What I did was the first time I took a hat I would take the hat to my
office and write it up and he had to personally come to get his hat. I'd
say, if you ever repeat, that is my hat. You might get it back at the
end of the year. So I collected hats. Teachers didn't like it too well
because in many instances they felt that they didn't get the respect
that they deserved when they worked on that particular policy but what I
never could get them to understand that what I was doing was
disciplining them in the hall before they got to the classroom. As Dan
Pickett and I said once as we stood in the hall and some kids were
trying to get to class and they were talking, some of these kids don't
have to be on time anywhere except school. Some of these kids never
experience any kind of discipline except school. So what I strongly
believed in was the fact that every time that kid responded to me
whether it meant him walking down the hall and my grabbing his hat off
or whether it meant that he handed the hat to me or whether it meant I
had to take him down to the office with me and deal with that situation.
Every time I did that it was breaking a little bit of the resistance
that he would have when he got to the classroom. That every time the
person made me it was developing that discipline in the classroom.
People didn't understand what I was talking about--most of them didn't.
Also, it gave me an opportunity to get to know my kids. A couple of
years ago, I said, he's one of my football players, a Black boy, I said
I want to talk to you a minute. He said, what, Mr. Jessup. I say you
know something-- the way you walk and the way you look and the way you
talk you try to be tough. He started laughing and I said you know
something, I believe that you really think that you can intimidate some
of the people right here. He just laughed. I said, I tell you one thing
there is just only one bad dude on this campus and that's me. I said,
there is only going to be one and I said do you understand what I am
talking about. He said, yes. But you know at that point in time I could
talk to the kids in that particular manner. I can think of one situation
last year. I try to make it very clear to them concerning discipline.
Why I was doing things.
An example, a kid threw something--a piece of candy or something and hit
me above the eye. Four guys were standing there. I took the four down to
the office and told them. Look guys, just tell who it was and I'll deal
with it and that will be it. Nobody would tell. I said I'll tell you
what, I'll give one piece of paper in front of you and let me tell you
something, you're not going to leave here without a name on that piece
of paper. I said it can be your name or somebody else's name but I want
a name on that piece of paper and when I have my name you can go. It was
the guy that I suspected. So I sat down with him and I told him, look
I'm going to suspend you from school for three days.
I'm not suspending you because you hit me with a piece of candy. I'm
suspending you because you wouldn't tell me the truth. That you wouldn't
step forward and say I did it. Not because you hit me because accidents
happen but because lying to me and all of this investigation I am going
to suspend you. The toughest situation was last year preceding the
Christmas holidays and I had two groups that fought one another. Some
people want to say they were gangs, one kid was cut a little bit above
the eye. It really caused an uproar in the community and a loss of
confidence that we really had control of the situation. The ironic thing
is that you can have a great situation for five years and one incident
can happen and everybody forgets about the fact that this is the first
time that we have had anything like that. But anyway I personally dealt
with that situation myself. Just put aside everything else and dealt
with it and the final analysis was suspending about ten kids. I made up
my mind after the investigation was completed that although I couldn't
get details and we had about three or four fights and although I
couldn't get all the details that I needed I made up my mind the kids
had to go and as the situations came up within the week or two they
went. I learned that basically from a principal in Hickory. They had
dealt for a number of years with human relations techniques talking,
talking, talking it out but it doesn't work. Sometimes you have to root
out the people.