Education

We caused our substitute teachers some grief back in the day (and we still feel guilty about it), but it usually just involved smartass comments and spitball throwing. But the kids at the Robert K. Fulton Public School in Cleveland are hard core:

Witnesses tell Fox 8 News, the trouble started when [substitute teacher Laura] Fritz attempted to refer several students to the principal’s office for misbehavior.

They responded by throwing objects at the teacher and soon other students joined in.

“The class became disorderly, unruly and once the injury happened to the teacher, a number of other students began to act out.” said Cleveland Schools Police Chief Lester Fultz.

“They were just throwing stuff, they hit the teacher with the marker, the papers were flying around, everything, it was terrible.” said a student who witnessed the riot.

According to Cleveland Police Lt. Thomas Stacho, 18 students were arrested for the incident, three were charged.

By the way, these were 7th GRADE STUDENTS. Gah! Paging Tom Berenger!

The only thing really noteworthy about this story is that it took an act of legislation to put this in place — really, shouldn’t the various school boards already be taking this sort of action?

The [Utah] House Education Committee on Tuesday unanimously passed HB286, which would permanently revoke the license of any teacher who molests a student or any other child. Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, said he sought the bill after Frank Laine Hall, a Riverton teacher, was convicted of molesting his students.

He said the odds of Hall returning to teaching already are miniscule. The Utah State Board of Education revoked Hall’s license for 25 years.

But Wimmer wants to make sure there is no chance of that happening.

While Fox news is reporting the girls who shoved glue up a Kindergartener’s private parts as “predators”, it would be my guess that these Kindergarten perpetrators were exually abused themselves. Kids learn what they are taught and what they experience.

Not that these girls shouldn’t suffer consequences for their actions. Obviously, the assumed abuse has not taught these girls boundaries or the difference between right and wrong. I’m sure time will present further disturbing facts about these little girls.

A Texas kindergartener is accusing two of her female classmates of sexual assault, MyFoxHouston reported on Monday.

“She said two of the girls at school put glue in between her legs, in her private parts,” the mother of the 6-year-old girl told the station. “Someone hurt my baby; she just seems different now.”

The alleged attack took place inside a school bathroom, according to the report.

Doctors confirmed the unidentified girl suffered vaginal trauma and that glue was present when they examined her, the station reported.

A NY kindergartener was handcuffed after having a temper tantrum at school.

Some reports claim that the school contacted various hospitals to set up a psychiatric evaluation for the boy.

The mother claims that the school used unnecessary force and brutality in handling her son who has some developmental issues and possibly ADHD.

Even though handcuffs seem way over the top for a little kindergartener, I reserve my judgement on this one. Some children with ADHD can disrupt the classroom and cause an unsafe environment if they are not being treated properly (medically).

Especially when the police states this:

The police report says the child was “punching his teacher and swinging wildly at school aides, that he smacked the assistant principal in the face, ran into a corner, and began to throw things on the floor.”

What is a teacher and school to do?

Now, if the classroom is not an appropriate learning environment for the child and his classmates, then the school does have a responsibility to find an alternative classroom for that child.

The class needs to be a safe and respectable learning enviroment for ALL the children.

NEW YORK (CBS) ― A Queens mother is demanding answers after her 5-year-old son was handcuffed at his public school for allegedly misbehaving.

The child, Dennis Rivera, a kindergartener at a Public School 81 in Ridgewood, was put on a chair after apparently acting up and handcuffed behind his back by a school safety agent, said Jasmina Vazquez, the boy’s mother.

“I think it was excessive force. It was unnecessary what they did to my son,” she told CBS 2.

Vasquez said her son, who suffers from asthma, has speech problems, and may have attention deficit disorder, was handled brutally.

Some parents at the Irasburg Village School in Irasburg, Vermont, are a bit irate at language arts teacher Wally Rogers for crossing the “separation of church and state” line. Rogers has the Ten Commandments hanging on his classroom wall, as well as religious texts lining his bookshelves. The final straw was when he gave the kids a handout titled, “Why Jesus is Better than Santa Claus”. Huh, we didn’t know people actually printed and kept all that kind of crap we get in our email inbox. And besides, I thought the debate of Jesus vs. Santa was already decided.

Downs said he doesn’t want other people teaching his kids religious beliefs contrary to his own.

The school’s principal, Paul Simmons, said the Ten Commandments poster and questionable books were removed from the classroom. He also said he’s observed Roger’s class several times and never heard him speak about religious material.

The school board is currently investigating religious links on Roger’s Web page on the school Web site. They also issued a reminder to all teachers that religious beliefs should not be shared in the classroom.

Last August, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law a “teen driving bill“, intended to reduce the number of high school kids killed each year behind the wheel. The measure includes extending the learning permit phase, driving curfews, limits on the number of people in the car, and something that is causing consternation amongst a group of high schools, six hours of district provided driver’s education. Nineteen high schools in Illinois are seeking a waiver from the requirement, stating that providing that extra level of instruction is cost prohibitive:

Abiding by the six-hour rule could cost each school district hundreds of thousands of dollars more, and state officials who had promised to fund those higher costs have yet to secure the money.

So the schools are asking for permission from the General Assembly to skirt the law. Apart from concerns over additional costs, school representatives contend that their driver’s education programs are effective just the way they are.

“I don’t think anyone has a problem with what’s behind the law,” said Scott Eggerding, director of curriculum and instruction at Lyons Township High School, one of the schools seeking a waiver. “It’s just a question of how do we do it so that we can offer the best experience for our students.”

Hmmm, think there will be a bit less sympathy for this guy than there was for Debra LaFave and Mary Kay Letourneau? They are viewed as adults with extremely poor judgment, but this guy will be called a child molester. Not that we’re defending his actions, not by any means, just that there seems to be a gender-based double-standard for sexual predators in our society.

A Park Forest teacher was suspended without pay on Tuesday after school officials learned he was arrested on charges of sending sexual messages to a former student at a Joliet high school.

Doug A. Schreiber, 22, of the 1700 block of Glenwood Avenue in Joliet has been charged with two counts of felony indecent solicitation of a minor for allegedly exchanging sexual messages with a 15-year-old girl, officials said. Schreiber was arrested at his home Friday and released after posting $5,000 bail.

Joliet police said the victim and her parents came forward last week to report Schreiber, who allegedly exchanged messages with the girl via the Internet and a cell phone on Dec. 26. The felony charges allege an intent of criminal sexual assault and sexual abuse, authorities said.

We had some pretty jerky teachers in our day, but this guy in India is pretty hard core:

Two high school students in Nadia in West Bengal were forced to relieve themselves inside a classroom as the teacher refused to let them go to the toilet.

The teenagers — Class VIII and IX students — have not returned to their co-educational school since wetting pants in the examination hall last week.

The students were asking in the middle of a three hour exam, and the teacher claims it’s the headmaster’s policy not to give bathroom breaks during tests.

New York’s Department of Education just recently started awarding schools a “letter grade” based on how well students do on standardized tests. This measure is largely influenced by No Child Left Behind’s accountability measures. Well some yuppie parents in Park Slope and elsewhere are getting their panties in a wad because their hoity-toity schools are getting Bs, Cs, and even — oh, the horror - Ds:

“It really saddens me that this is how the Department of Education thinks that parents are best served, by boiling everything that happens in an entire school to a letter grade,” said Lee Solomon, the mother of a first-grader at the Brooklyn New School, a sought-after school that accepts students only by lottery but got a C.

Jim Devor, the father of a fifth-grader at P.S. 58 in Brooklyn — which got a D on its report card_ said students there were “strongly invited” to attend Saturday test-prep sessions but have no time to discuss current events like the presidential campaign.

“I’m appalled at how little my child knows about social studies,” he said. “They’re all obsessed with test prep.”

For the record, we’re just having a little fun — we’re not exactly big fans of “teaching to the test”, either. But you just know some of these parents aren’t as concerned about teaching methods as much as an affront on their social status symbol…

This toddler wasn’t goin’ for it. When the pork chops came out, she ran for the hills…

When faced with pork chops for her school dinner, three-year-old Leonie Terry was not a happy pupil.

But instead of simply asking for something different, Leonie decided to take herself home for lunch almost half a mile away.

She wandered out of the school gates and down the street towards her house before crossing four roads on her own.

Leonie had walked around a quarter of a mile and was heading towards a busy dual carriageway when luckily a passer-by spotted her and escorted safely back to school.

Schools should just ban cell phones in my opinion.

We survived all the way through elementary, jr. high school, and college without cell phones and believe or not, we graduated and still had a social life.

Police and school district officials are investigating several Farmington Junior High teenagers who traded nude photos of themselves over cell phones.

The latest incident is the third time this school year that Farmington schools have caught students trading photos of their genitals and other nude shots, said Christopher Williams, a spokesman for the Davis School District.

“This type of technology creates problems,” Williams said. “Imagine being a teacher trying to teach a class and you’ve got students sharing inappropriate photos of each other. You’re not going to have the attention of the students.”

You think?

This just breaks my heart in pieces.

This is EVERYBODY’S problem. Schools, parents, the police — we all need to get together and get the message across. There needs to be stiff consequences for those who bully. There should be a zero tolerance policy in every school.

This poor boy’s suffering. It didn’t have to happen. I blame the parents of the bully most of all, because I believe parents of bullies are complicit in their children’s crimes.

LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. — A grieving mother is suing the Blue Springs School District, claiming her 12-year-old son was bullied to death.

Kim Myers said she blames school teachers and administrators for her son’s death.
She said her son, Brandon, was constantly picked on by classmates, teased for a speech impediment.

Last February, her boyfriend found Brandon unconscious.

Myers said, “When he found Brandon, he was still standing upright. He had his one foot flat on the floor and another up on a bucket, with a cord around his neck. And John thought he was playing because he wasn’t hanging, per se. And he nudged him and found that he was unconscious at that point.”

We’ll admit we were band geeks in high school — trombone, specifically. So we know the gooey mass of saliva that can collect in those things. And so does the band teacher at a New Caney, Texas high school who decided to come up with a new way to punish a student for forgetting his trumpet — have the entire brass section empty their spit valves into his hand. All 21 of them. Eww!

“With the diseases going around nowadays, that’s very unsanitary for one thing and there are ways to correct a child without going to that extreme,” said parent Jimmie Mikel.

“That’s just totally wrong,” added parent Mary Sargent. “The teacher needs to be punished for that because the kid’s got to live with the embarrassment for the rest of his life. That just ain’t right.”

Keene says he was made aware of the January 4 incident after his son went to his school counselor asking to be transferred out of band class. The school district has since put the teacher on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation.

We’re not sure what the new “diseases going around nowadays” are — seems a bit hyperbolic — but it’s still gross and inappropriate, nonetheless. We had a pretty nut job band teacher back in our day, and even he didn’t do anything as over-the-top as this. Perhaps the triangle player missing the beat AGAIN just put him over the edge.

And look at the bright side, Mr. Humiliated New Caney Student, the next homecoming game you’ll get to watch from the stands instead of on the field marching around in a dorky costume.

An 8 year old student and her mother are at odds with her grade school where the student is being made to do her classwork in the hallway because her teacher is allergic to the families choice of fabric softener.

Asked if the family could switch, the mother claims that the softener she uses is the only kind that she can tolerate because of skin condition.

So, whose “condition” should the school accomodate?

With eczema, aren’t dye-free and perfume-free detergents the best choice anyway? It’s all very curious…

An eight-year-old schoolgirl was segregated from her classmates and made to sit in a corridor because her teacher was allergic to the fabric softener on her clothes.

Hope Nichols was made to work in a corridor on three occasions, according to her mother, and was asked to move to the back of the classroom to prevent the smell from the conditioner upsetting her teacher.

Mother Sarahjane, 39, was stunned when she received a letter from Hope’s headteacher asking her to change the brand of fabric softener she uses when washing her daughter’s school uniform.

Today boys and girls, we’re going to learn how to make meth. Can you all say, “methamphetamine”? Good, now start by scouring the internet for some red phosphorus, have your parents help you if Google doesn’t bring up any good search results. Next, take this flame — make sure you have a dirty basement to hang out in, and…

A 32-year-old chemistry teacher at Shafter High School accused of trying to make methamphetamine in his school lab was arrested over the weekend.

Jeff Scheidemantel of Bakersfield was arrested on suspicion of possession of precursor chemicals necessary for the production of methamphetamine, manufacturing methamphetamine and manufacturing methamphetamine endangering children, according to a news release by the Bakersfield Police Department.