I collected this about a year ago as part of a disciplinary plan from a student who cut a healthy lock of hair from a girls head. I had posted it then, but some of his classmates alerted him to the posting and made a big stink out of it. So I post it again here today after some time has passed. Instead of automatically giving detentions, I often have students attempt to defend themselves in writing. It’s good practice for organizing ideas in an effort to persuade.

So here you go:

I do not think I deserve a detention because I only meant to get a small piece of hair that wasn’t noticeable to the human eye. Since I wasn’t really paying attention at what I was going for, I ended up getting a bigger chunk of hair.

When R. freaked out on me, I forgot about saying I was sorry because when someone says, “I’m going to kill you!” I throw that “sorry” out the window of regret and sorryness, and enter my realm of retaliation and I don’t say sorry after I do.

But in the real world, “I’m going to kill you . . .” is taken as a threat, no matter who says it. But what I did was uncalled for and stupid and I do regret it but I don’t like to hear, “I’m going to kill you!” from someone.

So when it is lunch-time I will tell R. that I am sorry for what I did. Now I know what I did to R’s hair affect her life in some way, shape, or form, but she has to know I didn’t try to cut that much from her hair, and I was just kidding around with her.

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