The story about the teacher who called his sixth grade student a "loser".
The story about the three teachers who screwed up black history month lessons.
Pink slips. As an aspiring educator in the public school system, I have made many friends "in the biz". I have had 4 children go K through 12th grade in the Savannah School District system in Anaheim, and two in Middle School presently in Riverside, CA in the Alvord School District. My sister has taught Kindergarten for more than 20 years in Temecula, CA, and I am 3 credit hours short of a B.A. in English where I have observed over 100 hours of elementary, Middle School, and High School classroom sessions. This is all so I can then go to graduate school to receive my teaching credential for teaching in California. Even with the thirty plus teacher friends I have and all that I have seen personally in my observations for school I readily admit I don't know everything about education. I hear and read about our terrible budget crisis, I watch as the Governator of California cuts millions of dollars for education in this state even after his election platform said he would bolster, not cut the school budget. All of this preamble is to say I get so sick and tired of very competent, very skilled and successful teachers being given pink slips telling them they will not have the same job come fall 2010.
All the while these teachers are getting the short straws, teachers are hitting the headlines for utter stupidity. Last week three teachers - male, European American teachers at Wadsworth Elementary School in south Los Angeles - a 1st, 2nd, and 4th grade teacher suggested their students study and celebrate three prominent African Americans and then have a parade to display what they learned. The three celebrities chosen were Ru Paul, O.J. Simpson, and Dennis Rodman. Of course, all this is in the alleged stage because these three racist schmucks are suspended until all the facts are investigated. Also, the three men are not named and have been unavailable for comments.
Choosing a cross-dresser, a moral degenerate, and a murderer as examples of the African American culture is deplorable. That is an incident of stupidity, bordering on evil, as these men who are employed to teach children in my opinion stand attempting to mock an entire race, and then a teacher in North Carolina piles on to the bad judgement bus.
A sixth grade teacher at a Middle School in North Carolina has what is described as an odd teaching style. In the article about this story, a video shows at least three separate and distinct times the teacher wrote "loser" on one young lady's paper. One time was for a grade "-20% for being a loser". The mother said these comments have been ongoing and when she went to com-plain to the school they stopped for a while until this week when the above statement was written atop her daughter's paper. The local news found three families to defend this adult bully's style of teaching. I asked myself, "Self, why didn't the principal take care of this situation immediately?" The video said this teacher had been in the school for 12 years. This has now grabbed national attention, so we'll see where it goes from here.
Almost daily there are stories of Counties, School Districts, and Schools making very hard decisions about letting great teachers go due to financial constraints. Unions have muddied the waters here in California, where Union leaders are going toe-to-toe with the beloved Governator for power and control. I don't have many solutions, but I am barely smart enough to see the problem. In our zest, or haste, or egocentric fervor to be the smartest, richest, and most powerful country we've taken so many short cuts, or simply ignored the hard work credo of generations past we are no longer in that place. How sad.
