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Woman had BAC of 0.27, police say. A Janesville school teacher was drunk while supervising students on a field trip Thursday, according to a report from the Janesville Police Department. The report states the teacher, Maria Caya, 50, was taken to Mercy Hospital by her husband after passing out on a field trip to a bowling alley. Caya is a fourth-grade teacher at Washington Elementary School. The police report states Caya had a blood-alcohol level of 0.27 at noon on Thursday. She admitted to hospital staff she was drinking at 6 a.m. before supervising on the field trip.

According to Town Hall: “An Illinois Social Studies teacher faces disciplinary action for reminding his students of their Fifth Amendment rights when filling out a school survey on behavior…John Dryden was collecting the surveys before class when he noticed the students’ names were printed on them. He looked to see what was being asked and noticed questions about alcohol and drug use…Dryden told his students that they had a Constitutional right to not incriminate themselves by answering questions on the survey.” As a result of Mr. Dryden informing his students about their basic Fifth Amendment rights, he is now facing...

After picking up the survey forms from his mailbox about 10 minutes before his first class of the day, John Dryden noticed that they had students' names on them and that they asked about drinking and drug use, among other subjects. Dryden, who had just finished teaching a unit on the Bill of Rights, worried that students might feel obliged to incriminate themselves—an especially ticklish situation given the police officer stationed at the school. Since there was no time to confer with administrators, he says, he decided to tell his students that they did not have to complete the forms...

A Batavia High School teacher's fans are rallying to support him as he faces possible discipline for advising students of their Constitutional rights before taking a school survey on their behavior.....But John Dryden said he's not the point. He wants people to focus on the issue he raised: Whether school officials considered that students could incriminate themselves with their answers to the survey that included questions about drug and alcohol use....The survey was not a diagnostic tool, but a "screener" to figure out which students might need specific help, Newkirk said. Superintendent Jack Barshinger said teacher support for doing a...

Three-month-old Elayna Nigrelli has redefined what it means to be a miracle baby. She was born while her mother was technically dead. In February, Erica Nigrelli was teaching at a high school in Missouri City, Texas, when she walked into a co-worker's classroom. Nigrelli said she felt faint, placed her hands on a table to steady herself and then passed out. Three teachers immediately grabbed a defibrillator and also began performing CPR. Kids in the classroom ran out, yelling for help. Nigrelli's husband, Nathan, also a teacher, was just two doors down. He rushed into the room. "Erica was lying...

Former Rustburg teacher Kathleen Cawthorne, 33, only has to serve four months of her 11-year sentence after a judge ruled she could not control her sudden sexual urges. ... Kathleen Cawthorne, 33, will be freed more than a decade early after a judge ruled she could not control the sudden sexual urges that took over her body.

What began as an outburst in class is now making the rounds online. Video of a student reprimanding his teacher for her allegedly poor teaching methods has gone viral. Several versions of the cell-phone video, which each have garnered hundreds of comments and thousands of likes since being uploaded to YouTube Wednesday, identify the school as Duncanville High School in Duncanville, Texas. In an impassioned speech, the student criticizes his teacher for "handing them a frickin' packet" instead of providing "face-to-face" lessons.

How's your outrage quotient today? A teacher in South Carolina who stomped on an American flag to demonstrate freedom in America and subsequently was forced to resign, has agreed not to press a legal challenge in his case in return for a settlement of $85,000. Lexington-Richland 5 paid former Chapin High teacher Scott Compton √ $85,000 to avoid a legal challenge, part of a settlement that led to his resignation after he stomped on an American flag during a class lesson. The payment is on top of Compton's salary that will be paid through June 7, even though he has...

A local high school English teacher was suspended after the father of a student accused the teacher of engaging in an inappropriate relationship with the student. The father of the 15-year-old girl gave a statement to the Putnam County Sheriff's Office accusing Palatka High School English teacher Austin Johns of having unseemly text message conversations and engaging in illicit trysts with the student. ... Johns, 27, has been put on suspension. His name is one of eight names listed as being up for resignation, suspension or termination at Tuesday's school board meeting. ... "We investigated it, and we found it...

ALBANY, N.Y. - A high school English teacher in New York state who had students pretend to be Jew-hating Nazis in a writing assignment has been placed on leave. The teacher at Albany High School caused a storm of criticism after having students practice the art of persuasive writing by penning a letter to a fictitious Nazi government official arguing that "Jews are evil." District Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard held a news conference Friday to apologize for the assignment. The Times Union newspaper reported on Saturday that the teacher was not in class on Friday and had been placed on...

Schoolteacher Kristi Whisner took up skeet shooting about eight years ago and fell in love with it. She also is an avid target shooter. She became equally interested in gun safety classes, earning her teaching certification in several, and recently opened a business to teach gun safety.

As a 15 year old, I never imagined my activism in politics would translate into controversy for me at school. My name is Benji Backer and I attend a public high school in Appleton, Wisconsin. I have always supported the public school system and plan to do so for the rest of my life. Many Americans who stand up for the public school system and the unions believe there is no attempt to sway opinion or that students with opposing beliefs are singled out. Unfortunately, experiences I have had with harassment and bullying prove that wrong. This is a timeline...

DIETRICH, Idaho - A Dietrich science teacher is being investigated by the state’s professional standards commission after a complaint from parents over his teaching methods. Tim McDaniel is being investigated after a complaint was filed by a handful of parents who objected to how McDaniel taught the reproductive system, Dietrich Superintendent Neil Hollingshead said. “It is highly unlikely it would end with his dismissal,” Hollingshead said. “Maybe a letter of reprimand from the school board.” According to McDaniel, four parents were offended that he explained the biology of an orgasm and included the word “vagina” during his lesson on the...

Why is our government education system so dysfunctional? Perhaps because parents often don’t get the truth and administrators and teachers are constantly fighting each other. That much can be discerned from the words of Karen Lewis, president of the radical Chicago Teachers Union. Lewis appeared before the New York Collective of Radical Educators (an appropriate audience, to be sure) March 16 to give the keynote address at the group’s annual conference. Lewis reminisced about her teaching days, when she would lie to parents when it came time to discuss their child’s performance. She then said – because of her lies...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A Las Vegas high school teacher who recently won his job back in arbitration after he was fired several years ago has been suspended. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports 54-year-old John Mannion was sent home from Bonanza High School on Friday after officials learned he faces felony drug trafficking charges. He was arrested last July on suspicion of selling the prescription painkiller Oxycontin to an undercover detective.

With the recently passed legislation allowing Michigan employees to choose whether or not to join or pay money to a union, teachers are at a crossroads. While a lot of my colleagues in the profession feel disenfranchised by the state's largest union, the Michigan Education Association, they are worried about striking out on their own. Most feel they have only two options: Stay with the group in the union; or leave the union individually. But there is another choice. Last year, Roscommon became the first teachers union in decades to decertify from the MEA and recertify as a local union...

A California preschool teacher is facing felony charges after she allegedly drugged toddlers with a sleep aid. KTVU reports 59-year-old Deborah Gratz was arrested on child endangerment charges after she was fired from her job at the Kiddie Academy preschool in Morgan Hill. A witness told authorities they observed Gratz putting an unknown substance into the drinking cups of the children in her classroom, who range in ages 1 to 2. Police say when administrators confronted Gratz, she admitted putting an over-the-counter sleeping aid "Sominex" into the kids' drinks. None of the children drank from the cups the day the...

Up to a dozen Norwegian children may have ingested their kindergarten teacher's blood after she brought a vial of it into class. The teacher, who has not been identified, reportedly asked the nurse at a recent doctor's visit if she could have a vial of her blood to take with her to the school where she taught. When 'sharing time' came, she took out the vial, poured it in a plate, and let the students pass it around the classroom, said Inger Lise Andersen, director of the Dravhaug kindergarten. 'The children asked if they could touch it and she allowed...

In a measure the state said would help stop massacres like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut in December, so-called "school sentinels" will be tasked with protecting children. The controversial measure was signed by Governor Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, and will go into effect on July 1. It reflects a growing divide between those including President Barack Obama, who believe guns need to be more strictly regulated, and supporters of the National Rifle Association who argue that more guns keep people safer. In South Dakota, supporters of the "sentinel" plan argued that schools in rural areas were...

Teacher job satisfaction has hit its lowest point in a quarter of a century, and 75 percent of principals believe their jobs have become too complex. The findings are part of the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Challenges for School Leadership. Conducted annually since 1984, the survey polled representative sampling of 1,000 teachers and 500 principals in K-12 schools across the country. Only 39 percent of teachers described themselves as very satisfied with their jobs on the latest survey. That's a 23-percentage point plummet since 2008, and a drop of five percentage points just over the past year. Factors...