent private high school. They are two of five Black students at the school.
Jake and Kevin live in low-income, underserved communities on the South Side of Chicago. They are bussed to school. The school is on the North side of the city.
The two students are friends with some tension, and that tension ultimately lead to the two of them fighting in class. During the fight, Kevin accidentally hit the teacher who was trying to break up the fight.
Jake also got caught having sex in the stairwell with one of the White female students. He received a longer suspension than Kevin because of this. However, Jake’s sex partner did not earn a suspension.
Jake and Kevin were fighting over a girl (the only Black female student at the school). I really didn’t need to include that detail, but I couldn’t resist spilling that drop of tea.
Original Source: Showtime - The Chi
At the point in which Jake and Kevin were issued their suspensions, I thought to myself, “Okay, I get that. They earned that.” The next day, Kevin got dressed in his uniform to head to school. As he approached the front door to leave, his mother asked, “Wait. Where do you think you’re going? I thought you were suspended?” Jake was also presented with a similar question from his older brother in a later scene. At that moment, I wondered why Jake’s brother and Kevin’s mother seemed to be so confused about the suspension and why they were still heading to school?
The two boys were indeed suspended. They received an “in-school suspension.” At the very basic level, in-school suspension is when a student is removed from the general classroom environment and prevented from participating in any school related activities. It is also supposed to be a time for students to engage in activities or conversations that will help remedy or change the behavior(s) that earned them the consequence.
I quickly realized that this type of suspension wasn’t the norm for schools like the ones Jake and Kevin’s families attended. Suspension for them meant that the student goes home and stays there until the return date stamped at the bottom of the suspension letter. There wasn’t a such thing as “in-school suspension” to Jake’s brother or Kevin’s mother; and quite honestly, I had never heard of in-school suspension until I became a principal of a charter school.
This, my friends, is what we call a disparity.
THE BIG DISPARITY IN SCHOOL SUSPENSION PRACTICES
Usually, when we talk about the disparity within school suspension practices we often zoom into the differences between the rate in which Black and White students are suspended. While this is an important reality, as it also surfaced in the Native Son episode, let’s take it a bit further. There are also grave disparities between what suspension actually means based upon the school a student attends.
What does this look like for most schools in urban, underserved communities?
A long time ago, when I taught in Chicago Public Schools district, suspending a student meant that s/he was removed from the school setting for a certain amount of time, depending on the infraction and severity. There weren’t any expectations for how the student should spend his/her suspension time, other than the hard requirement of staying off school grounds. When the student returned, teachers (myself included) just hoped for the best version of the student to show up. Rarely was that the case, and the cycle inevitably repeated itself.
What does this look like in other schools?
As I mentioned, I learned of in-school suspension when I became a principal of a charter school, a really awesome charter school [there may be some bias in the second part of that statement]. Our student handbook outlined the parameters for in-school suspension, alongside all of the behaviors and infractions that would lead to a student earning one. Students who earned an in-school suspension were required to come to school in full uniform and engage in reflective and restorative exercises for the entire day. Usually, the in-school suspension was served with the Dean of School Culture (or another available school leader). Exercises such as reflection essays, core values assessments, and restorative circles took place to ensure that the student understood their wrong-doings and had the opportunity to learn and grow from the experience.
Very different from what I experienced during my tenure with Chicago Public Schools—but why?
Why is there such disparity between the two?
Of course, race and socio-economic status are the obvious answers. Jake and Kevin attended affluent schools and therefore had the opportunity to serve an in-school suspension as their consequence (for a behavior that would have certainly earned them 3-5 days out of school had they attended the school down the street from their home).
However, they still received a consequence for a behavior that their non-Black classmates did not receive even though they all engaged in the same acts. Why? Well, Jake and Kevin are Black. The White female student didn’t get suspended for having sex in the stairwell; Jake did though. The White male student who got into a school fight in a previous episode didn’t get suspended; Jake and Kevin did though. These are not coincidences.
Bottom line: Having money can indeed create better circumstances, but being Black and having money doesn’t always create equity.
SO WHAT CAN WE DO?
Create better circumstances and equity within our own schools so that students do not feel the need to search for it elsewhere (and still ultimately never find it). When thinking about how to approach this practically, I recommend taking the initial step required for all change initiatives: try doing something different.
“Having money can indeed create better circumstances, but being Black and having money doesn’t always create equity.”
Begin with answering the question, “How does a student earn a suspension at my school?” Identify the behaviors students have to engage in in order to be removed from the educational setting and be stripped of valuable learning opportunities?
If you were to explore the idea of introducing an in-school suspension program to your school community (or giving your existing one a face-lift), how would you determine if a student received this consequence in place of the more severe, traditional out-of-suspension? We recommend to establishing a tiered behavior system that clearly defines the decision-making process when issuing either type of suspension. This would ensure equity, clarity, and consistency.
Get stakeholders involved. Conduct focus groups with students, teachers, parents, and other members of your team for their input and ideas. In order to effectively launch this idea, you will need the support and investment from all involved and impacted.
Think about what should occur during in-school suspension. This time should be valuable time spent for students and the overseeing adults. Reflective and restorative practices ought to be at the foundation of structuring a high-leverage in-school suspension program. Students deserve to have the opportunity to grow and learn from their behavior, as well as build relationships with their peers and themselves.
After [re]launching your in-school suspension program, make sure to engage in strategic work sessions dedicated to assessing how this shift is going. Collect and analyze the data that highlights the impact of your program -i.e. Ask: How is the post-behavior record for a student after serving in-school suspension? How does this compare to the post-behavior record for a student serving an out-of-school suspension (for the same infraction)?
Try it. Do not give up; results won’t be overnight. There will be wins and there will be challenges; but be sure to lean on and communicate with your people to bring them along on the journey, every step of the way.
Want to take steps towards improving your student suspension practices? Contact us. Our team is happy to support.