Polly Bath: The wall at recess. My gosh, the fact that we’re still even entertaining the wall at recess just baffles my mind.

If I’m sending a kid to the wall, I’m temporarily moving the child from the situation. However, I’m not teaching him or her anything.

If a student decides that instead of waiting in line to go down the slide, he or she is just going to kick the kid in front of them down, step over his body while he’s crying, and go down the slide, there isn’t one adult in this room that will say, “You can’t go down the slide. Jump down the ladder.”

You’re going to say, “Come on down and get on the wall.”

So, the kid goes down the slide and gets on the wall. It was worth it because he or she didn’t have to wait in line, and they still got down the slide. What’s a few minutes on the wall? But they still leave the wall without any skills.

When I see kids standing on the wall who have work, schoolwork, I look at that and go, “Now we’re punishing the child with the one thing we want them to love the most, and that’s the curriculum.”

I saw a kid doing time on the wall for chewing the eraser off his pencil, and I’m thinking, “Where’s the connection?” We’ve got to make sure that our consequences have some connection.