15 Year Old Wisconsin Conservative Meets Bullying From Teachers

freedomworks.org ^ | March 28, 2013 | Benji Backer

[JCBreckenridge]

“I have a distinct feeling that this young man is known to all his teachers to be a smart aleck who deliberately says provocative statements to elicit a response he can then blog about.”

Aside from your feeling do you have any evidence to substantiate your statement?

Again - even if this were true - students test teachers all the time. The teachers have a job to do and part of their job is classroom management. If you can’t handle the kids then you shouldn’t be teaching.

[Lancey Howard]

BUMP for excellence!

[EinNYC]

Obviously I would have to be in the classroom and record what the student and what the teacher both said to be 100% sure of what actually happened. But my gut feeling based on experience has proven to be pretty darn accurate, too. I do not believe it went down exactly as this young man said.

Handling kids is one thing. Handling their statements, which were actually solicited by administration walking into the classroom and telling the students that they should write up their teacher "if they say anything you don't like" and who were then coached to include the most damaging buzzwords in said statements, is another. That is exactly what goes on in many a NYC classroom while Bloombutt is running the school system. Using students as weapons to target the higher-priced veteran teachers who also have tenure, so they can be replaced by cheap newbie teachers who will not be granted tenure and who are quite willing to inflate their grades. That's a fine reward for decades of dedication to the art of teaching.

[JCBreckenridge]

Are you a teacher? I am. My job is to respond to children professionally. That means taking it all in stride.

I believe this student. Why? Because in my sophomore year, I had a similar teacher. She did much the same as what happened here - and she was eventually fired. I’m not going to get into everything she did, but suffice to say, it can happen and it does happen.

[EinNYC]

I am a teacher. It is possible that things are different in NYC classrooms due to the very deliberate "gotcha" efforts of Bloombutt and his minions to get rid of the expensive experienced senior teachers and replace them with the cheap newbies who lack tenure and will therefore divest themselves of any integrity or morals to keep their job. They only stay an average of 2-3 years anyway, so under Bloombutt, teaching is no longer a career but a Kelly Girl stint, with a constant revolving door of new teachers, while the veterans languish in a traveling reserve pool after their schools were closed. As I said before, under Bloombutt, there is a Reign of Terror where students are actively solicited, encouraged and abetted in writing statements against their teachers and where such statements (the vast majority of which are completely fabricated as revenge against a poor grade or disciplinary action) are then submitted to an investigatory body for possible teacher discipline. He has put students in charge, actively threatening their teachers that they will write statements against them, in addition to cursing out their teachers, throwing objects at them, and threatening them with bodily harm. In one school I know one traveling veteran teacher was carried out on a stretcher the day after being assigned to a 99% minority school. Others were struck in the face with thrown Arizona Tea bottles (very heavy and dense), paper wads, etc. A security guard was attacked by a student in that school. The week before, there was a blood bath knife fight on the floor below. Teachers are routinely told to "suck my d___k." These are not incidents isolated to that school alone, but are seen to varying extents all over the NYC schools under Bloombutt. Yeah, we take it all in stride. We try to spot weapons the scanning devices missed and check our health insurance, clandestinely tape our classes to prove we did not do whatever the fabricated student statements claim we did, and count the days til retirement. What was formerly a joy and source of pride is now a stress filled routine. There are still moments of sheer joy, when a student "gets it" at last, or when you are able to set a student back on the right path after a little chat, and that's why it's still worth coming in.

Yes, I had some doozy high school teachers myself back in the day, but I still think that this kid deliberately provokes a lot of their statements. I had said nothing to a teacher in my high school when he said on many occasions that "my skull would make a fine paperweight" (a la the Nazis), "You're lucky not to be soap", "Sniff, sniff, I smell gas", etc. I did not tell the principal because the teacher was a winning track coach and I knew nothing would be done. I did not tell my father because I did not want him to have a heart attack. I did not tell my mother because she would shame me in the school by acting out in a stupid way. I bore it all myself and made a promise I would not do that to others.

[JCBreckenridge]

“I still think that this kid deliberately provokes a lot of their statements.”

I disagree with you here. I think he’s conducted himself in an admirable fashion and I would be thrilled to have a well-behaving and hard working student in my class.

I also teach in a private school, so I can’t say I share your experiences of teaching in NYC under Bloomberg.

[EinNYC]

If you teach in a private school, you would be dealing almost exclusively with children of parents who care, children who can be thrown out if they chronically misbehave, and children who are motivated because school costs money. No comparison! You're in Cupcakeland.

A student who told their teacher that they were incompetent or stupid in class would HARDLY be a student I would call "well-behaved". And we don't hear about any other habits this kid may have, like talking in class, passing notes, being late, not doing his homework, etc. You are only hearing about conservatives' "Good Boy" points.

[JCBreckenridge]

Hey what can I say. I love my job. Do you love yours?

[EinNYC]

I love teaching. I do not love what it has become in NYC. It's all about grade and test statistics, "data-driven" as the satan in chief has called it. Kids are not widgets, and we are not supposed to be on a production line. Yet that is what Bloombutt would have for his edu-biz.

You can't control how much work the students will do, as they come from so many different backgrounds and have their own plethora of issues they bring with them to school. You can teach and teach and teach. No one wants to answer questions you ask. You can offer tutoring every single period of every single day, and no one shows up. Homework is not turned in. Tests are not studied for. Projects are ignored. Calls to parents result in "Doo-doo-doo. This number has been disconnected" about 70% of the time. The students will laugh in your face and tell you that they know you HAVE to pass them or get fired.

What's not to love?

[JCBreckenridge]

I relocated to TX to get away from crap like that. I wanted to work within a system congruent with what I believe.

[EinNYC]

I need to live in a community which can support my religion. That is the only reason I live in NYC.

[JCBreckenridge]

Are you Jewish?