I work at a high school up here in Alaska.
Here’s the sad truth about the post-Tinker vs. Des Moines school system... some students know how to game the system. They understand that an outrageous accusation can get a teacher reprimanded or removed. They often have parents who will come to the school with fire in their eyes based on a flimsy lie told by their little sociopathic offspring. Principals have to follow legal guidelines designed to cover the ass of the school district from liability, which means weeks, months, and sometimes years of prevarication, obfuscation, and meeting after meeting.
It is true that practically all the students in my room are decent human beings, but there are always a few exceptions every year. The legalizing of school discipline is a large part of the problem. The trouble students know the limits of the law (”You can’t say that! You can’t touch me! You can’t make me do that!”) and push it to their advantage. It’s one of the reasons why competent people leave the profession.
It is my experience that students who are the greatest problem come from families where the parents blindly defend their kids. In the article I just read, I can easily imagine a student acting like a sassy slut. Every school has a couple of them. They are often terrors to teach, willing to use indirect vendetta or the Anita Hill strategy to punish teachers they don’t like. I read the review of a book about psychopathic behavior which stated that one percent of the population are psychopathic, and many of those are at a functional level, with equal numbers of men and women - and there are female students fitting the profile. In a teenager, that would come across as sassy and slutty. And being reasonably charismatic, the students gains allies in important places.
Just speaking for myself - I never go into a room with a student alone, ever. Conferences are in the commons area. I am happy to have a wall of windows on one side of the room. I document everything. And I’m extremely cautious about what I say and how I say it, even in jest, as it can and will be used against me. My primary lesson came watching a good man like Clarence Thomas get slimed viciously for making a joke about a Coke can and jesting about a porn movie to one of his sassy coworkers; I’ve never forgotten feeling after watching the hearings that there are dangerous and deadly people out there willing to ruin you for the most petty reasons. Even 12-year-olds and their mothers. It’s a fallen world.
Perhaps it was the review of The Sociopath Next Door... 1 in 25 is clinically or subclinically a sociopath... 4%. That is one (or more) in every classroom.