Kicking students out of class

I am going to write several blogs today to try to catch you up on the past two weeks!

As a teacher, I generally believe that removing a disruptive student from class is a mistake. It teaches them that when they act up, they get to leave and not have to sit in class anymore. Basically, it makes life easier for the teacher but does very little to change the behavior of the student since, in some ways, it is a reward for them. Generally, it is far more worthwhile to figure out what it is causing them to act up and then deal directly with that issue. Unfortunately, I have learned, that is not always an easy thing to achieve. My ninth graders are currently giving presentations, and I have one particular class that likes to give presentations but does not like to listen to presentations. I also have a slightly nerdy girl in that class who gets picked on a lot because she is always the first one to have a comment or answer to my questions. Her group presented last Monday. I have a boy who sits in the back of the classroom and continually shouts out comments in a mix of Bulgarian and English. As long as he is not disrupting other students too much (I know, how much is too much?), I ignore him and let him blow off steam since he generally directs his comments at the presentation instead of just talking to other students about something else.

During this girl's presentation, however, he was more disruptive than normal. The presenters were talking about men vs. women, and they had written men on one side of the board and women on the other. The boy ran up to the board and wrote "and (the girl's name)" next to the women side of the board, implying that the girl did not naturally fall into that category. Standing nearby, I quickly erased the phrase and told the boy to head back to his seat. He sat down but continued to shout out comments. Since most were somewhat relevant to the presentations (he mostly shouted out a defense for men), I let them slide. Then the girl made a comment about men being prejudiced against women and trying to hold them back in society, and the boy yelled out, "You just say that because you're a stuck up bitch." While I normally do not believe in removing students, I think that this case was an exception. I refuse to ignore a terrible insult directed at a girl who is already the subject of insults. While this would be what one of my college professors called a teachable moment in which I could begin a discussion of why the boys feel the need to talk in that way and why society believes that this is acceptable male behavior and the inherent irony of the boy insulting the girl while she was talking about society trying to hold back women, but I only had 8 minutes left in class, and the student presentation was not finished. So, I very calmly stood up (the same college professor would note that standing while the student is sitting is an assumption of a position of power and authority), turned to the boy, and told him to leave my classroom. He apologized and asked to stay, but I told him that he had crossed the line and needed to leave for the rest of the period. I have mixed feelings. I hate having to remove a student, but I can't really see what other options I had in this situation. I refuse to yell at a student because it is ineffective and a waste of class time. What should I have done?