There’s something particularly scary about being excluded, being alone, being asked to leave. Being pushed out of a school, for many students, is an experience of being judged, rejected and socially isolated. Being asked to leave school seems to not come in a flash, but after a buildup of tension between a student and authority figures within the school. Functionally, what this means is students are often waiting in limbo for what feels inevitable – a demand from the school that the student leaves, whether it be for the day, or the year, or for good. While waiting for the official verdict, the students often experience deteriorating relationships both between themselves and the adults in the school and between themselves and their peers. These dynamics can foster a sense of mutual distrust and disregard between the students who are soon to be pushed out and the administration that is soon to ask them to leave.
Several of the youth that participate in discussion sessions hosted by the Denver Healing Generations (DHG) organization pointed out that navigating the school system from their cultural and social positionality had been no easy task. In fact, many of the discussion participants had experienced being pushed out of a school, and noted that prior to their punishment, they were already experiencing day-to-day circumstances that made it difficult for them to manage their school affairs. The organization that hosted the discussion that provided the content for this article believes that systemic racism lies at the heart of many of the difficulties experienced by youth in public schools and think that utilizing a ‘la cultura cura’ framework will provide better and more sustainable solutions to addressing problems faced by these young people.
Often, instead of the cultural cures proposed by DHG, schools implement traditional forms of discipline like expulsion or suspension to address student behavior. Schools sometimes suspend or expel students for academic concerns stemming from chronic absences or tardiness or more serious infractions like fighting teachers or other students. Several students that had gotten into trouble noted that their behavior could only be correctly understood when considered alongside the larger context of their lives. Nonetheless, they believe that administrators feel that the schools have the duty to protect their students and faculty and exercise discretion over who is allowed to attend the school.
Experiencing a Reputation
Students who have had a number of run-ins with school administrators often build a reputation that both precedes them and creates a sort of notoriety. Students who have experienced this type of dynamic felt that too often, authority figures make decisions based on their reputation and often ignore what is actually happening on a day-to-day basis. This reputation focused approach to discipline can lead faculty and administrators to be acutely aware of the student’s behavior and eager to intervene at early stages, sometimes even preemptively, due to fear of what the student may do based on rumors. Not only does that create an environment where the student feels that they are being constantly watched, they often feel that the surveillance is harsh and unjust. When framed in this light, it seems quite understandable that students wouldn’t be receptive to initiatives meant to pursue justice dispensed by the school.
If the system is rigged, so to speak, incentives for participating in good faith are not particularly compelling. One student who had been handcuffed and detained by police for a school fight noted that the looks she received from her peers when being hauled away, have stayed with her. From that moment on, she felt like many of her peers treated her differently. She thought the involvement of police officers in a simple school fight was a bit extreme and, in part, was an effort to criminalize what they believed to be normal teenage conflict. From their perspective, schools often lack the ability to reasonably create a gradient scale which allows them to appropriately respond to conflict amongst students, especially if those interactions involve physical contact. It seems that she wanted the school to be able to differentiate between conflicts that involved some disorder and pushing and shoving, from those that resulted in significant damage.
Experiencing Surveillance and Discipline
We often take for granted the idea that one ought to be presumed innocent until proven guilty but fail to make that true in practice, particularly for those who have committed some type of prior offense. In an effort to promote school safety, school systems often utilize a system of surveillance where students are treated as perpetual suspects who must be constantly watched because they are searching for an opportunity to commit some type of offense. If one is never able to begin upon a redemption arc, there may seem to be no point in trying to demonstrate good behavior or change in attitude. Students who have previously been in significant trouble seem to crave some means for having their development accounted for and reflected in how they are treated. This may be especially true for teenagers who can come to feel that no matter what they do, they will always be the proverbial ‘bad guy’. One young man noted that his school essentially put him under perpetual surveillance after he had gotten in trouble for fighting with a faculty member. He was accompanied by an adult for all activities within the school, including eating lunch and going to the bathroom. Over time, this system of surveillance wore on him, making him feel as though he wasn’t really a part of the school community but rather that he was a threat to the safety of the community that needed to be carefully monitored.
Another young lady who was searched every day noted that although she was searched by female staff, the constant touching made her feel uncomfortable. And perhaps more importantly, she was frustrated by the notion that she couldn’t reject the physical contact. What she encouraged instead of constant surveillance and skepticism was the development of a sort of trust between herself and the school’s faculty. She said that if given the opportunity she was willing to be honest if she had done something wrong and was also willing to obey the existing rules. As she put it, “As far as the searching, patting down and stuff, I get it. I know it’s necessary to see if we have anything on us, but low-key, I feel like when I get patted down, I get uncomfortable.”
One student noted that it was frustrating to continue to be searched every day despite showing no signs of causing trouble after a previous incident where they had fought a teacher.
Although she acknowledged that this incident was a serious threat to the sense of safety in her school community, it was unclear to her what she would have to do to demonstrate that she now understood that such behavior was unacceptable. Another student noted that it was upsetting to be asked to remove his shirt routinely in order to address possible gang affiliations. Those in charge of securing the school routinely made him take off his shirt, and the justification was that his clothing made him “look like a gang member.” His friend jokingly said that over the course of the semester, the school had confiscated nearly half his closet.
Without the ability to dialogue, those tasked with security can miscomprehend the situation and become overly punitive. For instance, one time she recalled that once she was in a bathroom stall with another student, but they weren’t doing anything wrong, just chatting. However, she happened to have a lighter on her and that was confiscated, but her intention was not to smoke with the lighter, rather she used it to light sage. As she put it, “they caught us at the wrong time. I forgot two girls weren’t supposed to be in the same stall. They took my lighter, but that’s what I used to burn my sage.”
Schools sometimes attempt to intervene before incidents which would result in traditional discipline occur, however, these efforts to intervene often left students feeling unheard and unsupported. One student noted that she felt unsafe in a justice-circle meeting meant to help her work out issues she was having with a group of girls in the school. She noted that in her school, these restorative justice circles often result in fights, and that she felt she was made unsafe and that the issue wasn’t even resolved. As she put it, “They put things in place that don’t mean shit, that don’t do anything and they’re like ‘oh we’re trying here’…. we need something that’s actually going to help. We try to come up with things, but they don’t listen to us.” In fact, all of the students acknowledged the ineffectiveness of many school-offered solutions to the social dynamics which often result in fights and arguments.
Experiencing Isolation
Although all of these reasons make the experience of expulsion or suspension difficult for students, it seems that the most difficult element may be the feeling of isolation. One student noted that prior to getting suspended she already felt quite alone having moved to a new school where she was having trouble acclimating to a new social climate, making friends, getting to know teachers, and so on. A rumor was circulated by some other students at the school that left her feeling even further marginalized and isolated. As she put it, “I was new at the school and she had been there since middle school. I had nobody and I still have nobody and last year it got worse.”
Another student described her frustration with being suspended from school and having to spend her days still accomplishing school work but without the opportunity to have any meaningful social engagement during the day. As she pointed out, almost all kids are in school during the day, so if one is removed from school, there are not many opportunities to engage in social activities. “I’m a person that doesn’t like being home all day. I’m an only child, so I have nothing to do. So that’s the only way I can get human interaction,“ she said.
If the purpose of suspension and expulsion as discipline is to be a corrective measure, it is unclear that those experiencing this as a form of punishment find it to be particularly useful. Especially telling was the fact that all those who had previously gotten into trouble had crafted actionable plans to avoid these types of problems going forward and made no mention of how the suspension had helped them along in that journey. Many of these kids want to be able to stay in school and exist alongside their peers as a typical student but felt ill-equipped to comport their behavior in a way that was acceptable in a school setting.
Many of the students set goals for their personal behavior that would make it easier to incorporate them into social groups and the overall school setting. Much of the discussion had to do with developing strategies for internal emotional regulation as to allow opportunities for deescalation regarding conflict. Perhaps a more fitting form of discipline involves not simply removing children from the school but equipping them with the tools to handle the social environment in the school. As one student pointed out, school, like jail, is an extremely difficult social environment to navigate.
“A lot of them internalize a lot of the stigma that comes with that, I don’t want to say title, because that’s not who they are, that’s just something that’s placed on them but…If a school could see them as an individual instead of just a justice engaged student, I feel like that is a way for them to be supported.”
Expulsion and Suspension as a Concept
Utilizing suspension or expulsion as disciplinary tactics can often bestow labels on kids that become difficult for them to shake off during the rest of their time in the educational system. Sometimes these labels are not only external baggage that the student must carry with them throughout their educational journey, but also internalized stigma that shapes their own self-understanding. Young people throughout the community turned a critical eye towards suspension and expulsion because they felt that on balance, they appeared more like carceral practices within the education system than effective forms of discipline. Largely, as they saw it, disciplinary tactics like expulsion and suspension had little to no place in the educational system and including these forms of discipline as potential punishment for unwanted behavior was a telltale sign that schools were more invested in sorting out the good and bad students than ensuring schools were a truly inclusive space.
Several young people in a roundtable discussion came to the conclusion that expulsion and suspension were problematic concepts because they often serve as a means to use labels to stigmatize students without addressing the root causes of their behavior. The disciplinary power of expulsion and suspension, they fear, may really be its ability to impose a negative identity on a young person. The group’s understanding and critique of disciplinary practices in schools was deeply informed by their overarching goal of being student advocates for progressive changes both in the school system and in society more broadly. In this particular conversation, which occurred in August of 2024, discussants referred to those who had experienced these forms of discipline as justice engaged youth. As one young lady explained to a member of the discussion group who was unfamiliar with the term, justice engaged youths are young people “who are either suspended or expelled or previously were incarcerated and could also extend to having ankle monitors, stuff like that or if they have a probation officer.”
More Than Students
Students pointed out that ignoring root causes while still punishing misbehavior is an over-evaluation of the role school plays in the minds of many young people. Students live complicated lives and often those complications supersede the importance of any demand placed on them by the school district. These students noted that far too often, students are expected to treat school as a sort of abstraction from their actual lives. When they are at school, it seems that they are being asked to divorce themselves from their ‘real lives’ and then are punished for their inability to do so. They believed that schools are unable to account for the ways that the background conditions of students’ lives sometimes enable, provoke or exacerbate the behaviors which suspension and expulsion are meant to address. Schools seem to hold the incorrect assumption that students will be more likely to follow the schools code of conduct following a suspension or expulsion; an assumption that ignores how students view their relationship to their school and the imposed rules.
One young person noted that when they were in high school, many of their peers were tasked with serious responsibilities like earning an income, caring for family members or maintaining the household. For many of these kids, these responsibilities were critical to maintaining their well-being and therefore often ranked higher on their priority list than complying with the rules their school had in place. As she put it, many young people “can’t put academics first and school has a culture where they constantly try to make it seem like ‘oh you’re a student first, you should always put your academics before everything else.’ It’s like no, this is a survival thing, academics is literally on the bottom of your list because you’re literally just trying to survive.”
Disproportionate Discipline, Considering Circumstances
What seemed to trouble these young people most about the use of suspension and expulsion was the way it tracked with other systems which disproportionately affect marginalized youth. Although they did not mention specific statistics in their relative schools, they all had the sense that school suspensions and expulsions would be disproportionately high amongst students of color and poor students. As one DPS alum put it, “People don’t realize how big of an impact poverty has on students. Whether it’s food insecurity or not having access to technology or the internet to do your work at home, I think that it affects how students are able to perform in schools. I think that a lot of schools assume that students’ home life is okay, which is not a good assumption.”
One student noted that simply holding students to certain standards without providing needed context does not allow for the school system to act humanely or responsibly. They went on to say that when put into the appropriate context, something like chronic absences might not be grounds for removing a child from school. Another student recalled, for instance, that they had once missed a tremendous amount of school in a semester, but it was because their sister was experiencing mental health challenges and she often chose to stay home to be with her. In retrospect, she doesn’t think that having been suspended or expelled for missing school would have been an appropriate or helpful response to that situation.
Relating to Justice Engaged Youth
Particularly telling was the way being labeled as a justice engaged student seemed to serve as a basis to separate students from one another. These young people perceived these forms of discipline more as a vehicle to provide a label, than as a genuine effort to address problematic behavior. Attempts to separate students based on their interactions with the justice system were troubling for many community members in light of the growing skepticism that the carceral system had any actual interest in advancing justice. As one young woman put it, “We all know the justice system is not justice or equal or fair at all. So to truly place a perspective on a student that quite frankly is a false perspective is not fair to the student.”
Many of the young people noted that they believed there was a difference between how students and educators reacted to justice engaged youth. Educators, administrators in particular, they believed, were more prone to care about whether or not a student had previously been suspended or expelled. As one recent graduate explained, “It’s more the administrators and staff, to be honest. That’s where 99 percent of it comes from. So I think to better engage them, I feel like it comes down to actually getting to know them. I feel like after staff hear a student is justice engaged, they put a label on them like that’s a bad kid. I have to constantly look over your shoulder to make sure you’re not doing something bad.”
For many, it remains unclear what the purpose of suspension and expulsion is. Conceptually, they seem to indicate that one is deemed unfit to participate in normal school life for some period of time, but it is not obvious how these forms of discipline will leave one better equipped to succeed in a school setting after the punishment is dispensed. Furthermore, it seems that these forms of discipline may result in internal and external stigmatization, which can make it difficult to navigate the school system.
This year, Denver Public Schools, the largest school district in the metro area, unveiled a revised disciplinary matrix that provides schools with updated guidelines about when exclusionary disciplinary tactics like expulsion and suspension are appropriate. Providing clearer guidance on when these types of disciplinary tactics are appropriate has been a focal point for refreshing the district’s disciplinary practices not only because these options have been disproportionately used in cases involving Black and Latino students, but also because the district wants schools to be judicious about suspending or expelling students. As DPS Deputy Chief of Staff Deborah Staten recently put it, the goal of the district “is not to have kids out of school… Our goal is to have kids in school.”
Of the many goals of the new matrix, a critical aim is narrowing the use of suspension or expulsion to cases where all other options have been exhausted. Essentially, the district wants schools to understand that exclusionary discipline should only be used as a last resort. For instance, the new guidelines state that, “Exclusionary discipline should be the option of last resort after appropriate interventions are implemented with fidelity.”
Promoting Focus
Teacher’s Perspective
In a recent conversation amongst young Black men and their teacher, participants indicated that suspension is often most useful in cases where student behavior disrupts the basic functions of the school like keeping a classroom orderly. The teacher noted that his time in the classroom has led him to believe that exclusionary discipline can be quite useful in cases where students are behaving in ways that are impeding others’ ability to focus. He noted that having some students disrupt others’ focus is particularly problematic in an era where many students already have a tough time settling down to focus on a task. As he put it, ”especially in your generation, y’all are distracted as hell. It’s so hard for y’all to sit down for a little bit and focus on something, so when I think about some of the students that are distracting learning… yeah, you need to be kicked out. Because if you’re distracting from learning, what is the point of being there?”
He further explained that while it is always somewhat difficult to manage a classroom, it can become nearly impossible if even just one student is adamant about refusing to cooperate with classroom instruction. Even more troublesome from the perspective of this teacher were students who actively sought to disrupt the ability of other students to engage with the content of the course. He felt that the school had an obligation to ensure the students who wanted to enjoy education without other students providing a distraction were able to do so.
The Students’ Side
Several students agreed with that sentiment, even going so far as to suggest that students who do not demonstrate a commitment to actively and positively participating in the school attaining the goals it has set out for itself would be better served spending their time doing something else.
Some students thought that it was reasonable to turn to suspension or expulsion in cases where a student’s conduct would undermine the ability of a school to meet its goals.
As one young man put it, “what’s the real reason for you even being part of our community if you’re just going to sit up at the rec all day? Why don’t you just unregister yourself and go do something better with your time? Honestly, you’re just making the school look bad if you’re not showing up to classes and ruining the attendance average, the goal that the school has set for themselves, by just being here. That’s one of the valid reasons for not being here. If you’re not going to go [to class], then get out!”
Several students noted that of their peers that get suspended or expelled, a common theme is an overall disinterest in participating in school activities. These students seemed to think that schools are often so attached to keeping disruptive students in the classroom that they end up allowing their rejection of school rules to, in the end, bring down the overall morale of the school. They discussed the point that it may be better for some students to do other things with their time that advance their own personal aims and don’t involve others in the way that being in a school intrinsically does. In some ways, it seemed like these students considered their school community to be like a team and seemed unsure as to why the school couldn’t simply remove students who had no investment.
An Imperfect Practice
Without the possibility of expulsion, it may seem that consequences do not appropriately approximate the ‘real world’ and, therefore, tools like expulsion and suspension might be necessary as a precautionary warning of sorts. As one young man understood it, knowing that you can get expelled can sometimes serve as a useful reminder that “you’re about to be an adult and they’re about to start giving you adult consequences.”
However, there was significant disagreement about the effectiveness of exclusionary discipline as a means to indicate to students that they should consider modifying their behavior. From their perspective, far from being a deterrent, for many students getting suspended counts “as a flex.” One young man explained it this way, “most people who get suspended tend to think of it as a vacation, no punishment intended. Like yeah, you’re sending me home, but like, that’s where I was going anyway, so there’s no real consequence in certain students’ minds. The majority of students that cause problems and cause issues think ‘it’s no difference to me for real. I’m just not coming to a place I didn’t want to be in for real, anyway.’”
His comments highlighted a key point of tension in much of the discussion regarding exclusionary discipline, which is the seeming uncertainty about what exactly it’s meant to accomplish.
Here, it seems effective for alleviating the disinterested student’s burden of attending school, but perhaps it is not so effective in preparing students to be successful in both the school environment, and more broadly, in the future.
They also noted that amongst students, removing someone from the school can create a type of suspense in anticipation of the return of the suspended student that can often make the situation worse. Recalling a recent incident that had taken place in their school, one student noted that a particularly intense fight had occurred between two girls and one of them was suspended for only two days. Upon returning to school, the same two girls got into another fight. He speculated that perhaps some more time apart would have allowed the parties to more effectively move on from the original incident. Another student pointed out that sometimes students will egg on the students involved in the incident that resulted in the suspension to continue the behavior. He noted that this type of social pressure can be especially pervasive after students return from suspensions for things like fighting with other students. As one young man noted, it is really easy for constant comments about how one got beat up so badly that they had to suspend the other student to get under one’s skin.
Conclusion
As school districts continue to navigate the complexities of providing schools with workable guidelines to ensure that discipline is consistent and effective across the district, it may be worth continuing to consider what exactly the purpose of exclusionary discipline is. This conversation suggests that at least for some community members, exclusionary discipline is the appropriate tool when student behaviors are making it difficult for teachers and students to establish and enjoy a school environment that is conducive to learning. However, for others, this might be too insignificant of a reason to actually suspend or expel students.
It seems that determining whether or not suspending students from school is appropriate depends in large part on what the exclusionary discipline is intended to do. If it is simply to make it easier for the school to proceed with its operations then it seems to be relatively effective, but if it is meant to help students be more likely to successfully navigate school settings in the future it might not be the most effective practice. In short, the practice of exclusionary discipline creates a quandary of sorts because although it is a useful strategy, it is an unsatisfying solution to the underlying problems.
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Allan Tellis
Chief Writer, Denver
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