Don Boyce: Handling defiant students

Regarding the Oct. 29 news article “Sheriff fires deputy who tossed S.C. teen”: With all the condemnation about the resource officer’s inappropriate handling of a defiant student in a South Carolina public school math class, no one has recommended how the school should have handled the situation.

News reports relate that the student refused to leave class when the teacher and then an administrator instructed the student to leave. Therefore, the resource officer was the third authority to instruct the student to leave the classroom so the rest of the students could continue their learning.

If the officer’s action were excessive, exactly how do we get a student out of the room if she refuses to get up and walk out on her own? Should the officer have requested “back-up” so that three or four cops could have gently raised her desk and her and carried her out of the room?

Another alternative would be to move the rest of the class to another room to resume instruction. But what message does that send to the rest of the students, and with our over-crowded schools, does that empty room exist? Let’s hear more about what we should do rather than not do.

This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Don Boyce: Handling defiant students."