Detentions have always been around, Assistant Principal Jonathan Mach said. It’s just that the reappearance of people normally think of as detention has started around this year, he added.
As there was increased paranoia and restrictions on the amount of students in a classroom after
school hours due to COVID-19, there were far too many barriers for the school to run detention
as usual for the past two years, Mach said. There has always been a form of detention at school, but
it involved meeting with administration in the office rather than in the classroom setting detention is in now, he added. Fewer COVID-19 restrictions this year allowed students to be in a classroom more freely after school, Mach said. Detention “provides accountability,” said Brian McGarry, a teacher who has run detention this year. “If students take that time to come in and say this is going to be an hour of sitting here and being quiet with no distractions and just working on schoolwork, that’d be awesome.”
A big part of the reason for detention is tardies and cutting, McGarry said. The point of detention is to create a classroom environment for students who have been consistently missing class time, he added.
“It’s a place for you to make up work and make up time,” Mach said. “Beyond that, we have mediations, we have conferences for families, we have suspensions, and very rarely, we put students up for expulsion.”
Detention has a reputation of being a harsh and cruel punishment, McGarry said. There are many other actions like suspension that administrators take for severe misdemeanors, but detention is simply another classroom for students to have time to work, he said. However, he acknowledges that being in detention can feel not as enjoyable, McGarry said. “Detention itself is annoying to deal with,” said senior Gavin Angelo Baradi, who has had detention multiple times. “It is a tedious task of annoyingness.”
There seems to be a disconnect between how influential teachers believe detention is and how effective it is to students, Baradi says. “I am still late to class, I still act out in class, and to be frank,
I don’t think that it really helps, but maybe other kids get help from it,” Baradi said.
Many times, Baradi naps in detention because he does not know what to do during the time he is in detention, he added. “By all means, if someone finds a solution better than that (detention), then go ahead, but as of right now, I don’t think that there’s anything better,” Baradi said.