11-Year-Old, Handcuffed For Being Rude
When Yajira Quezada copped an attitude, police put her in cuffs.
An Adams County, Colo. Sheriff's Office incident report obtained by KUSA says the Shaw Heights Middle School 11-year-old was handcuffed and taken to a holding facility because she was, "argumentative and extremely rude" to an assistant principal.
"Why would they handcuff me?" Quezada asked KUSA. "I'm not the type of girl to get arrested."
The Sheriff's office said it was just following normal procedure.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/yajira-quezada-handcuffed_n_1324635.html
If I had handcuffed all my students who were argumentative and rude, a lot of them would have been cuffed at one point. Call a parent. That won't work all the time, but sometimes it will stop it flat.
This has got to stop. Unless the kids are outright dangerous or in some extreme emotional state, the cops should not handle it. I wonder if the administrator had dealt with many kids. Some haven't.
On thing I learned is never go to the Defcon 1 of discipline or you are out of ways to control the problem. You better try the other levels first.
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As I said, calling the police is the DEFCON 1 of DISCIPLINE. It is an analogy.
Lower DEFCON levels of discipline might include:
Calling a parent
Bringing in her counselor
Giving her a timeout with someone to watch her until she calls down.
Also try to find out what set her off. Somebody listening to her instead of ordering her might give her a chance to pause.
It probably quickly reached the level of saving face. Neither wanted to give an inch lest they feel like they have lost after feeling disrespected. The admin needs to offer her a way out that is a compromise. That is a 'golden bridge.'
This depends on her listening at all. However, she can't hear if she is being scolded.
I tried all of these at some point when I was teaching. A lot of times they worked. It beats calling the police.
Example: A student would utter a curse word. It might be directed at me or it might not be. I would turn around and look at the student and say 'Excuse me?' That meant you have one chance to escape trouble by apologizing. Almost all of them did apologize. I asked them to watch the language they used.
I didn't try to make it a big deal, but I wasn't going to ignore it. Some teachers I knew went batshit crazy.
where are the cops to protect them?
Oh, I know, they're out dealing with something even MORE IMPORTANT, like a rude child.
Some kids feel that face or their dignity is precious.
I taught some kids who were many grade levels below where they should be academically. They felt like academic failures. Their home situations weren't great. If they felt like you were disrespecting them, they would really get upset. In their own way, their dignity was something to hold on to at all costs.
They could be disciplined. Just don't humiliate them!
What you refer to as her self importance may be something quite different. They don't have to be handled with kid gloves. You do learn what buttons that will result in problem if pushed. You want some humility, but you will never get it if it is viewed as humiliation.
This girl may be a real discipline problem with a long history of problems. She could be upset about something just that day.
Adults aren't necessarily always right. Getting to such a high level of confrontation is the last thing you want to do. Calling the police unless it is dangerous is ridiculous.
I never took any shite off my students, and they knew it. They also knew what I expected from them, and that I would take care of any problems. I would also listen to them. I had my share of confrontations, but it was a battle I was damn sure was worth fighting
I had a father who was always right. He loved me, but I really felt humiliated at times when I was punished. If it was deserved, ok. If not, resentment would build up. That isn't healthy in parenting or teaching.
Of course, thermonuclear war is the biggest response. That is in the context of the geopolitical world and the confrontations there.
I am specifically talking about schools and the confrontations there. There have been many stories about the police being called into schools to handle problems. Sometimes it is a person who is on campus for security.
M
I am not making this up out of whole cloth. I taught and saw many types of confrontations between many different students and teachers. Most were handled by the teachers. At times, an administrator or counselor had to be called in. The cops were never called. They only would have been brought in for a student who presented a real and present danger.
They were brought in one time when one of the darlings went down the hall and set fire to all the posters on the wall. She had been a hard case and real troublemaker for as long as I knew her. She had pushed everyone to the limit. The principal talked to various people above her, and it was agreed that if she did not behave, the police would be called. She was warned, and I guess she wanted to test the principle. Off to juvie she went after the police turned her over to that system.
I never thought about calling the cops or anybody else. SWAT wouldn't be brought in unless there was a shooter or riot. I have no idea why you are going down that road. If a particular student or a few students were completely out of control, the cops are DEFCON one.
Once you go to that level, you have few other options. You have used the worst punishment in your arsenal. There are other less severe things to try. Those should be tried first.
I cannot explain this more clearly. We will just operate under different assumption.
As reported, this was a case of a juvenile deciding that her judgement on whether or not to obey a rule was superior to that of the authority in place to administer that rule - even after being confronted by that authority.
That's very much the kind of person who gets arrested.
Now... it should be noted that those in authority are not always correct and it's often appropriate to disobey authority... but it is the kind of thing that can get you arrested.
In this case, I don't think we have enough information to judge whether or not cuffs were necessary (though it certainly seems extreme), but we do know that this young lady has very poor judgement when deciding which rules should be followed even when she disagrees with them and which situations require her to take a stand on her principal (pun intended). "I'm going to get my sweater whether you want me to or not" is particularly childish.
But then again... she's 11. 