By Lindsey Coad
Every year, during the first week of class, Peter Giuliani would collect his students’ money for book orders and field trips. He’d tuck it away in his desk drawer for safe keeping, along with the emergency scholastic fund. He was always upfront with the students and told them: here’s where the money is kept, if you’re going to steal it, you’ll do it.
But never, in 20 years, did a single penny go missing.
“I’ve always trusted my kids. I’ve always found that when you trust kids…they’re going to come through for you,” says the veteran Ottawa elementary teacher.
This basic philosophy contributes to a safe learning environment, says Giuliani, where older children are encouraged to help the younger ones.
“I don’t think a safe learning environment is something you can teach in 40 minutes a day—it’s something that you live,” he says.
But three years ago, the Conservative government had a different idea. Educators were told to buckle down with a tough-love approach to disruptive students in a bid to make classrooms and playground safer. Teachers were granted unprecedented power to suspend students.
“When it first came in I laughed. I laughed out loud in the staff room,” Giuliani recalls. “I said, ‘This is just politics.’”
Under the Ontario Safe Schools Act, students can be automatically sent home by a teacher or principal for infractions like bringing drugs to school or uttering threats. Since it came into force in 2001, suspensions have increased.
But teachers have chosen not to use their new power under the act.
Carl Novak teaches computers at Ridgemont High School where suspensions are down slightly, according to school administration.
“It’s a moot point — we don’t even go there,” says Novak of his authority to suspend.
Once, a student swore at Novak after being told to be quiet during the national anthem. Novak reported the matter to the principal. There had been many previous warnings and so the teen was suspended.
“We enforce the rules and the administration enforces the breach of the rules — so that’s our job and we don’t become the judge, jury and executioner,” says Novak, who is also local branch president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. .
He jokes about his six-foot-four frame, suggesting he might be mistaken for a police officer. Instead, Novak uses humour in the hallways as he’s confiscating ball caps, part of the school’s “no hat” policy. “You know I need a blue-coloured hat to go with my collection,” he tells a student. He gets a grin in return.
Lisa Falls, local president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, says the union has always advised teachers not to suspend students. The logic was simple: leave the administrative duty to principals so teachers can focus their energyon teaching and learning, and avoid potential “emotional fallout” with parents after a suspension.
“It does not mean that the teacher does not discipline. Teachers have always had to contend with violence and verbal abuse…they’ve always known it was unacceptable in the classroom or the schoolyard or anywhere else,” says Falls.
Still, the concept of zero tolerance isn’t black and white. Before issuing a suspension, teachers and principals look at factors such as a student’s age, history of offences and whether a disability might affect a student’s ability to understand their actions.
“You have to look at all the mitigating circumstances and make a call and if you’re the one who is working with the child, you may not agree with the call, so that happens sometimes,” says Falls.
Guiliani says mandatory consequences don’t always allow room for sound judgment.
“Zero-tolerance policy means ‘I don’t have to think.’ Let’s be honest…It means there’s a policy, the policy has been broken, no independent thought goes into it, the policy is followed…You’ve got to say, okay, we want this general approach but for God’s sake be reasonable,” he says of the zero tolerance doctrine.
Guiliani says each situation is different but violations of the act must be addressed to maintain the “moral tone” of the school.
“If you have someone who is making others feel unsafe in the classroom—I think that’s serious… if they don’t feel safe they can’t learn properly.”
Claude Séguin, chairman of the Ottawa Carleton Catholic School Councils Parent Association, says he supports a case-by-case basis in which mitigating factors are considered. “It’s a guideline that provides for a little bit of human consideration and I think that’s important to keep in there,” he says.
And Séguin admits there are some tricky calls. He notes a case from 2001 when an Ottawa boy was suspended after he brought a letter opener to school for show and tell. School officials deemed the artifact as a weapon.
“If something was to have happened with that letter opener…more parents would be very quick to jump on ‘why was he allowed to have that?’ So it’s unfortunate. It’s darned if you do—darned if you don’t. You’re never going to make 100 per cent of the population happy,” says Séguin.
Jim Covert, a visiting professor in the education faculty at the University of Ottawa, says the new act hasn’t done much for the image of educators.
“Most of the things that get reported are the silly things that make teachers look bad,” he says. “It’s really kind of hard because you don’t want to be a bad guy.”
Covert spends time discussing the impact of the act with his students—how they can explain the rules to children in elementary school, for example.
At the high school level, Covert explains, the move toward zero tolerance policies can be used by teachers as a way to spark a class discussion about changing society and culture.
But he’s optimistic this type of top-down, strict legislation will ease in the future. Whether it is the safe schools code or tougher provincial testing standards, Covert says educators at the ground-level are looking more to student-oriented approaches to learning.
“Teachers have exercised a great deal more common sense,” he says.
“They just do the best they can.”