"Write a Referral"

Brian Spencer was one of the counselors at Dana Middle School in San Pedro.

He was a real help to me, unlike the staff that I had to contend with at North High.

He gave me the best advice:

"Write a referral."

I was afraid to be so easy with the referrals, since my mentor teacher had told me to go easy on writing them. I was also a little intimidated by the guy who ran the Referral Room, Mr. H. He was not a nice guy, one who would openly challenge teachers who refused to call parents or engaging in other interventions before sending students to the referral room.

He told me not to worry about it:

"Look, the kids are not giving you respect. You do not have to put up with it! That is the priority: respect!"

I really liked what I was hearing. It took a great deal of strain off me for the rest of the semester. Unlike at the previous assignment, which I failed in large part because I had no support, and I was just expected to put up with students’ folly, at Dana I would write kids up and send them out of the room if they refused to cooperate or they insisted on giving me a hard time.

Writing a referral turned out to be the best way to get through a lot of issues.

Perhaps most educators would differ with more over this method, contending that there is no point to being a teacher if the teacher spends more time sending kids out of the room.

I can only answer that sometimes, the only thing that we can teach students is:

"If you cross this line, you better be prepared for the worst."

They never learned this stuff at home, and now the teachers are expected to step up and hold them accountable for these things.

I think that if more teachers wrote referrals, more learning would take place in our classrooms.