I was searching through my files yesterday, and came across this petition that my son wrote a couple of years ago in outrage to what he considered to be unfair punishment for cafeteria offenses. Incidentally, more than eighty students signed the petition and presented it to the school guidance counselor. The principal - somewhat reluctantly, but publicly - addressed the petition in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and changes were implemented.
STOP TABLE DUTY ABUSE
We, the undersigned 6th Grade students of Carson Middle School, feel as though we are being unfairly punished with table duty. For example, an overlooked fruit cup and a few unavoidable cracker crumbs left behind on the table resulted in ten students being given table duty for five days as punishment. A similar situation happened last month where students left cracker crumbs on the table and this resulted in seven days of table duty being assigned to every student at the table. Sometimes students at the table are given table duty before they finished their lunch and have had a chance to clean up.
In addition, some students had more days of table duty added onto their punishment because they did not know they were supposed to check off the days they worked table duty in the table duty binder. The students assumed the table monitors were doing this and did not want the students to stop working. In addition, we were threatened with extra table duty days if the monitor felt we were working too closely with other students on table duty, which is sometimes unavoidable.
We call for the following changes to table duty:
1. All students at the table should not be punished for one student’s mistake.
2. Students should not be punished with more than one day of table duty, unless the infraction is very serious. The punishment should fit the crime.
3 The rules for table duty have to be more specific and clearly communicated.
We feel these changes are needed because we are tired of being used for free child labor. Also, the time could be better used for what school is intended for: studying, reading, and building social skills.
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3 comments:
Lily, I'm all for punishing everyone over no one but I am against table duty :)(seriously, don't they have people for that?). Just out of curiousity what changes were made?
I think 'table duty' was instituted because the janitors were complaining (and rightfully so) that the students weren't cleaning their tables after lunch by throwing away their garbage. With regard to the changes, they stopped assigning students to multiple days of table duty and were careful to punish the student responsible for leaving behind a mess, instead of the whole table of students.
What an articulate letter. I especially like the use of the word "infraction." Your son should go into politics!
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