And if the student had had his cell phone turned off as the rules require, none of this would have happened.
His Mom can get a chance to call him about once a month and it was always late at night in the past.
So, as the student said, he was not expecting a call from his mom, and that wasn't why he had his phone on.
For the first time she called her son at school during the day, she has little control over when she has a chance to call.
I've wondered why she called at that time, knowing he would be in school. The mother is a First Sargeant, she knows about rules and discipline. I don't think the phones are as limited in most parts of Iraq as you'd expect.
If the teacher had backed off and let him complete his call they could have settled it afterwards and we would not be reading about this.
I've read one account that said the teacher told the student to hang up & give her the phone, and the student told the teacher it was his mom in Iraq and he wasn't hanging up. I've seen another that said the student admitted he didn't tell the teacher he was talking to his deployed mother. I don't know which is true.
Either way, it was apparently the profanity and out of control behavior that got the student suspended, and if he'd followed the rules in the first place, none of it would have happened.