When a defiant middle schooler was called into the principal’s office for breaking the dress code, he never imagined how the encounter would end. Although the boy initially refused to take off his hat, the principal changed his mind and quickly went viral for the way he handled the situation.
After a school resource officer shared photos of the incident on social media, Anthony Moore, an eighth-grader at Stonybrook Intermediate School in Indianapolis, Indiana, was sent to the principal’s office after the seemingly defiant boy refused to remove a black beanie, according to SB Spotlight. However, rather than just calling the boy’s parents or removing the hat from the child’s head himself, Dr. Jason Smith, the principal of the school, decided to investigate the root cause of the child’s defiant behavior.
After a conversation with the boy, Dr. Smith realized the student was refusing to remove his hat because he was ashamed. Those of us who remember eighth grade understand why a student might be willing to run the risk of being punished for defiance rather than being bullied by his peers.
Luckily for him, Dr. Smith was more than willing to step in and diffuse the situation in order for Mr. Moore to comply with the rules. After a brief conversation, Dr. Smith learned that Anthony Moore was refusing to remove his hat because he was unhappy with his haircut. Although Dr. Smith didn’t see an issue with the boy’s hair, he understood that the student wasn’t happy with it, resulting in his refusal to remove the hat, WTHR reported. “His barber messed his hairline up. Me and Miss Rivers thought that his hairline looked fine, but he was adamant about not taking his hat off,” Smith recalled.
Rather than insisting that the boy must comply with the school rules regardless of how he felt about his haircut, Dr. Smith decided to strike a deal with Anthony Moore. Instead of penalizing him for his defiant behavior, however, since it was a snowy February day when the incident occurred, that meant braving icy roads.
Apparently, nothing was too much for his students though, so Dr. Smith grabbed his keys. “I said, ‘Hey, if I line you up, if I fix your line, will you take the hat off and go to class?’ and he said yes,” Smith said. Coming back to school, I almost got stuck in the front of my house because the side streets haven’t been cleared,” he recalled, having braved the snow-covered roads in order to hold up his end of the bargain.
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