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Student Management

  • Students are respected and valued. It is a leap of faith for families to leave their children with our staff for eight hours each day. They have every right to expect their children to be treated with respect and dignity at all times.
  • The ICS’s student-management framework is part of the staff’s service to its customers.
  • Students who are engaged rarely misbehave.
  • Consequences for behavior should not be tied to academics. Strategies that incorporate academic-based activities can serve as a disincentive to work in the classroom.
  • Management of student behavior shall be positive whenever possible. Teachers and staff are to encourage and promote positive behavior. When those standards are not met, then self-reflective exercises, mediation, and community involvement are cornerstones of the ICS approach.
  • Consequences shall be applied individually, not en masse. ICS students shall not be punished or inconvenienced because of the actions of fellow students. To do otherwise is to create disincentives for well-behaved students:

    “Because it is of more importance to the community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished…But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned…the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.” – John Adams, Boston Massacre Trial, 1770
  • Not every transgression can, or should, be punished:

    “…for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not.” – John Adams, Boston Massacre Trial, 1770
  • Recess should not be used as a consequence, except in limited, individualized, and appropriate ways.

    Research and experience are showing the importance of unstructured free time for students, including the reduction of stress, that ICS students have always enjoyed at recess. Further, students who are struggling with behavior are likely to be precisely the students who would benefit from that short period of freedom.
  • Lunch is a supervised but student-friendly period during which each student deserves the opportunity to enjoy a nutritious meal free from reprimands.

    Students who cannot live up to that standard will be removed to an alternative site, where they may continue their meal in isolated silence. Silent lunches, shortening of the period, withholding of food or drink, or group lectures are not acceptable tactics in the ICS lunchroom.
  • “Coercion” is counterproductive. Rewards have only short-term benefits and must continually be increased, thereby losing their effectiveness quickly. Threats and punishments are discounted by students, especially when they are not followed up on.
  • Student management is a community wide effort. Students need to know they are accountable to more than one or two people in the building, and that everyone in the community cares about what happens to them.