Duct tape is a wonderful product that has a thousand and one uses. I'm guessing this isn't one of the recommended ones:
Tippecanoe Schools has dismissed a veteran teacher who reportedly duct-taped a student's mouth shut.
In a letter to the School Board dated Dec. 19, Superintendent Scott Hanback recommended ending Battle Ground Middle School teacher Pamela Dahnke's contract. The School Board voted Wednesday to cancel her contract.
[. . .]
"On September 30, 2008, Ms. Dahnke placed duct tape over a student's mouth during class in an effort to correct his excess talking," the letter states. "Placing duct tape over a student's mouth for approximately half the class period (15-20 minutes) and allowing that student to leave the class with tape on his mouth demonstrates behavior which cannot be tolerated. It is good and just cause for contract termination."
"Excess talking" sounds like a polite way to say "a loudmouth who wouldn't shut up," to the point where it disrupted class and made it difficult to teach. Gov. Mitch Daniels and his new attorney general have vowed to support teachers who use reasonable means to enforce discipline. Would this qualify for their support or not, I wonder?
Comments
I don't know if it qualifies for Mitch's support, but it sure qualifies for my support.
Reasonable means?
"Yasureyoubetcha"!
(sure beats what I had in mind...like the "board of education" firmly & repeatedly applied to the "seat of knowledge")
Sorry...OLD school here.
(I'm Bob G, and I approve and support this method)
;)
It is teachers like this that caused all the rules in the first place...
Kevin, I think you inadvertently just provided us with an outstanding example of "liberal blame misplacement" syndrome, whereby a governments' bad decisions are blamed not on the government itself that enacted a stoopid rule, but rather some benign incident which caused said government to woefully over-react put in place the aforementioned "stoopid rule".
Students take note, there will be a quiz.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Have the parents filed a lawsuit yet?? Rather than assume responsibilty for their child's behavior, they probably will look to sue the schools. Who pays? The taxpayers and the remaining students, because of less resources available.
I read today they fired the teacher. Too bad, they should have kept the teacher and booted the motormouth kid.
The bizzarro world in education!
Makes me wonder how they would have treated teachers in MY day when they were allowed to bounce a chalkboard eraser off your noggin, when you were doing something OTHER than LEARNING?
All my teachers would have been FIRED in today's educational system, and that's sad, becasue they WERE great educators.
Problem with THAT thinking is that OUR teachers FORCED us to LEARN...to CHALLENGE OURSELVES...to ASK QUESTIONS (other than 'is class over yet?')...and to BELIEVE in ourselves.
Today, the system is all about feeling good...period.
Teach to the "test".
No child left behind, no matter HOW "stoopid" you might be.
And (heaven forbid) if something's NOT "entertaining" for these poor little urchins...
(fageddaboudit!)
But look how FAR today's line of education has gotten us...
(dumber and dumberer)
The ONLY good thing about this debacle, is that we baby-boomers won't all be around to watch it unravel like a dollar store sweater.
;)