Don′t Suspend Me!: An Alternative Discipline Toolkit

Excellent book on understanding what is and how to apply alternative discipline! As we all now know based on data and much research traditional forms of discipline have only led student on to the path to "school to prison pipeline" with such rules as zero tolerance policies. It is no wonder that schools are now forced to seek alternatives forms of discipline that actually work. As a parent of 3 and a grad-students, I found this book very helpful. It supports the truth that as parents, teachers, counselors, school staff, etc., part of our job is to prepare children for adulthood. To learn from their mistakes and teach them to make good choices in the future. Children are not bad, what they chose to do are sometimes bad, and it's our job to guide them grow from that. When we give them an opportunity to explain themselves and involve them in their own discipline, not only do we allow them to keep their self-worth, we are modeling honor and respect. Because they are allowed to explain themselves they can come up with the understanding of what they did wrong and how they can make it right again. Thus, taking ownership of their actions and are less likely to do that unwanted behavior again. This book walks you on how to do exactly that. It provides many examples of alternative discipline for different types of miss-behaviors. One thing to keep in mind is that as mentioned by the authors, these are ideas and may be used as guides, every child is different and again not one thing or list of ideas will work for everyone, therefore consequences need to be tailored to the student. Some may require more consequences than others, the goal is for the student to learn from the event and make better choices.In addition, I wanted to mention my favorite part of this book, the "Discipline Belief Self-Inventory" (P.9) I believe every administrator, teacher, school staff should take it. When you take this it will give you a "reality check" on your belief system. You may just find that what you say you believe in may not align with your actions. Or as administrator, you may just find why alternative discipline, PBIS, RJ, has not been working in your school.

The ideas and tools presented in this book are applicable and practical. I love that it incorporates social justice practices, but adds so much more. I also love that I can integrate these in at my own pace, rather than trying to make such a huge change at once. I would love to see a forum or social media group where we can all share our "toolkit" ideas. Anyone using these in their school? I would love to see a school using the alternative discipline idea for dealing with students misbehaving for subs!

The book has some good ideas for assignments to learn from mistakes and reflect.

As a dean at a high school I have really enjoyed this book. This has become my go-to book especially when I have run out of ideas on how to supports different students and ensure that we are implementing restorative practices. The book has cases to read and learn from. It also has worksheets, next steps and ideas on next steps that can be used as-is or that can be modified to fit your school and student needs. I wish there was more like this book!

Excellent book with practical and ready to use resources for dealing with discipline incidents! I love that is has lots of real-life scenarios to help see how to apply alternative discipline measures to common discipline issues. I am using the resources from the book to creative an alternative discipline toolkit that we can pull from quickly and easily in our school and be able to make lasting and significant changes with our students.