Monica´s story

I have been a witness to many, many situations involving inappropriate begavior of pupils in
general. Most of them ended in inappropriate response (in my opinion, of course) from the school
staff, whether it was an assistant, teacher or even a deputy headmaster.
My highschool classroom consisted almost purely of girls turning into women, facing not only the
hormonal changes, but also new challenges of life. To be honest, I was not a well-behaved pupil
back then, which nowadays helps me to understand my pupils a lot better.
One day, my classmate Monica brought an electronic cigar (vaporizer, only smoke, no nicotine) into
school. Since the school rules did not forbid it, she took her last inhale just as a teacher walked
into the classroom. Of course, the smoke (more of a steam in this situation) did not dissolve right
away. The teacher said nothing and continued to do as always but during the class she informed the
headmaster and told him to deal with the situation which we didn´t know

 My analysis of reasons behind this situation is really simple. Monica was just going through a
rough patch in her life, her parents getting a divorce, splitting everything, moving to new city,
losing her old friends… She meant no harm to anyone, and, lets be honest, all of us were just
trying to be as cool as possible, smoking, doing stupid things just to fit in… Trying to find who
we are and what we like, going through a hormonal changes where in one minute we are like cool and
the other minute we are a mess is just hard. Also, with a class full of girls (only three boys
involved), it was hard to keep a stable place in the collective hierarchy.

The teacher said nothing and continued to do as always. The class ended and in few minutes, the
deputy headmaster came into the class, already screaming at Monica in front of us all, humiliating
her verbally, calling her stupid, misbehaved, and so on. She just stood there and looked right at
him, then said she is sorry, and there is no nicotine in the vaper, making it legal in the eyes of
the school rules. Deputy headmaster said it does not matter, she shall be punished anyway, and
stormed out of the class.

In my opinion, this solution was completely wrong…