H.S. Coach Fired for Leaving 2 Misbehaving Seniors Behind (And an Update)

Okay, I am completely baffled here. A couple of bratty teens refused to get on the school bus after eating as a restaurant and the coach was supposed to do… what, exactly? He waitied there with them until their sorry excuses for parents arrived to collect their little darlings, right? What were his other choices? He can’t physically force a couple of young men onto a school bus, can he?

I can’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would want to teach this generation of children and deal with their rediculous parents.

Why was his action illegal?

How rotten of those parents to expect the whole bus full of complying kids to sit there indefinitely because two young men would not comply.

So is it now the standard that a senior in high school cannot go one hour without adult supervision? WTH? And let me guess – these kids’ parents plan on sending them away to college four months from now. I hope they are sending a chaperon along.

Lenore, I hope you don’t mind that I incorporated (read: stole) part of your 6th paragraph to cobble together a response on Chron.com to some folks who feel that kids should never be left alone with Coach Sargent.

Re the coach’s record: who knows, but I wonder if his record is good because he has a more realistic view of what teens are capable of than his predecessors.

I bet the parents are most outraged by having to drive an hour at 11pm to pick up their brats. How dare the coach inconvenience them in such a way? Glad he got his job back.

From the update article: “the Board voted to rescind the proposed discharge of the head boys’ track team coach and the suspensions of the **four** other coaches”.

I’m assuming those 4 were suspended because they were on the bus and therefore involved in this. Why did one of those 4 not stay with the bratty students? Surely the 17 students who did get back on the bus would have been fine with only 3 coaches in attendance.

I think the Board’s response was excessive, and I’m glad they reversed it, but I agree with the poster that said the coaching record probably was the biggest reason they changed their minds. School boards are a lot more responsive to the squeakiest wheels than they are to common sense.

If those were my kids, I would be absolutely mortified by their behavior. Because they decided to be little brats, the coach and the parents had to get out of bed at 11pm and drive an hour through the middle of nowhere just to babysit them. (Hempstead and Giddings are two small towns, with nothing but another small town between them, in the middle of a bunch of nothing between Houston and Austin.) And then the coach had to apologize? Insane!

I did read in another article that one of the moms found out about her son being left behind when *he* called her, and that she freaked out because no one from the coaching staff had called to tell her what was going on. That does sound reasonable. The coach should have called the parents right away.

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/120409-hempstead-isd-fires-popular-coach

*inflict

Lenore-thought you might want to see this.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-six-year-old-handcuffed-20120417,0,765665.story
I have a few issues with this.
One, this girl has serious behavioral problems, and my best guess would be that she has bipolar disorder. (My son is bipolar, so I’m quite familiar with it.) Still, her parents obviously do nothing to teach her consequences. Her mother told reporters she had her ‘mood swings’ but that was no reason for the police to treat her so harshly. Throwing a tantrum so severe you injure a teacher is not a result of a mood swing.
Two, I wonder what triggered this tantrum. I don’t mean to imply that the teacher in any way earned this, but I find it odd that the article doesn’t even mention what she was so upset about.
Third, when I first saw the title of this article, I was appalled. A six-year-old put in HANDCUFFS?! But as I read, I started to understand it from the teacher’s point of view. This girl was obviously out of control and a danger to herself and everyone in the room with her. Not that I believe calling the police on a child that young should be first-response. (The police have better things to do, people!) But these people had no other ways of restraining this child. And I don’t doubt that the police slapped handcuffs on her for their and her own safety.
The parents here obviously think their child should be able to do whatever she wants. THIS mother should earn the title of World’s Worst Mom, not dear Lenore here?

While in no way disagreeing with the actions of the coaches (I would have left them behind too). It might help some readers to understand why a 17yo boy is capable of this behaviour.

You have boys transforming into men in an environment (high school) that gives them no responsibilty and therefore no outlet, no way to be men. Couple this with teachers conditioned to being in control of a group that outnumbers them. You have major power conflicts that happen all day long throughout a high school day. Lots and lots and lots of emotions. Rarely do students of this age have emotional control..rarely are they taught it. They know aggression or submission (not how to back down, calm down etc).

Hoping it is easier to see how two boys can back themselves into a corner that they don’t emotionally know how to get out of. Given that four coaches couldn’t get them on the bus one might easily imagine the coaches were rather emotional themselves…. A bit of a hotbox.

Leaving the boys was great (at 11pm after a long day trying to keep a team of high schol boys under control I might have done the same) but also a big power play by coaches. The boys were not shown how to control emotions.

I am still all for there being nothing wrong with two young adults being left alone, just hoping to show that these emotions are big and real and sadly the young men have not learnt to control them.

I will go back and read the other posts, but, if these were my kids, and I got the call that they had to be picked up due to misbehavior, I would be telling them to walk the hour ride home. And no, I don’t care about the time of night.

They misbehaved at an age when they should be role models. They wouldn’t take their punishment, and made matters worse by holding up the whole team. Those kids need to apologize to their parents for letting them down, to the coaches for causeing the trouble and to their team mates for not being part of the team. And as the parent, I would tell them they were off the team.

Texas teacher here – the coach would have been fired if he didn’t have a winning season – even without this incident. Football is god in Texas.

The coaches did violate several laws/policies regarding students.
1. Most serious denying food. You CAN NOT punish a student by denying them food or restroom breaks that is considered abuse.

2. Giddings is not more than a wide space in along US 290. These are towns that basically roll up the sidewalks at 10 pm. Was the restaurant going to even be open? Even the Whataburgers tend to shut down their dinning rooms and only have the drive through open.

3. Problem we are required to have X chaperons per Y students. Generally they require 1 driver and 1 adult on a bus for HS. For the COACH’s protection they couldn’t leave one coach they would have to leave 2 coaches behind. Remember these are two ticked off athletes lying and saying the coaches did something or came on to them is a real possibility. That may have left 2 busses without supervision.

What do I think they should have done – called the parents that raised the brats and tell them they have 10 minutes to get their brats on the bus – or they are suspended for the rest of the year – all letters of recommendation will be retracted, and they don’t graduate. Those parents would have had the brats on the phone and on the bus quick. Come Monday the principal should have suspended them, retracted all letters or recommendation, and barred them from walking.

Honestly, if the boys’ original infraction was just being rowdy on the bus, I think it was probably a dumb move to just keep escalating the punishment–first, they were rowdy, then they got punished with not being allowed to get off the bus for McDonald’s (and,the bathroom issue didn’t even occur to me, but good point, especially considering they’d probably had a lot of water and Gatorade during and after the game), and then they got off anyway, and fanned the flames by refusing to get back on, because they were probably ticked off at being denied McDonald’s, because even if it was just a late-night snack/treat, most teenage boys have the appetites of trash compactors, so they probably WERE hungry, despite (maybe) having eaten dinner earlier. So, if I were the coach, I would have had the boys channel their energy in a positive way, by leading the rest of the bus in a sing-along. I might have even made this an established tradition/rule right from the first away game–you act up, you sing for everyone. This would either embarrass the boys into behaving, because they didn’t want to sing, or it’d get everyone involved in a rousing chorus of the school fight song–and, it might even get some students volunteering to lead the sing-along, thereby promoting camaraderie and inherently discouraging misbehaviour.

SCARY!

So I told this story to my husband to see if he would have the same initial reaction I did. Yup, exact same “What ever happened to, if you don’t get on the bus in 5 minutes you will be left behind?”

Both of us went on school field trips at that age. No one ever defied the get back on the bus call, and we can’t imagine what would have happened if we did. We believed the drivers when they said, “be here or you will be left.”

What a jerk move on the part of the school board to completely undermine all the bus drivers and coaches like that.

As always… Wow! … and unbelievable. I especially loved “after hearing from the community, parents, students, and the coaches, the Board voted to rescind the proposed discharge” in your Paul Harvey rest of the story.

Let’s hear it for the Good Guy and responsible citizens that stood up for him. I hope we see more of the same.

Thanks, Lenore for sharing!

@Emily sing along for 17 years old boys? I guess that would escale well over denied dinner and bathroom break.

@Andy – As other people have pointed out, how was the coach supposed to react to that situation without breaking rules? I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be allowed to physically force two bratty teenage boys onto the bus(no matter how much the worthless brats deserved to be manhandled a bit) or force the rest of the teenagers to sit and wait god-knows-how-long in the middle of the night until their idiotic teammates finally decided to cooperate.

Of course, everything is the coach’s fault, not the moronic teenage boys’ fault. I’m sure those wastes of oxygen got off with a slap on the wrist, while the man who was just trying to do his job nearly /lost/ his job.

Well, this was a track situation. Note the reference to “meet,” not “game.” So it’s not unlikely that they were legitimately pretty hungry and hadn’t eaten in many hours after expending a lot of calories running — but still, as others have said, it won’t kill them, they were adults or very, very close, and what was he supposed to do? Take a bunch of people acting like animals into a restaurant? THEN what problem would have arisen?

This coach is also the DEAN OF STUDENTS and has been completely undermined by the administration. He got his job back, but I’d be surprised if he can continue effectively in either job at this point. The general attitude that teachers are always in the wrong and the kids never are is one reason why students are not learning in many schools. It’s not the lousy teachers! It’s the lousy students!!! There is no concept of personal responsibility — underlined by stories like this. The coach did not owe anyone an apology. Those students ought to be shining that guy’s shoes from now until graduation.

I did not get the impression that the kids were denied food. Assuming this was actually a needed meal in the first place, there are ways to receive food other than going into a restaurant.

Don’t worry – this kind of thing will be the new norm as “kids” live with their parents into their 30s.

@Andy–when I was in high school and (my first round of) university, we took great pride in singing our school song, at sports games, during Orientation Week, and any time when school spirit was needed–in fact, it’s tradition at Bishop’s University, my alma mater, for the entire first year class to start each new academic year by gathering in the principal’s front yard (the principal’s house is on campus) to sing the school song–at least, the clean version of it. Anyway, the reason why I suggested it is because it’s win-win–if the boys want to sing, that gets them all occupied and doing something positive, and if they don’t, the mild “threat” is enough of an incentive to get them to behave. Also, for the person who said “pack a snack,” that doesn’t solve the “bathroom” half of “food and bathroom break.”

“By the way—I don’t really agree with the idea of feeding young athletes McDonald’s junk for dinner, unless there’s no healthier alternative.”

There’s no alternative on the kind of budgets that most schools give their track teams. Around these parts, they get a whopping $5 each to feed themselves after a meet. That’s not enough even at McD’s for most of them, so they have to bring extra themselves.

I guarantee if this had been a football game, we wouldn’t be talking about McDonald’s, unless it was kind of an “optional” thing as has been suggested.

Emily, this is not a private school in Quebec. This is an urban track team in Houston. Your experience does not carry over.

And BTW, I’m NOT saying that “they need the food” and so shouldn’t have been kept out of the McDonald’s in the first place. The coach’s initial decision to keep them on the bus was entirely appropriate. I’m just saying that the restaurant stop may not have been intended just for fun and games, but was quite likely a normal part of the process for an away track meet, that everyone considered just part of the routine and the way they were going to get a meal that night, just like every other week during the season, because that’s how it’s often done.

Knowing how to read, I understand it was a track meet. I just assumed they got fed like the football players do (well not the big meals because football is very important in Texas and track isn’t, but fed something during the day). I know that, through my 5 years in band, McDs stops for the football team and entourage were optional and occasionally cancelled for various reasons. I was basing my thoughts on that. I could very well be wrong.

If they hadn’t eaten, denying food to a kid who hadn’t eaten all day is wrong no matter how awful they are being. But not letting kids off the bus doesn’t necessarily mean no food. I would have ordered their food and made them eat it by themselves on the bus. If you can’t trust them to act reasonable on the bus, you have no business unleashing them on the restaurant.

I also agree with Uly – If you know you are going to go hours without being served food, bring some with you! If you haven’t eaten all day and are starving, seems like you should have prepared better. I imagine that they wanted something more substantial – and the buses usually stop at some fastfood teen haven – but no food all day is the fault of the person. Wanting something more substantial is no more compelling to me than simply wanting a midnight snack. These kids were only an hour from something more substantial at home and should have brought sufficient snacks to last the day so that they weren’t starving.

As for bathroom, good grief, it is a total of a 1.5 hour drive from meet to home. They were just at a place with bathrooms less than 30 minutes prior. These are teens, not little old men with prostate problems. Even with drinking lots of fluids, they shouldn’t need to pee every half hour. While it is certainly possible that they did need to pee, I’m not going to assume that they did on such a short trip and view the decision not to let them off the bus as cruel.

@ Pentamom–Bishop’s University is public (and not elitist or excessively expensive), and they have a football team. I was never an athlete, but I did travel with my high school band, to day-long competitions, and also travelled internationally twice with them–to Italy in grade eleven, and to New Orleans in OAC. I also went on a three-day concert tour with the wind ensemble at the University of Western Ontario. Our music teachers ran a tight ship, but they didn’t ever deny food/bathroom breaks on trips as a punishment–instead, they encouraged us to play our best, and be our best, because doing anything less would reflect badly on our school, and ruin our colleagues’ hard work. We mostly took that to heart–not saying we were perfect, but most people we encountered, liked us, both as musicians and as well-mannered young adults.

I didn’t get the impression that this was an inner city urban track team. It actually seems like a relatively small, rural school. I think someone said between Houston and Austin. A Class 2A football team is generally not a large urban school, but maybe Texas does that different too. Either way a sing-along is laughable.

Emily, I was part of MANY school organizations that took trips, including the tennis team. It was always very well known that bad behavior on the bus could lead to not going next time or getting kicked off the team completely (or whatever). Track, not being a powerhouse sport in which the athletes can do no wrong (unlike football which is), I’m certain that not going to the next meet was always on the table. They were already passed that and needed something IMMEDIATE to get the behavior to stop for the rest of that trip. And, if my brother and his friends were any indication, teenage boys are not as bothered by nasty teenage boy smells as teenage girls. In fact, they may actually be impervious to them.

I also agree with Muldoon that 60 miles is too far to make someone walk, even a healthy athlete, and even as punishment.

Again Emily those things ARE established from day one. I’ve never been on a team or in an organization for school that did not have rules for bus trips and penalties, up to and including getting kicked off the team, for violating them. This is a WINNING football coach with many years experience and the Dean of Students, meaning he has some ability to instill discipline into kids. Believe it or not sometimes kids misbehave even when they know there are consequences to their misbehavior. Believe it or not sometimes kids act up on the bus even though they KNOW they won’t get to go to the next meet. Believe it or not, kids don’t always make good decisions.

I’m not sure why you have the impression that this was a first resort as opposed to a last resort to solve an immediate problem after known threats to miss meets were ignored by starting the behavior in the first place. Outrageous behavior on the bus needs to stop. It is distracting to the bus driver making the drive unsafe. You can’t keep taking away meets if that isn’t working. You need to try something else for the safety of everyone. And nobody else was penalized except these two kids. Everyone else got to go to McDs.

I’ve never seen The Cosby Show. What happened to Theo?

Hi Lenore – love your blog! You know what would be great, though? In the FAQ – maybe you could have a section with good comebacks to common helicopter parent ?

For instance, a message was posted recently on a neighborhood email group that I belong to, forwarding a community alert from a nearby town that warned of a man driving in a van, who had apparently asked a kid to get in his car. The kid walked away.

Regardless of the truth of this story (there was a similar story recently which turned out to be a fabrication), the tone in which it’s told, and the accompanying comments about kids needing to be supervised at all times, need to be challenged. It’s hard to know what to say to convince people, though, or at least present another point of view.

Theo and Cockroach were making rude comments about an overweight cashier at the restaurant their track coach took them to after a meet. The coach yelled at them, made them get back on the bus, without ordering food and then kicked them off the track team. They lied about why they were late coming home from track but Clair (Theo’s mom) knew something was up. Theo complained that she wasn’t treating him like an adult (he was 17) so she decided to treat him the same way she treats people at her job as a lawyer and arranged a trial to uncover the truth about what really happened.

Now, I’m not suggesting parents have mock trials for their kids but she knew her son was keeping something from her. She didn’t automatically assume that she knew the whole story based on his word alone and when she did find out the truth she made him responsible for his own actions without blaming the coach or someone else. He screwed up and they both knew it. If I found out my 17 year old had been left at a restaurant, rather than taking the team bus I would want to find out the whole story, including the coach’s. My grandfather always said, “There’s 3 sides to every story; your side, my side and the truth.” Even if I trust my kid I’d want to know how other people viewed the situation because there’s always more to it than a single perspective.

What Neener said.

The issue with eating is – did the coaches break a rule in refusing the runners food such that THAT is grounds for them being disciplined regardless of what happened later? By law, schools (and even prisons) cannot withhold meals as punishment for any behavior. If this was a scheduled meal, the coaches are skating on thin ice for not providing the meal. The school could find itself mired in all kinds of problems. If this was a treat stop, they haven’t even violated that law.

@Muldoon they would have had to walk to the nearest bus stop/station.

@the 6 year old being handcuffed, yes she should have been handcuffed, an exception should not be made because she is a child. Today it’s “but she’s only a child!” in a while it’s “but she’s only a teenager!” a little while longer and it’s “but she’s only a woman!”

About the 6yo – my bigger question is how the heck did we get to this point? Kids thinking they can throw furniture at teachers? School personnel having no right to restrain said kids? Parents throwing public tantrums because their child’s tantrum was not considered acceptable? The media rewarding said parents by picking up the story?

My kids have a classmate who gets into trouble every day, and it often involves physical violence, including hurting classmates. At least one of my kids has been bitten by this child, among other things. Once my daughter got disciplined because she didn’t want to be this child’s reading buddy after said child had hit a classmate. But this brat has all the rights. So what if my kids get bitten in school? At least their teacher isn’t allowed to touch them.

skl1-

I don’t know if the head coach was made aware of everything or just the last bit. It is clear he knew about the end, but it is also possible that he was informed all along.

You can escape from prison too. I’ve seen people do it as easily as these boys (from jail anyway). I’m not sure that the fact that the kids were not physically tied to the seats and could actually break out of the bus through an emergency exit is a good argument that they were not confined to the bus and could eat if they wanted. That would be like me arguing that the fact that my client slipped out a police car window means that they were not really in police custody, and thus, not guilty of escape. And military personnel cannot legally be denied MEALS as punishment either. In fact, while an employer need not provide meals, it can’t deny an employee access to them by denying breaks. Nobody said anything about dessert. That is kinda the issue – whether this stop was a MEAL or dessert.

School kids generally have no more right to leave campus and get a meal than a prisoner. My kid can’t leave school to grab lunch. If she did, there would be punishment to her for leaving campus. I bet there would have been suspension if these boys had walked out of the track meet to get food. I bet there was (or should have been) punishment, beside being left for getting off the bus, against the orders of the coaches. I think the point of the law is that people who can’t get meals for themselves without suffering some punishment for doing so should be provided those meals, not that meals only need to be provided if there is no humanly possible way to get said meals.

“They may not even be football runners. The school year is winding down. This has got to be near the end of track season. ”

Don’t know what it’s like in Texas, but my son is at his second meet of the year today, with about four more weeks of competition to go. The beginning of our season was a bit delayed because of funding cuts in our district, but we’re by no means at the tail end.

Again, just a point of fact, not disputing what you’re saying otherwise.

This really ticks me off. All it taught these kids is that their coach has absolutely no authority and would actually get in trouble for any kind of reasonable discipline, which would include leaving their overgrown toddler a__ as what was done here. A prime example of how all of this parent paranoid and school fear of litigation type of society we’ve evolved to today. Just wonderful.

Donna, re the 6yo, why be angry at the school? What should it have done differently, assuming they had no prior warning that this could happen with this child? I’m told they were not allowed to touch her in order to get her to stop.

As for what the parents are or should be angry about, the fact is that t hey sent to school a child who was out of control and they don’t see how they have set the school up for failure with this child. Even if the parents did not create the behavior problem, they should feel responsible for fixing it or mitigating it. “I know she has mood swings” doesn’t cut it.

skl1 – The police shouldn’t have been involved in matters involving a 6 year old. Even if, and that’s a huge if, the school had justification to call them, the child had calmed before the police arrived. The police should have been removed from the equation at that point. The girl was under control and there was no need for police involvement unless an arrest was intended and the arrest of a 6 year old is ridiculous.

Why do you assume the parents knew their child was capable of this behavior? The child may never have raged this violently before. The parents may truly have seen nothing more than “mood swings” prior to this. The fact that the school was unaware indicates that this was not common behavior for this child. We are not in the first weeks of school. The school has been interacting regularly with this child for 8 months now with no similar behavior. If the behavior was a shock to the school, it may have been an equal shock to the parents. She is only 6 and we have no idea what set this off.

We don’t know if the parents previously sought help for their child for her “mood swings.” Maybe they dropped the ball. Maybe the behavior wasn’t so serious that the parents sought help. Maybe they couldn’t get help. These are not people with resources and education. It is damn near impossible to get a 6 year real treatment for mental/emotional issues if you have a wealth of resources. It’s virtually impossible when you have to rely on medicaid and Advantage Behavioral (Georgia state mental health clinic). I’ve had many juvenile clients who, after years of trying, finally receive treatment because they were brought into the system and the court forced it.

These parents are not parent of the year. They clearly don’t get the extremeness of their child’s behavior. That may be because they weren’t there, have never seen anything similar from their child and really believe that it was nothing more than the “mood swings” they are used to. It could be because they are rotten parents. Regardless, handcuffing the child was wrong and the parents have a right to be upset about it.

Donna, have you ever been in a school with a child throwing a violent, throw-desks-around tantrum? A 6 year old can indeed hurt others, even adults, and especially the other children. Yes she calmed down, but she could easily have raged again and majorly injured someone. I had a classmate that was prone to tantrums like this. After such a tantrum, it literally was not safe to have her sitting in the office waiting for her parents to come pick her up, or to let her go back to class and resume the day. We learned that the hard way, after (it was thought that) she had calmed down and then later, as I was focused on my work and didn’t notice in time to jump out of the way, she threw a desk across the classroom and happened to hit me.

This child was attacking adults that could legally not restrain her. She may have calmed, but if she raged again there would be nothing they could do that they didn’t do the first time. If no one could predict she would do that the first time, they couldn’t predict when/if she would do it again, and obviously her mood was extra volatile that day. Yes, this child needs help, but that has to come later. At that time what they had to do was make the child and the people around her safe. The only way to do that at that time was to involve the police.

Emily … what you don’t seem to understand that this had turned into a pissing contest between the two students (male, 17, and testosterone poisoned) and the adults on the bus. They had pushed it so far that they weren’t going to back down. Egos were at stake.

My brother’s way of dealing with this – when he was coaching soccer – was to call the parents of the misbehaving players and hold the bus where it was until the parents had retrieved their children. They got one chance per season to talk their little snowflake into behaving, because the next time it was drive as far as necessary to get the kid. On the third offense, the child was barred from the bus – they could still play, but their transportation to games had to be arranged by the parents. Riding with my brother was a privilege, not a right.

He also called all the OTHER parents to tell them the bus was going to be late because other players were being too obnoxious to be allowed to stay on the bus and they were waiting for the parents to come get them.

Once launched, that particular bomb was not canceled – pleading, whining, groveling and promising to never do it again didn’t work. They had had the rules of the road explained to them, and had signed a copy of them before the season started. So had the parents.

Skl1, how did we get to this point? It used to be first, that kids did not enter school until 1st grade. 2nd, kids with “issues” did not used to go to public schools, prior to the mainstreaming efforts.

But, I do know that this did happen in the past. A man my age (45) as a kid used to throw tantrums like this. His older brothers were called and they held him down until his mother came to the school. He is probably on the spectrum, and could/can not control his temper.

Now we have internet telling us about how bad everything is, but, have you heard about what is or is not happening at your own local school? This kid is not the norm for schools even now. Which is probably why most of the staff and teachers do not know how to handle a kid like this.

I have to agree with CrazyCatLady. Mainstreaming and integration are all well and good, UNTIL they start ruining school/summer camp/swim class/whatever for able-bodied kids. For example, when I was 13, I went to the same summer camp I’d attended since I was ten, and one girl in my cabin was mentally handicapped. She slept in the bunk next to mine (we had four sets of bunk beds, two by two, then the two counsellors slept on single beds in the front corners of the cabin, and the back corners just had shelves), and she kicked me all night, bracing her hands on the bedposts so she could kick harder. When I complained, and asked to be moved, I was labelled “intolerant” by my counsellors, who were unwilling to switch beds with me, or rotate who slept next to that girl, or arrange for her to sleep in the infirmary or something–and, because I was 13, I sort of believed that my counsellors were right, and I was the one at fault. I’m not saying that kids with issues should be denied a “normal” childhood, but tolerance is a two-way street. Yes, the general population should make some adjustments for those with special needs, but the caregivers of said people with special needs should teach their charges to behave appropriately before exposing them to situations where their negative behaviours can adversely affect others.

“They have the power and ability to restrain someone if necessary, and if the child was really that dangerous and unpredictable, she could have been short-term committed to a mental health facility on a time-limited basis until her case could be dealt with. If she was NOT enough of a danger to herself or others to do that, the cops were not necessary.”

But the school staff does not have the ability to determine if she needs to go to a mental health facility. And I don’t know if things are different elsewhere, but around here the Emergency Services department of Social Services will tell you to call the cops if the child is an immediate threat or in immediate danger. Social Services will work on the case quickly, but the cops do the immediate removal of the threat. Maybe public schools (I know for sure private schools don’t) have a secret hotline to Social Services where they will arrive as quickly as the cops can and take care of such a situation, but I doubt it.

Either way the result is the same; adults with the legal ability (yes physically most adults can restrain most 6 year olds, which is why I said legally) to do so restrained the child and removed her from the situation. The parents should be thankful she was taken to the police station where they could pick her up, rather than committed to a mental health facility.

Emily, you have to understand that how you acted up is not how EVERY kid acts up. In fact, it’s probably not how most kids act up. You are holding the entire world to the “band geek” standard of behavior (I say as a fellow band geek). The world is not made up of only band geeks. Maybe troublemakers DO sign up for track at this school – at least 2 of them anyway. Or maybe these are good kids who were just full of themselves one night. Or maybe they were just average kids whose acting up is worse than wearing a hat.

What do you suggest that the coaches do if the kids won’t shut up? Hold up the entire bus on the side of the road while they all sing until the miscreants give in? (I suppose that is one possibility but why should the non-offending kids have to be delayed). Loud obnoxious behavior on the bus is distracting to the driver of the bus and unsafe for everyone on the bus. It has to stop or the bus has to stop.

The coaches acted very much in accordance with common practice at my school during my high school days. If we got too loud and wouldn’t calm down, the coaches threatened missed McDs to get it quiet before the bus wrecked and everyone died. The bus would then get deadly quiet because we wanted our McDs. For some reason, these boys didn’t shut up and decided to lock into a battle of wills with the coaches instead. Who knows why. Could be jerks. Could be feeling wild oats of the tail end of senior year. Could be because the head coach wasn’t there. could be because of a million reasons. 17 of the 19 kids acted responsibly so it is something with these particular kids and not a result of overall coach behavior. If 17 of the kids got locked out of McDs, then I’d wonder what the coaches were doing wrong.

And why was that procedure put in place? For safety reasons. And safety or not, as I said before, an exception should not be made for anyone.

@Donna:

1. Band students are not necessarily geeks. My high school band was the only ensemble of that level (as in, regular public high school) to be mentioned in the Canadian Dictionary of Music, because the music program there is really good, but more than that, the band reached out to the school and the community, by playing at game days, dramatic productions, and parades and charity events around town. Playing in the band didn’t carry the kind of social stigma you see on Saved By The Bell and whatnot, and the band was as well-known as our (undefeated) rugby team. Also, several band students were also athletes. They still knew how to behave, and honestly, I don’t even remember the non-musical athletes causing trouble either. They all got good grades, and were nice to EVERYONE around school, popular or not, because they respected their coaches as much as we respected our music teachers, and all of those people stressed the importance of being the best person you can be both on and off the court/field/stage/whatever. The worst I can remember anyone doing is maybe sneaking an underage beer here and there at a party outside of school (myself included; I drank at the West Side Story cast party), and none of us would have dreamed of purposely getting our entire group in trouble over a power struggle with a teacher or coach who we liked and respected.

2. What do I suggest for a disciplinary impasse on the bus? How about this: Assistant coach or team manager/team parent, or maybe the principal takes an extra vehicle, under the pretext of transporting the Gatorade/first aid kit/extra uniforms/whatever. This person follows the team bus, and any players who misbehave are exiled to that vehicle, and then disciplined further later, if necessary–maybe washing stinky jerseys or jockstraps, maybe kicked off the team temporarily or permanently, depending on the severity of the infraction.

@Emily —

If I were the parent of a non-misbehaving kid, I don’t think I’d want his expensive uniform (for which I’d have to pay if it were not returned undamaged) placed into the custody of another kid to be washed as punishment.

Even if you could somehow make those kids pay for any damage, MY kid missing the next meet because the OTHER kid didn’t get it washed and safely returned on time is NOT an appropriate price to pay for THAT kid’s misbehavior.

Besides everything Donna’s said — the point isn’t that band kids are better behaved than these kids because they’re less cool. It’s that your experience of fairly well-behaved band kids who could be brought back into line with a few words OBVIOUSLY DOES NOT APPLY to kids who wouldn’t get back on the bus after being threatened with being left behind, and who were in the position they were in the first place because of blatant misbehavior.

It icks me out to hear people talking about “disciplining kids” as if they are 10 years old. These are young adults in my view. If they don’t know how to behave in this type of situation, as far as I’m concerned, that’s their problem. I just wouldn’t have anything to do with them on a school excursion (sports or otherwise) again.

There may be something to the argument that the coaches were not treating them like young adults in the first place. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. Maybe there was a better solution, but hindsight is 20/20. What I picture is a group of exhausted, exasperated players and coaches wanting to go HOME already. And two seniors with cell phones who cared more about their theatrics than anything else at that moment. Who were NOT endangered by being left there until the coach arrived. Worthy of review at the next staff meeting? Sure. Desrving of firing? No.

Speaking of how we treat young adults . . . I am reading a book about longevity, and it occurred to me that maybe the dumbing-down of our youth is due to the fact that our lifespans have gotten so much longer in the past century.

I may look at things differently from many parents since I am 40 years older than my kids. Who knows how long I’ll have the luxury of supporting them or covering their asses, even if I want to? I have to proceed on the assumption that they need to function as adults as soon as they can be legally treated as such. It’s a good motivation to make sure my kids taste reality as soon as they are ready.

Not so long ago, parents knew they would be lucky to live long enough to become grandparents (even with early marriages the norm). I’m sure it would never cross their mind that someone should be constantly supervising their 17yo son. For that matter, most probably would have considered it flagrant spoiling to allow a 17yo to play sports instead of working.

I’m a teacher. Here’s what was going on.

The reason the coach was in trouble isn’t that the students were unable to supervise themselves for an hour. It was that during the time period when the students were unsupervised, the students were legally still on a school-sponsored trip. The law therefore recognized them as still being at school, which means the school was legally responsible for their safety.

If one of these dumb-ass athletes had gotten hurt by even slipping and falling on a recently-mopped floor or had left the restaurant and gotten hit by a car while crossing the street, the parents would have had a whooooole lot of legal right to sue the school for negligence. Doesn’t matter that the students were jerks or dumbasses or snots; the parents could sue and they would win. =That’s= why the coach was in trouble.

The legally proper response would have been for the coach to call the parents and make the entire team wait until said parents showed up. Once they did, he could turn the brats over and be free of legal liability. He could also kick them off the team and be assured the whole team would hate them forever.

Scott, don’t quite agree that it’s necessarily “spoiling” to allow teenagers to play sports/participate in extra-curricular activities, and we don’t know that it wasn’t in ADDITION to working a part-time job. A lot of universities favour applicants with some kind of extra-curricular involvement over those without, and a lot of people say that a Bachelor’s degree these days is like a high school diploma was a generation ago. Also, there are long-term benefits from these activities–socialization, teamwork, physical fitness (for sports/dance/cheerleading), so we can’t discount these benefits, and treat all after-school activities like a pointless indulgence for young people, as if they were just sitting and playing Wii for hours on end.

About the McDonalds thing. At 11 pm in Giddings that might have been the only thing open.

skl1,
If the child is older than the age of reason in your state – you go to the cops and press assault charges against the bully. Get a TRO to keep the brat out of school.

If the child is under the age of reason – press child endangerment charges against the principal for not controlling the situation.

@ Emily.
Struggling in veing not to get involved in this debate. You are not listening to people who actually know.

In the light of day is very different to on the bus at 11pm. Instead of trying to give inexperienced advice maybe just listen to the comments and see if you can really get your head in that space…. It was always going to be a no-win situation, only a very skilled teacher could have handled it… and only a few teachers in a staffroom have that skill.

Your experience as a girl at band camp holds nothing over the behaviour of a senior male athlete on a bus full of other male athletes late at night after an event. It does not compare. Ask a thousand teachers if they would rather the bus full of band students or the bus of these boys and almost without exception they will choose the band camp bus… They are two very different types of students, and two very different crowds for a teacher to lead.

I am a teacher. I have been there. I have dealt with amazing students who comply, students who cant be threatend, conjoled, requested etc. I have also experience a hot-headed backed-in-the-corner rookie-mistake argument with a student… There is no backing down. I am reading these comments and so many of the response are from teachers, parents, leaders who know that this is true.

Here is my advice… Go lead a group of these boys. Experience it. Prepare to be laughed at and scorned though, because the moment you make the mistake of asking a boy to sing to a bus… well you will never ever ever have control of that group again… that is how the pack works. So in the heat of the moment, at 11pm, after a long day keeping these young men in line, when you have been pushed way to far…. make the right call…You suggested quite a few, don’t throw them all at the kid.. just pick the right one… and then stare that kid down as you enforce it… don’t give in… and don’t make the wrong call or not only will you lose the respect of the team and you job, but some people on the internet will start picking your decisions to pieces.

Cass:

1. I actually have worked with kids of all ages, including teenage boys. The most difficult group would have to have been the open grade ten drama class I peer-assisted during my last year of high school. “Open’ meant open to students with learning disabilities, behaviour problems, you name it–and, on the other end of the spectrum were the really bright, engaged, enthusiastic kids who really wanted to learn, but often had to take a back seat while the troublemakers were being reined in. On the other hand, they were all very concerned with being “cool,” so mild public humiliation (or, the fear of appearing “uncool”) was an effective deterrent with them, but YMMV.

2. While working with these students, and other young people, I rarely got backed into a corner, because I chose my battles. Hat in class? Fine with me. Teasing another student? Deliberate cruelty, absolutely not fine. Hitting on me? Harassment. Backflips off slippery theatre blocks? Potential spinal injury, so go to the office before you end up in the E.R. All those things really happened, but the teacher was more likely to get backed into corners than I was (at 18 years old), because I chose my battles, but she chose EVERY battle.

3. For the record, I’ve never once been to “band camp.” Even band kids teased each other about that (mildly), since the advent of “American Pie.” There was no social stigma attached to going on band TRIPS during the school year (maybe because we were roaming around Rome while others were stuck in school), but for some reason, going to “band camp” in the summer crossed the line into true “band geek” territory–it was one of our many running jokes. But, main point, there is a difference.