How Would You Have Handled the Spring Valley Ohio School Incident?

I have been reading about the school girl in Spring Valley, Ohio School who refused to give up her cell phone and leave the classroom as asked by her teacher.

A cop arrived, called by the teacher. The cop tried to assist the offender in leaving the room by trying to pick her up and put her out. Obviously that didn’t work very well. Other students took videos of the incident (What were students doing with phones in the classroom? I guess that’s another story.). Anyway, the videos showed the officer trying to pick her up and in trying to get her up, ended up throwing both her and her desk across the room.  The cop has been fired. I don’t know what happened to the student.

Of course, I have an opinion, but I sure don’t have any real answers.

For one thing, this is a teenaged girl. We all were one of those once. Remember. And if you were not a teenaged girl, you were a teenaged boy and equally obnoxious. Oh, those days. I never want to live through them again and I’ll bet most of you don’t.

 Evidently, she had just lost her mother and entered the foster care system a few days before. I don’t know if the teacher or the cop was aware of this or even if it made any difference.  

So we have a young girl who was reportedly using a cell phone, against school rules. She was being a typical defiant teen who knows everything and is sure adults know nothing.

The first mistake the teacher made was to call a cop.  The girl didn’t need a cop. 

The first thing that should have happened is that the entire class except the cell phone user should have been sent to the library. Donna, who was a fifth-grade teacher years ago tells me that when those sorts of incidents occur, ya gotta get rid of the audience. So the teacher needed to call the librarian and say, “My class is on their way to your library, so watch out for them.”  

OK, then you are in a classroom with one student who is breaking the rules.  Do you still need a cop? Really? OK, if you think you do, then call one, but it seems to me that some school employee should be trained to deal with obnoxious and oppositional teens. After all, she can’t be the only one.  

Teachers out there, what would you have done? How would you handle it?  Would you have asked a cop to throw her out? 

Or could you have dealt with her one on one with no other students in the room?