Archive for the ‘Professional Conduct’ Category

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Autistic Child Put in Duffel Bag as “Therapy”

December 28, 2011

If you ever wanted a reason why teachers should never be given permission to inflict corporal punishment on children, just reflect on this sickening case. An autistic child who threw a ball across the classroom instead of putting it down as instructed, was subjected to a most unorthodox form of punishment. He was put in a duffel bag with the drawstring pulled tight.

The mother of a nine-year-old autistic boy who was placed in a duffel bag with the drawstring pulled tight has called for the teacher responsible to be dismissed and for the practice to be banned.

Sandra Baker, from Harrodsburg, Kentucky, said that her son, Christopher, has been withdrawn and uncommunicative since the incident at Mercer County Intermediate School two weeks ago.

Baker, who was told her son had been placed in the bag as “therapy” for his autism, in a practice that has been used on other students, said she has had no apology or further communication with the school, despite promises to the contrary.

She said: “You do not put a child in a bag like that for any reason. If I did that to him, I’d be put in jail. We have not heard anything from the superintendent and we have not had an apology.”

What kind of barbaric form of “therapy” is this school handing out? Name me one medical practitioner that suggests time in a duffel bag is the perfect fix for insubordinate behaviour.

And don’t get me started with the schools response (or lack thereof). In these litigious times a school cannot even apologise to rightly disgruntled parents, without the apology seen as a possible green light for a lawsuit.

Even with the apology it seems as though the school hasn’t broken any laws:

Kentucky is one of several states in which no laws exist preventing the use of restraint or seclusion in public schools, according to a document on the Department of Education website.

If we give the teachers the permission to metre out punishments of a physical nature we will see abuse all the time. When teachers (or in this case aides) are capable of this type of ham-fisted reaction, who knows what they will come up with should the parameters widen.

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Posted in Classroom Management, Corporal Punishment, Professional Conduct | 1 Comment »

When Will Teachers Ever Learn?

December 24, 2011

Some teachers must live under a rock. The only thing worse than calling your students names is calling your students names on Facebook. Any teacher found to be insulting their students on Facebook deserve what is coming to them.

Two teachers have quit after staff allegedly called pupils “thick” on Facebook.

Headmistress Debbie Johnson and teacher Nyanza Roberts resigned when comments were printed off and stuck up near the school they worked at.

Teacher Stuart Clark sparked the tirade after he declared he was “fed up of bumping into pupils in town”.

Nyanza Roberts replies: “By town, do you mean top end of holderness road? That’s bout as far anyone goes. No wonder everyone is thick..

“Inbreeding must damage brain development.”

Head Debbie Johnson jumps in and says: “You’re really on one today mrs… !! Xx.”

Colleague Jane Johnson posted: “Massive queue of year 5/6 kids in poundland! x”

Parents found out about the conversation by staff at Westcott Primary School in east Hull when copies were attached to fences in the streets surrounding the building.

Mary Wallace, chairwoman of governors at Westcott Primary School in Hull, said the two had “decided to relinquish their posts”.

Hull city council added: “We’re supporting the school and will focus on ensuring children get the best possible standards of ­education.”

There are thick people in this incident, but they are not the students.

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Posted in Professional Conduct, Social Media | Leave a Comment »

Teacher Writes “Stupid” on Student’s Forehead

December 16, 2011

There is no doubt that teachers have a responsibility to maintain their calm and not give in to difficult and challenging students. Whilst this is harder than it sounds, teachers cannot afford to vent at their students.

When people ask me what are some of the most important skills required to be a good teacher, I always mention patience. To me, patience is an essential skill for every teacher. But patience doesn’t come straight away. It often requires years of practise and hard work.

That is why I think it is important to note that the teacher that wrote the word “stupid” on the child’s forehead was in his first year. Yes, he wrong to do what he did. Yes, he deserves to be sacked. But I hope he is not lost to teaching permanently just because of what he did.

A Tennessee teacher’s first year on the job could be his last. He could lose his job for something he did in the classroom.

It’s a simple school supply, but when a teacher, Alex Boles, used a permanent marker to write the word “stupid” on a student’s forehead, the director of Overton County Schools took immediate action.

“One word can break a child I mean I’ve got three children and I wouldn’t want it done to mine,” said Matt Eldridge, Director of Schools.

It happened last week at Allons Elementary. The K-8 school only has a few hundred students just outside Livingston, Tennessee.

One student had a question, and Boles responded and wrote the word on the student’s forehead in front of his classmates.

“The teacher said I was trying to joke with him and of course I’ve tried to talk to him and told him that’s not the way you joke with anyone,” said Eldridge.

Until last week, Boles taught math at Allons Elementary. He was new to the job, he just started this fall, and what many consider his lapse in judgment could cost him in the long haul.

“It’s kind of one of those mistakes that’s hard to correct,” said Eldridge.

The district will allow the teacher due process, but the director said he will insist that Boles lose his job. A big price to pay for a single significant mistake.

I still hold out hope that Mr. Boles has potential to be a very good teacher. It would be great if he was given the support to learn from his mistakes and is given a second chance in another school.  I also hope he apologises profusely to the child involved, as well as the child’s parents.

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Posted in Classroom Management, Professional Conduct | 4 Comments »

Let Our Students Think For Themselves

September 14, 2011


Be very wary of a teacher with an agenda.

Teachers have opinions – that’s a given.  They have beliefs about religion, politics, etc.  But teachers do not have the right to use their classroom as a platform for spreading their convictions.  Teachers must allow their students to think for themselves and reach their own conclusions.

Unless the school is a private religious school or the subject is Bible Studies a teacher does not have the right to deviate from the curriculum to canvass their religious beliefs.  That is why the Supreme Court in the U.S. got it absolutely right when they handed down a ruling that disallowed such a practice:

Saying a high school teacher has no right to “use his public position as a pulpit,” a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a San Diego County school district was on solid legal ground when it ordered a math instructor to remove large banners declaring “IN GOD WE TRUST” and “GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE.”

Those inscriptions and others that longtime teacher Bradley Johnson displayed on his classroom wall amounted to a statement of religious views that the Poway Unified School District was entitled to disavow, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Under U.S. Supreme Court rulings, the appellate panel said, government employees, including public schoolteachers, have no constitutional right to express views in the workplace that contradict their employer’s rules or policies.

“Johnson took advantage of his position to press his particular views upon the impressionable and captive minds before him,” said Judge Richard Tallman in the 3-0 ruling, which reversed a lower-court decision in the teacher’s favor.

The district “acted well within its constitutional limits in ordering Johnson not to speak in a manner it did not desire,” Tallman said.

The two banners, each about 7 feet by 2 feet, contained references to God from U.S. documents and patriotic songs. One quoted the Declaration of Independence passage that all men are “endowed by their CREATOR” with unalienable rights.

If Mr. Johnson wanted to inspire his students to respect or even adopt his religious beliefs he should have disposed of the signs long ago and instead tried a far less invasive strategy.  He should have concentrated on being a role model, acting with integrity, commanding respect from his students and making a good impression.
He may have had some or all of those character traits, none of which required cheesy signs.  The best way to make someone follow in your footsteps is to lead by example not creating loud billboards.

 

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Posted in Ethics in the Classroom, Professional Conduct | 2 Comments »

Teacher Escapes With 3-Month Ban for Kissing Student

September 13, 2011

Unprofessional behaviour sets a terrible example for teachers and undermines the essence of what teaching is all about.  Parents send their kids to us hoping we can help make them safe and take care of them.  When teachers break that trust and cross the line of professional standards there must be consequences befitting the crime.

To get a three-month suspension for kissing a student is a disgrace that cheapens the entire teaching profession:

Emma Walpole, 28, had accepted lifts from three of her year 13 pupils — aged 17 or 18 — and made sexually provocative comments to one during the journey. She invited another into her home where she tried to give him alcohol and kiss him.

She admitted unacceptable professional conduct. In a ruling published by the General Teaching Council, the committee said that Miss Walpole would be suspended for three months but felt further sanctions were not necessary as she had expressed remorse and it was felt she would not pose a further threat.

The council was told that Miss Walpole, a teacher at Denstone College in Uttoxeter, Staffs, had befriended the pupils between September 2007 and June 2010.

She sent and received about 25 inappropriate text messages with one of the youngsters between May 2010 and June 2010, some of them of a sexual nature. In May 2010, she requested that he give her a lift in his car and made “sexually provocative” comments to him during the journey.

I’m glad that Miss Walpole regrets her actions and has promised not to reoffend but that doesn’t excuse her behaviour.  The punishment received is tantamount to a slap on the wrist.  It sends the message to other teachers that they can exploit teenagers for the barest of consequences.

Miss Walpole should consider herself very lucky.  If I was on the Council I wouldn’t have been anywhere near as charitable.

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Meeting Targets Over True Academic Progress

July 22, 2011

Well done Monty Neill!  The Executive director of FairTest, reaffirms what I have been saying all along about teachers caught cheating on standardised tests.  Below was my reaction last week to the Atlanta School teaching scandal:

There is no excuse for teachers or officials to cheat.  We are there to provide a moral example for our students, and cheating of any kind is clearly unacceptable.

But we must not leave the matter at that point.  There’s a reason why some teachers have cheated on standardised tests.  Those tests  are anti-education.  They measure success through pressurised outcomes rather than authentic teaching and learning.  They expose teachers to unfair stress and scrutiny and force them the teach to the test, rather than teach to enrich and engage.

Mr. Neill says it even more succinctly:

Focusing solely on punishing the Atlanta school employees who wrongly changed test answers ignores more fundamental problems.

The Georgia investigators found that a primary cause of cheating was “unreasonable” score targets coupled with “unreasonable pressure on teachers and principals.” They concluded that “meeting ‘targets’ by whatever means necessary became more important than true academic progress.”

Misusing standardized exams as the primary factor to make educational decisions encourages score manipulation. Campbell’s Law predicted this result decades ago. It states, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures, and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

That is precisely what happened in Atlanta. The nation’s students, schools and taxpayers deserve assessment systems that promote ethical behavior, better teaching and stronger learning outcomes.

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Posted in Professional Conduct, Standardised Testing, Teachers Stress | 1 Comment »

Teacher Humiliates Student For Not Doing Her Homework!

July 6, 2011

If proven, this is a horrible case of teaching at its worst.  To strip a student naked and make her clean the toilets all because she didn’t complete her homework is just shocking!  The fact that the parents couldn’t get a proper response when they took the matter up to the relevant authorities just makes matter worse.  Not to mention the allegation that other teachers watched the poor girl and didn’t intervene in any way:

The Gujarat government has ordered an inquiry into the affairs of a minority institution in Ahmedabad where a six-year-old student of class one was reportedly paraded naked in the all-girl school and made to clean toilets. All because she had not completed her home work and the class teacher found her handwriting to be “too bad.”

The class teacher was arrested after the parents lodged a police complaint against her and some of the trustees of the private high school in the minority-dominated area of Shahpur in the heart of the city.

The incident occurred on Friday, but the girl kept quiet and, under threat from the class teacher, did not even inform the incident to her parents till one of her schoolmates spilled the beans on Monday after the girl showed reluctance to go to school.

As the word spread in the neighbourhood, the enraged parents first tried to meet the trustees of the school and, after failing to get a satisfactory answer, lodged a complaint with the Shahpur police.

According to District Education Officer R.H. Patel, though the school was unregistered, the government had taken cognisance of the incident and would go to the root of the problem.

According to the father of the girl, she was stripped naked, made to do sit-ups, paraded in the school naked, was forced to clean the toilets and was locked in there for a few hours.

Though it is an all-girl school, some of the class four staff members are male and her parents felt outraged that she was watched by some male staff when paraded naked in the school. The trustees, however, claimed that only her veil was removed by the teacher.

This, however, is reportedly not the first such incident in the school. Another guardian complained that his daughter was given a similar punishment by the same teacher in March. When he tried to lodge a complaint against her with the trustees, he, in turn, was named in a police compliant lodged by the trustees.

I am appalled by this story.  It gives teachers a bad name.

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Posted in Classroom Management, Professional Conduct | Leave a Comment »

Teachers Are Not Their Students’ Parents

July 3, 2011

A teacher defends kissing, cuddling and touching the behind of a female student by claiming that is the way he treats his own children.  And how did the authorities respond to this pathetic defense of an indefensible action?  They bought it hook, line and sinker.

A TEACHER who kissed and cuddled a schoolgirl defended himself by saying that was how he treated his own children. Jeffrey Cave, who taught at Willows Primary School, in Basildon, also pulled a boy’s hair and then told him that was how “teachers used to handle misbehaving pupils”.

He was found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and has been reprimanded by the General Teaching Council.

Mr Cave touched a girl pupil on her bottom over her clothing, allowed her to sit on his lap, kissed her head and cuddled her.

Mr Cave admitted in his witness statement kissing her head and cuddling her, but said that was the same way he showed affection to his own children.

He said during police interview he stroked the pupil’s bottom over clothing in a downwards motion to test if her trousers were dry.

The hearing heard Cave. who has had a clean professional history for 26 years. was going through a period of personal stress at the time of the incidents, and his actions were not sexually motivated.

I have no doubt that the soft “reprimand” response came about from his defense.  Their soft ruling sends a very bad message.  The public must be reasuured that teachers can not in any way show affection to students in the same way as parents do.  I am a parent too, but I have no right to treat my students like my children.

My message to all male teachers is to avoid being in a room alone with a student, act with professionalism and integrity at all times and keep your hands to yourself.

They are not your children, they are someone elses.

 

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Posted in Professional Conduct | 4 Comments »

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