Detentions can now be served by assisting faculty members other than the maintenance staff. Students are required to provide assistance to a teacher for at least 15 minutes a day for five days during their free periods in order to complete their sentence.

Faculty members that have received assistance through this program include athletic trainer Milo Sini, Assistant to the Head of the Upper School Michelle Bracken, upper school attendance coordinator Gabe Preciado, science teacher Antonio Nassar and football coach Scot Ruggles.

The previous detention system, which is no longer available, required students to sit quietly in a classroom for an hour on a Wednesday morning or to write a character building essay. The new system was proposed by Preciado in November in order to allow students to serve their sentence while benefiting the school.

Originally, the new detention could only be served in the morning, but Preciado extended it to include the rest of the school day because midday rather than morning is when the faculty needs the most help.

Preciado hopes that students will enjoy helping the school community while serving their detentions.

“I know maintenance needs a lot of help,” Preciado said. “But I know certainly other teachers could use a lot of help. Maybe [students] can reach out to some teachers that they want to redeem moments with or just lend a helping hand. I think that flexibility is very important. They like the idea of reaching out to their prior teachers.”

Alex Thal ’14 served his detention by helping the maintenance staff pick up trash on the quad during his free periods.

“I think it’s a better learning experience,” Thal said. “And I also felt kind of good helping out the community even though I was being punished. I kind of enjoyed it actually, because it was a good thing, rather than just sitting in a room wasting my time.”