of office referrals

When I sit in a session like yesterday's at Worcester's North High on student discipline, I think about Kurt.
His name wasn't actually Kurt, and, usual round of disclaimers: 

I taught in a well-resourced district. 

This was twenty years ago. 

An anecdote isn't the singular of data.

I taught English, mostly freshmen and sophomores. Kurt was in one of my midday sophomore classes. He played defense on the football team, which mattered, because, during the season, you had to have a passing grade in each core subject in order to play each Friday. 

I don't remember what day of the week it was, but it was well after football season. It was into the part of the year where we'd all settled in, the course changes had long been made, and this was where we were for the duration. 

And that day, for whatever reason, he just couldn't settle in. As I was trying to get through the work of the class, he kept pushing back and not doing it and getting in the way of others doing it. 

And I spoke to him and I spoke to him and I spoke to him, and eventually he snapped.
I can still remember him getting up out of his seat, outraged with me, and yelling back at me.

I sent him to the office.

My classroom was next to one of the sets of swinging fire doors that all schools have, and as he left, and went through the doors, he hit the window of the door hard enough that it shattered. 

His hand went through it.

And so he came to the office, furious and bleeding, and he went to the hospital.

And I sat down at my desk that afternoon and filled out the office referral form. 

And he was suspended for a few--two? three?--days for the damage to school property.

While he was gone, the assistant principal came to my classroom during my prep period with the referral, and he asked me to talk him through it. This didn't always happen, but, after all, this one had ended with stitches and a broken door. 

And so we sat and talked through it.

My assistant principal--and as teachers know, you need the secretary and the custodian to like you, but an assistant principal can make or break you--never questioned my judgment and he never argued with me. What he did do was make me think about how it could have gone differently.

Kurt had, clearly, been having a rough day before he got to me. I had even seen it in how he carried himself as he came in. This, like so much of what happens in school, wasn't about me or my class at all. 

Was there a point at which a choice that I, the adult in the room, made could have meant that Kurt didn't end up in the hospital that afternoon?
In retrospect, there were several.

When Kurt came back to school, he came by my room and apologized before school. There are many ways I messed up as a teacher over that part of my life, but in this case, I didn't: I apologized to him, as well.

None of this is to absolve a fifteen year old from breaking a door or even from being disruptive in class.

Schools are not just about English and math and history, though; they're about becoming people. 

As a teacher, I had the luxury of time with someone wiser than me who wasn't accusatory but who asked what happened in terms of what the adults, the ones who have the most agency, can do.

To that question, we need to add: what resources are needed to create institutions that support, rather than hurt, the young people in them?