TEACHER HUNT

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

witch hunt movie

http://www.witchhuntmovie.com/trailer.html

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The surreal world of discipline within an American public school Part II

This kid, who had a D or so, was now a TA for some teacher. He could spend the rest of the trimester (about 3 weeks) sitting on his duff, stapling papers, for an A.
Despite covering my bases, I was the one being blamed for this debacle. I had made my classroom rules clear, given warnings, taken abuse from this kid. I had let the parents know, hoping to head off any escalation in the conflict, and they had continued to go after me. I had contacted the principal and let her know that I had been on top of this and despite that, this "child" had continued to disrupt the class and misbehave. Furthermore, he seemed hellbent on creating issues for me.

I emailed the principal that summer and asked what her protocol was for complaints. Normally, the first person parents should talk to is the teacher. That's exactly what she told me and I let her know AGAIN; that the parents had gone straight to her and never spoke to me. When the Summer ended, I sent copies of this jerk's papers to the parents. These were the papers where he bragged about misbehaving and was unnecessarily critical of me. It was addressed to the father. I wrote "If this was my child, I would want to know what was going on." Approximately a month later, I received an envelope in my classroom from the parents. The writing was so poor, I presumed that the kid might have written it. Nope. Mommy, the reading teacher, was no scholar. Now she was telling me that I had waited too long to send their child's "work," and that this now constituted harassment of their child.

Let's see. She was telling me that she would have actually responded to any indication that her angel was misbehaving. Well. I assume she knew he was working on the yearbook. Wouldn't she have wanted to see the pages he contributed to? Hmmmm......no 8th grade boy's basketball pics. God. The hypocrisy of it all. This letter indicated the parents would go to the school district's board meeting to attempt to have me removed as I "didn't belong in a classroom with children." If you care to see this teenager in action, google "mr. jingles goes boom." It shows this young man blowing up a frog with a fire cracker. They are real pillars of the community.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7hrg1ZmfmI

It was disgusting to me, after all I had been through. I contacted Karen Horwitz, from NAPTA. She asked if she could use the story for her book, White Chalk Crime. It's there on page 166 or so.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Bait and film

bait the teacher and put it on youtube

The surreal world of discipline within an American public school Part I

I knew the kid disliked me. He told me to get out of his chair one morning after walking into the computer lab while I worked on the school's yearbook. I asked him to go outside to discuss his rude behavior where he told me his mother "didn't even like me." I emailed his mother, an elementary school teacher in the district. I never heard back from her. This young man was on the 8th grade basketball team and had chosen to get photographs of the team for the yearbook. Since he had sprained an ankle or something of that nature. He should have had plenty of opportunity to comply. But he was disruptive and almost sadistic in flaunting his disdain for me or the rules of the computer lab. One day he sat there and took apart a keyboard right next to me as if daring me to take action. His behavior deteriorated even more as the year began to wind down. I called his father who told me he would "ask one of Michael's classmates whether I was accurate in my assessment or not."

I received an apology letter from him saying he would try and improve his behavior. I knew it did not jive with his earlier behavior and waited for the next attack. A week later I heard "M is on the warpath" from a colleague of mine. His mother was after me. Yep....should have known. The kid was well behaved for about 3 more days. I could see these people thought they could do whatever they wanted with impunity by the actions I had seen so far. The boy had never completed his pictures of the 8th grade boys basketball team. As a matter of fact, he had not submitted a single picture. He had not showed up for detention due to his poor behavior and been given As despite not showing much work. ( He was given credit for work he said he did that he claimed had been lost due to computer difficulties). By the time we finished the yearbook, I asked students to include everything they had done in a small booklet. He had nothing to enter but went so far as to blame me for the class when asked what particular projects he had worked on. He mentioned spending time texting on his cell phone and playing video games online in this resume as well. He wrote an essay blaming me for issues that arose in the class and was quite vindictive. I had inherited a computer lab that was basically dysfunctional for 3 months and we still managed to put out an improved yearbook over the previous year's product.

Now he was being held accountable and still behaving poorly. His grade was a C- or D and moving towards an F very quickly. I handed out a worksheet students were supposed to work on one day and found that he claimed I had never given him one on collecting this homework. I knew this was an attempt to bait me. If a student is paying attention and something like this happened, they would let the teacher know. This was ridiculous to believe. I had a talk with him outside and left him out there. My class moved to the computer lab and instead of following us, he stayed outside of my regular classroom, attempting to do whatever he could to not comply with feigned lack of understanding. I sent someone to get him and had a heart to heart. When I walked out of the lab, seeing his face bout 3 week from the opening, I felt his foot under mine as I stepped towards him. He was now going to play the physical abuse game. "Get your foot out from under mine." I said. I told him he had not done his work and had been doing whatever he could to get under my skin. He told me he wasn't responsible for the basketball pictures because I hadn't "written it down." When he asked how coud he have taken the pictures when he was in the games, I replied he probably sat on the bench, referring to his injury. He gave me an F-U and I sent him with a referral. He never went there.

What do you know? His mother had scheduled an appointment with the principal that morning. I sent the principal information stating I had never spoken to the mother and had been trying to resolve the issue for some time. A week later I was asked to show up for a meeting with union rep. God.....it figured I was in hot water after putting up with this bully. I brought all the paperwork I had trying to defend my behavior. It was futile. The mother claimed I had kicked her kid and when I told the administrators that he baited me the way he had I got a sarcastic "yeah right" from the principal. The principal told me she wanted to put me in the program improvement which is a euphemism for the teacher exit door. "You have never even watched me teach I retorted." She said she was unimpressed with the way kids just threw down their backpacks as they entered the lab, on a day when she covered for me. I was incensed by the injustice in this.

That summer I found a site called NAPTA (National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse). I bought the book on principal mistreatment of teachers and joined. Little did I know that this travesty of justice was only the beginning of my nightmare in this snake bit district.

(to be continued)