It was a bitter freezing Monday morning, as the students of my school walk into science class, grumbling to themselves. Everyone is still half asleep, as the students sit down in their chairs and the class starts, The teachers says, “Everyone take out the notes that was homework last night!” as some of the kids start to panic because they forgot about it. There was one student who stood out, he was standing on the other side of the room talking to a friend. As the teacher starts walking around checking off the homework. Some students start to wonder why she has not told him to sit down yet. Finally she says “Sir can you please sit down.” He looks at her, mumbles something, and continues to talk to his friend. The teacher again says “Sir can you please sit down.” with more power in her voice. The boy looks at her and says “Fine! This class is so f***ing stupid anyways.” he walks over and sits in his seat. The teacher continues to go over kids homework as if it didn't happen. Some of the kids sat there in shock thinking to themselves, “He just swore and called the class stupid and the teacher didn't care? thats a little odd but ok.” As the teacher keeps going around she goes to the boy and asks him to take out his homework. He says “no” the teacher asks why and the boy says “ I didn't do the stupid f***ing homework so get of my damn back.” He storms out of the room. The teacher continues to act like it didnt happen.

Just another average day in school as some kids in a program called TLC are allowed special privileges. We surveyed 8 students and 6 of them agreed that kids in TLC should not be allowed to get away with certain things such as swearing at teachers and getting in fights with kids and not getting in trouble. Our surveyors say “I agree that kids in TLC should not be allowed to swear at teachers. If anything, students in TLC should be disciplined more for getting in trouble as teachers should be trying to help them become more respectful.”
We also asked our surveyors what they think about the kids in TLC being allowed to take walks when they get frustrated, This is one of the comments, ”I think kids in TLC should be allowed to take walks in classes but only 5 minute or so walks. Sometimes kids in TLC take walks and don't come back for the entire class period, missing the entire lesson we learned.” Many of the students have also noticed that kids in this program are given more credit for less work. Going back to the science class, kids in TLC have been given more credit and have gotten “Good” grades when they do half the work that the kids not in TLC have done.

What could be done to fix this? We asked many people and their responses were mainly around the fact that the kids should be disciplined more for being disrespectful, not rewarded. Maybe when kids get disciplined more we wont have kids start thinking its ok to be disrespectful.