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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Reason #29767 To Homeschool I cannot believe this teacher is not job huntingAnd if he's not soon, the principal and the superintendent need to be out there hitting the job search trail themselves. Okay, here's the deal, you make the call.You live in Pennsylvania. Your 17-year old kid is a fan of John Elway, the retired Denver Bronco quarterback. On the Friday before the AFC championship game between Denver and Pittsburgh, your kid wears a number 7 Broncos jersey to school. When he reaches his "Ethnicity" class, the teacher calls him a "Stinking Denver fan" and orders him to sit on the floor for the duration of the class. The students are taking a test that day, and your kid is so upset he can't concentrate on the 60 questions, he winds up leaving about a third of the questions blank. Certainly, the fact that all of the students have been made to throw wadded up paper at your kid throughout the test doesn't help matters. And here's what the teacher has to say for himself: [Teacher, John] Kelly said [Joshua] Vannoy, a junior at Beaver Area Senior High School, just didn't get the joke.Neither the teacher nor the principal will return calls. The superintendent says she's aware of the situation but confidentiality rules prevent her commenting about it -- but not to worry, because "We'll take whatever action we need to in order for the student to feel comfortable." Like I said, if that includes anything less than termination for that teacher, there's a couple more people need to join him. And just what the hell is an "ethnicity" class, anyhow? What do you teach them? [FOXSports on MSNBC] ... [Kate blogs at The Original Musings] Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by Kate at 12:50 AM |
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5 Comments:
Maybe one of the things you teach in an ethnicity class is how it feels to be singled out and felt subhuman when you're in a minority group.
Maybe one of the things you teach in an ethnicity class is how it feels to be part of the mob and go along with it, even if you aren't that excited about doing so.
Maybe one of the things you teach in an ethnicity class is how, when you are being ridiculed and made to feel less than human you do not perform as well as others, even though you're capable of performing on a par with the majority.
I think there's a lot of knee-jerk reaction. Maybe the teacher is a jerk. But something tells me that there's a BIG connection between the fact that it was an ethnicity class and what happened that just doesn't fit neatly inside an AP story.
These are the people that told us that "12 Miners Are Found" without worrying about whether that meant dead or alive and not worrying over how people might interpret that news. I wouldn't jump to conclusions and call for a teacher or administrators to be fired when the teacher might have seen the jersey and seized on an incredibly poignant teaching moment.
Assuming that there were real-world lessons being taught (and that the whole thing isn't being staged to see if the rest of us "get it."), I would agree that points will need to be deducted, of course, for the teacher not doing this with a student who could grasp the larger lesson (even later) or for not articulating that lesson in more express terms to the entire class.
I'm with the school administrators who think this deserves some careful and closer examination.
Part of the "knee-jerk reaction" on this end was to hunt down this teacher and give him a piece of my mind. Maybe this is the wrong thing to do; maybe I'm being jerk by doing this. But I figure if Mr. John Kelly is so interested in teaching a student how it feels like to be singled out and humiliated, I'm sure he'll appreciate our enthusiasm with him as the subject.
The staff page of the school:
http://www.tigerweb.k12.pa.us/bfhs/staff.htm
John Kelly's phone number at the school:
724.843.7470 ext. 1764
Except not...
"The treatment wasn't part of any classroom lesson, his teacher says. He had warned students before not to wear another team's jersey in his classroom." -DenverPost.com
Oh my gosh. Even if it WAS part of the lesson, do you really need to degrade a child to teach a lesson? That is SO wrong.
Should we throw them out on the street for a week to see what it's like to be homeless?
Should we have male teachers rape the female students to have them feel what it's liked to be raped?
Come on! That is ludicrous!
So glad I homeschool.
I can't believe the uproar about this. I'm guessing the student didn't study, failed his test, and is trying to use this as an excuse to retake the test.
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