Teachers Deserve More Respect than Parents and Society Demand for them
We shouldn’t tolerate some behavior in schools… or anywhere
--
We need teachers.
When courageous substitute teachers stood in front of my public school classes, the students unified with one mission — make the teacher cry. Often we gave them the silent treatment. Sometimes we repeatedly sang hot hits, such as the alphabet song. A-B-C-D-E-F-Geee… Yes, that one.
But none of my classmates tried to cause physical harm. We engaged in psychological warfare. Maybe that’s because physical consequences awaited us when we stepped beyond well-defined boundaries.
That was a lo-o-o-ng time ago. You know, back when telephones had cords, and you exercised your brain every time you called someone. If you didn’t know a phone number, you called the operator or looked it up in a phone book. Back then, we regularly worked our brains in ways that are now obsolete.
What are teachers supposed to do?
It leaves me wondering if any brains worked during the chaos at a middle school in De Soto, a suburb of Dallas, Texas. According to news stories, a chair-throwing fight between a substitute teacher and a student occurred.
You read that right.
A student threw a chair at a teacher. With blood dripping from his head, the substitute teacher picked up a chair and threw it at the student.
I talked to a middle school counselor about her perception of the incident. She’s such an advocate for students that she should wear a cheerleader’s outfit and carry pom-poms to work. She told me the teacher is the adult in the classroom. “He’s supposed to always conduct himself as an adult.”
I get that, but…
Per a news report, the student wasn’t on the class roll. He “wandered in then refused to leave.” The assistant principal intervened. The student left but returned.
I asked my counselor friend if she’d heard about the teacher left dazed and hospitalized in Florida after a five-year-old student attacked her. Five years old. Did she conduct herself as an adult?
