Gryphon Gazette

The student news site of Animo Pat Brown Charter High School

The student news site of Animo Pat Brown Charter High School

Gryphon Gazette

The student news site of Animo Pat Brown Charter High School

Gryphon Gazette

    Detention: A Fair Punishment?

    Detention: A Fair Punishment?

    By: Marlene Cazarez & Francisco Cernas-Garcia

    Detention is passed out by teachers the way police pass out parking tickets and students hate detention the way America hates Donald Trump. Students hate detention, yet they fail to change their habits that constantly get them into detention week after week after week. 

    There are a variety of different detention policies at different schools across schools in Los Angeles, but here at APB we consider our detention policy to be very unique. When students receive a detention, they have the opportunity to serve their time with any teacher and they have the chance to complete any work they may have not done. Instead of wasting the students time, here at APB students have the chance to be productive and do homework or even read a book. Some students hate the policy here at APB and some might even find it as an unfair punishment but first we have to learn exactly what the policy here at APB is. 

     

    What is the detention policy here at APB?

    Mrs.Brown:

    A system for both teachers and administrators and other staff members to use when they feel that a student isn’t meeting basic classroom or school expectations. I stressed that it’s something that teachers and staff can use because sometimes in other schools only the administrators could only hand out detentions. I think we have tried to empower the teachers to use good judgement and decide when they feel detention is appropriate when something has taken place in their own classroom.

    The teachers objective is to discipline the students for whatever they are doing wrong, to enforce good student behavior. But the question is whether the detention policy here at APB is actually effective. Is the detention policy really needed here at APB, or is it just a meaningless detention?

    Why do students need detention?

     Mrs.Brown: The point of any consequence is to hopefully deter the student from doing the same behavior again if its causing a problem. For some students its very effective, they get a 30 or 60 minute detention and they realize it’s not worth having to give up that amount of time and they work on whatever behavior led to the detention in the first place and it stops. For other students, its not very effective and so from there we try to go beyond from a basic detention and try to figure what’s the root of the behavior.

    Here at APB, the teacher’s job is to keep the students behavior on check, making sure they follow school rules. For some students it’s a quick reminder to refrain from using inappropriate behavior during school, but some students keep getting detention on a weekly basis.

    Junior Manuel Montes said, “I get detention for using profanity” and when asked when he clears his detention he said, “I wait until Friday to clear my detention because I’m too lazy to stay for guided study”.

     

    Some students don’t take of the opportunity of serving their detention during guided study and rather wait to Friday where they sit in a room silently until they have served their time. The reason as to why they rather wait until Friday to serve their detention is unknown, but some students are not bothered by detention and end up getting detention on a weekly basis. Detention can be an effective policy here at APB for many students, but for some students detention doesn’t curve  behavior and they are usually seen in detention on Friday.

     

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