Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Automatic Timeouts -"illogical consequences"

My son has just left a Montessori environment and is in a science based charter school. While he is aged for 2nd grade, his academics are far beyond this level. I have avoiding the "skip" conversation in Montessori, but I fear he may have just outgrown 2nd grade. Especially since his teacher has ADDED an automatic timeout to the school's color chart discipline system. "Way To Go", Green, Yellow and Red (which is accompanied by a note or call to home) is the standard amongst the school. His teacher (advertised as full time gifted but my personal research has shown no such qualifications and experience only in K classrooms prior to this year) as added this extra little nugget. You get one warning, and then YELLOW = 7 MINUTE TIMEOUT. The warnings are cumulative not behavioral, so, if you have gotten ANY warning for ANY behavior the next time she speaks to you is a yellow. Not, new warning for new behavior.
Last week a little girl received a 7 minute timeout (did I mention they sit on the floor and not in a chair?) because she was at the back of the line. She stopped to tie her shoe, and when she was done the line had proceeded without her. She ran to catch up and since there's no running....TIMEOUT! (No mention of her proceeding the line without waiting for the girl...where was she going?)
My son received a timeout (without a warning) for asking for his pencil back from a child who took it in front of the whole class. "DS7, we don't call other children thieves. He says (surprise) that he doesn't have it. For (get this one) FALSELY ACCUSING him of stealing, go sit in time out." Yeah, because 7yr old boys on the 3rd day of school like to call out some kid they don't know in front of the ENTIRE class as a thief over a pencil. Mmmm...good call lady! (I'm still a little miffed about this, can you tell?)
Anyway, these timeouts seem to be used as punitive and not as a behavior modification. I'm looking to see if anyone has research onto the negative effects of timeouts on children this age and in this type of situation. To me, this seems outrageous, but maybe it's normal for 2nd grade, and I should just give in and push for his 3rd grade placement.
Thoughts?

I don't have any research, but I can tell you anecdotally that that system was horrid for one of DS8's friends.

We've never dealt with it personally (we've only done Montessori but one of his good friends started at a Catholic school. I've watched this little girl and I have to say she is one of the most well behaved kids I know. She's bright. She listens to reason. And she's cooperative. She almost got kicked out of school because of the effects of the this system and ended up switching mid-term to the Montessori.

For her, it made no sense. Like you said- the warning might have nothing to do with why she got the yellow. And neither infraction had to be a big one. In fact, in the early weeks it struck me (from her mom's stories) that they were just trying to get them good and afraid of getting yellow or red so they were very liberal with handing them out. The girl started out trying to reason with her teacher (hah- that went over well.). Then she sincerely tried (per her mom's direction) to try harder and accept any punishment. But after awhile the unfairness that she perceived just made her lose it. She drew a yellow and screamed "I don't deserve this.". That comment got her a red and she fell to floor screaming and wouldn't get up. Several parent conferences about what was "wrong" with her and another episode of her melting down about getting a yellow (and subsequent red) and the school was making suggestions that she might need a different environment. Her parents pulled her out and put her in the Montessori with my son. The director was nervous to have her given the past "emotional problems" she'd displayed. But she flourished there and never had a single meltdown.

Montessori comes with its own slew of problems- dont get me wrong. But the lack of that system is one thing I am grateful for. By the bright and gifted child it is quickly (and correctly) perceived as unfair- particularly in the hands of the wrong teacher. Wishing you the best in trying to help your son navigate it.

Just our experience--our DD has a *ton* of problems with illogical and/or unexpected consequences. And we have been in Montessori the whole time (now starting fourth grade), but at two different schools and with different teachers each year for the last four years, despite the three-year Montessori class structure. In our experience, there have been two kinds of Montessori schools and teachers--those who are very serious about the Montessori philosophy, particularly grace and courtesy, and who respect the children, and those that to us seem to have the Montessori label without any of that. The teacher quality at the one school that we just left was all over the place--we had two wonderful years there, followed by an absolutely awful one last year in which the 'Montessori trained' teachers basically imposed illogical and unexpected consequences as you describe, except not keyed to a color chart. As an aside, it also irks me that Montessori schools get talked up so much for math--I think the system is great for teaching concrete --> abstract, but once you get beyond that there doesn't seem to be much and it's up to the individual teacher to teach higher math, and if they aren't interested you're SOL with the school, so we've been using EPGY since last year. We came to find out that a lot of DD's classmates were also doing math outside of school, which surprised me given the way the school talked up their math curriculum. Anyway, I guess my point was just in our experience it is really the teacher that matters the most, and that Montessori can mean a *lot* of different things in terms of how the classroom actually works. I really wish there was some way to figure out beforehand how one's kid would work out with a particular teacher, but we haven't found it yet. I really hope things go well for you but I don't have any helpful advice except that it might be better to leave if you can than to try to make it work where you are. Best of luck!

To play devil's advocate, the consequences don't seem so illogical to me. In real life when one commits a range of different serious crimes, one can wind up with the same consequence, time in the pokey, though with different durations. Nor does the successive progress through the stages seem illogical to me; it seems to encourage the children not to act up multiple times in a single day. My son's public school has something very similar, and the children seem well behaved as far as I can tell. I wish that rigid application of disciplinary rules were all we'd had to cope with at my son's school...

(ETA: ... though I can also see how a child with an anxiety disorder such as Pemberly's might not be well-served by any normal disciplinary system at all which could cause anxiety. Such special circumstances of course might warrant an accommodation, but of course they don't mean that discipline is generally inappropriate.)

That said, I really don't like that your son got punished after someone else stole his pencil, and the teacher apparently made no attempt to get to the bottom of it. I think that any disciplinary rules should be predictably and fairly applied, but that rules are fine and generally desirable. They let people know where they stand.

OP your post made my blood pressure soar - I can relate BIG TIME! My DD's issues with color charts and punitive behavior management systems have been well documented on these boards. Suffice it to say that we have not (yet) gotten a diagnoses of PTSD but all - professionals and school personnel alike - agree we are dealing with "a post traumatic stress situation" after DD's initial *horrible* school experience with this type of teacher.

All I can say is listen to your gut. No this is not just typical for second grade. It is however typical for a poorly trained teacher who has not educated herself on better classroom management techniques. I think the important question is how is your child responding to this? My DD, then in K, reacted immediately by begging not to go back into that classroom, having nightmares, crying in her sleep, etc. By the time I was able to get her classroom changed she had completely shut down. Full blown anxiety as a response.

Good luck! And as I said trust your gut!

This is precisely the kind of system which elicits major "civil disobedience" from my DD as a form of silent but not-so-passive protest.

It can really be a disaster with some kids.

This system wouldn't work with any of my three because of how unfair it is. All of mine are justice obsessed and this would result in major problem behavior.

I hate to directly challenge teachers, but I would tell her you're troubled by the system, as it seems unfair and unduly punitive. And if she insists, I would ask to see the literature to back up her punishment system, as you have never heard of it, and you believe it is harmful. If she can't provide any support, (she can't) I would go to the principal.

The color tracking is just a behavior tracking and management system, and a fairly widely used one at that. And it doesn't have to be supported by research-- teachers are given some leeway in how to conduct their classrooms day to day; absent some evidence like Pemberly's that it's causing a particular child an anxiety or other medical problem, I don't think that's a battle a parent can win, like it or not. I can't think of a quicker way to alienate this teacher than attempting to go over her head on the basis of some lack of research support where none is generally necessary-- and here such an attempt pretty much guaranteed to fail, as you may note that the school itself has adopted the color chart tracking, and the teacher's only apparently added the seven-minute timout innovation to the system itself.

Instead of finding fault with the way the teacher is keeping track of her student's behavior, I'd instead bring to her attention the unfairness of the way she's treating the students in specific cases, as that's the real problem. And instead of finding fault with the way she reportedly treated a little girl when I wasn't there, I would start by bringing up the way she unfairly treated my son. I think that's simpler, more direct, and less likely to fail and cause a tempest in a teapot.

I'm not talking about the color system-- I realize that is widely used. I'm talking about a 7 minute time out on the second warning, rather than actually using the color warning system. THAT is not a widely used behavioral correction in a classroom and seems excessive. I think given that it would cause more behavior problems that it corrected for my children, I would challenge the teacher on it. My kids would lose all respect for the teacher, in addition to being angry about the punishment. That's just our family, though. My kids are sticklers for justice issues. But yes, I would talk to the teacher about it and see if she would reconsider and I would talk to the principal if it was causing problems for my child. I think virtually every experienced educator would realize it's excessive.

I understand, and I too have a justice-stickler (two of them, actually). I really think JS7 would be just as incensed to be so unfairly given a yellow without a timeout as with one. I don't personally think a seven-minute timeout for breaking fair, consistently applied rules twice in a day is excessive.