When Heather Kiausas was seven weeks pregnant, one of her third graders punched her in the stomach.
Ms. Kiausas, an elementary school teacher with seven years of experience teaching in Philadelphia public schools, had up until then handled the child’s behavior issues – on that day, refusing to complete his work, getting out of his seat, and distracting classmates – by following school protocol: first talking with the student, then recess detention, then calls home, and eventually pink slips to document extreme behavioral problems.
After the punching incident, however, her school principal took discipline to the next level and suspended the boy for several days. Much later, Kiausas learned what might have been behind the punch. “There was a lot of trauma happening at home [for the student],” she writes in an email. “But we were not aware of these issues until months later, after the student was placed in another classroom.”
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Gonser, go to http://www.csmonitor.com/Equal...y-schools-discipline]
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