Word came through the grapevine that the youngest school-aged boy received an unique discipline for refusing to sit in his chair during a math lesson: his chair was removed for a time.

Such a confused handling prompted some reflection on classroom discipline that I knew growing up. And the most severe was in third grade: the teacher placed troublemakers in the closet.

The elementary school building was brand new, and the alcove that housed the closet for coats and cubbies behind heavy wood doors on pivot hinges spanned almost the whole length of one classroom wall. On one occasion as many as five children were stuffed in there with the winter coats and boots. Alternately, the teacher employed the lavatory, for every classroom through third grade had a private lavatory, as a place for isolating a young rogue from the class.

Discussing Tim's treatment with Jeff in light of what we experienced as kids - and I look back with some pride that I was never among those sentenced to either the closet or the john - he teased,

Didn't she tape you to your seat once?

No.

Was it your brother, then, that she taped to his seat? She taped someone to their seat once. Ask your brother.

Which one?

Any of them, all of them. Ask all of them. It could have been any of them, right?

I suppose so.

When she put the girl who sat in front of me all those years in the closet, the girl told her father, a high school teacher. She never put that girl in the closet again.

tags technorati : classroom discipline