While on Christmas break, I got hooked on many marathon viewings of Locked Up on MSNBC. It's an excellent show that documents prison life. One night they were profiling a juvenile detention center called Lake County Juvenile Complex in Indiana.
There was one story that focused on an inmate/teenager/student who was back in court after being arrested on drug possession charges. It was his second time in the center for various illegal activities. This time though, he was making progress with his life; he removed his gang tattoos, went back to school and was passing to become an electrician, making tremendous progress in his weekly therapy sessions for anger management, and also had a second child on the way and promised to be a better father.
During the court session, the prosecutor kept bringing up the negative issues associated with this inmate/teenager/student, while the defendant was pleading his case in all the positive contributions he has been making. The court ruled that he was making progress with his life and he needs that to continue and therefore didn't need to have a longer stay at the detention center. After the ruling, the inmate/teenager/student erupted in tears of joy.
I like to think of myself as not only a teacher, but a tutor, counselor, advocate, parent and friend. Now I can add defendant to that list. Without the defendant pleading for this inmate/teenager/student, there is no way he would be free. I think some teachers are always pointing out the negative such as not showing up to class, not doing homework, etc. We need more defendants pointing out the positives in our students' lives. It's the only way some of them have a chance to succeed.
I run a school-wide positive behavior support plan and you'd be surprised the amount of teacher reluctance in participating in the program. There are many ways to support your students. A simple "Hello" and "How was your weekend?", if said sincerely, can welcome a student in your class and be that positive support they desire. Let's all be defendants and promote our students to be the best possible citizens they can be. We don't want to see them on the next episode of "Locked Up".
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Here is Rodrick: the student mentioned in this post
