Keewaydin school uses the take a break system, which seems to not work well with their students.  The idea is that if a student’s behavior becomes a problem, you ask them to take a break.  They go to the chair in the back of the class, sit for an amount of time that they think is appropriate to reflect on their actions, then rejoin the discussion,  If their behavior continues to be a problem, they TAB out, where they go to the teachers room next door, fill out a sheet with some questions about their behavior on it, and then rejoin the class.

The idea is that it gives students time to reflect on their behavior and it gives them an amount of control over it.  In theory it should work out, but in practice you mostly have students walk over to the chair, sit down for a second, then get up again and rejoin the class.  They have obviously not reflected on their behavior at all, and sure enough start it up again as soon as they get back to their seat.

For TABbing out, the questions on the sheet are

1)What happened?

2)What Keewaydin expectation of S.O.A.R. was not followed?

3) Do you need help solving the problem? Yes or No

Yes: Who could help you restore the community? _______________________

No: What is your plan to restore the community?

As you can see, most of these questions are something a middle schooler doesn’t care about at all.  They’ll just write whatever they think will get the teacher off their back, and be done with it.  The students don’t seem to care about taking a break or tabbing at all, and barely view it as a punishment.  One of them even said, when Mr. Homan asked her to take a break, ‘I’ve done this 1,000 times and it doesn’t solve anything.’  Even the students seem to realize this doesn’t work

There was a student, however, who refused to put any answers on the sheet and just scribbled IDK for every questions.  That student did get a call home, and she did not seem to like that.