LEWISTON — An angry student at Montello Elementary School last month lifted a chair up near his head and threw it.

That kind of conduct, combined with what Principal Deb Goding described as the boy’s escalating behavior, last year would have gotten him kicked out of school. Suspension used to mean days at home watching television, playing video games and falling behind in school.

Most students who behave badly this year aren’t leaving Montello; they’re going to the school’s new in-school-suspension room. Isolated from their peers, they do school work and get counseling to make better choices.

“Our goal is to try to keep them here,” Goding said. If a student’s behavior is too violent — a “knock-down, drag-out fight” —  he or she is sent home, she said. Typical behavior that lands students in the suspension room includes swearing, being rude and disrespectful in class, Goding said.

Numbers show the program, which began in September, is working.

Montello has 700 prekindergarten through grade six students. Last year, 242 suspensions were issued and 178 students (some were repeats) were sent home. This year, 176 suspensions have been issued and 34 students sent home.

Statistics say 80 percent of students in a school should not have behavior problems. At Montello, “82 percent of our kids are not having any issues,” Goding said.

Pleased with the results, Lewiston Schools Superintendent Bill Webster is expanding in-house suspension to Longley Elementary and Lewiston Middle School.

In the suspension room, students do classroom work under the direction of Martha Felton, who supervises and teaches. The room includes Felton’s desk, an American flag overhead, and four desks and chairs separated by cubicle walls.

“If they need help, they come to my desk,” Felton said. “If it’s writing, we’ll do rough drafts, final drafts. We’re also talking about their work. It’s not just them sitting in the cubicle.”

Students also practice manners, Felton said.

She said a third-grader recently asked, “’Excuse me, Miss Marty. Did you pick this job?’” She laughed and said, ”’Why do you ask? Do you think I’m bad at it?’ He said, ‘No, but you’re sitting down here with kids all day who are bad.’”

That gave her the chance to tell him she liked her job. “He looked at me like I had grown another head and said, ‘Why?’” Felton told him she gets to work with students having a hard time. “It’s my job to help you guys learn a better way of acting, a better set of choices, so you don’t have to sit down here and be bored all day.’”

That exchange gave Felton a chance to tell the student he wasn’t bad; he needed to make better choices.

On her door is a poster of a wide array of facial expressions: happy, sad, frustrated, shy, angry, and so on. Kids are fascinated by it, Felton said.

“We’re helping them to make a connection to how they feel and how they act. It’s OK to be angry, upset or impatient. It’s not OK to kick your teacher, yell at someone or knock over something.”

Suspension-room students meet with counselors daily. Students fill out a reflection form where they must write answers to these questions: What did I do? What happened right before I did this? How did that make me feel? What could I have done differently? What will I do next time?

Felton hangs by the clock examples of good word choices students could use the next time they get upset or angry. (Getting cut in line is a common trigger.) There’s a lot of clock-watching. When students finish their in-house suspension, they don’t want to come back.

“It’s isolated,” Felton said. “They don’t get recess. You won’t have access to the playground if you’ve shown you aren’t safe in the classroom.”

Goding asked for the program last year because she didn’t like sending students home for bad behavior. “We thought, ‘Is there a better way to help support them?’ We put our heads together.”

Webster said the Montello program has the right amount of structure and rigor, “and has already demonstrated its worth in reducing behavioral issues in school and allowing students to continue their education.” In addition to the middle school and Longley, the program may be expanded to other schools, he  said.

Some parents appreciate intervention with their children’s conduct; others don’t think their children need it. Most are happy that their children are in school, as opposed to home and unsupervised, Webster said.

Parent Shannon White had nothing but praise for the program, crediting it with saving her family a job. A single parent, her young daughter began acting out earlier this year, yelling, running out of the classroom and out of the building. “I was getting calls at work,” the mother said.

That behavior baffled White, but time in the suspension room with “Miss Marty” helped, she said.

“It’s made a huge difference,” White said. “Very rarely do I get a phone call.” Without the program, her daughter would have been sent home frequently and would have fallen behind in school. “I might have lost my job,” White said. “This has saved our family.”

Webster said he can’t force students to get counseling, he said, “but I can tell students and parents I will bring them to the School Committee, which may lead to expulsion, if they don’t participate in those programs.”

bwashuk@sunjournal.com

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