Posted on 11/16/2001 1:27:05 PM PST by Lizavetta
CHESTER — The Green Mountain Union High School Board fired 11-year teacher Jay Van Stechelman after asserting that he had shown students movies with graphic sexual content and profanity without notifying their parents, and that he discussed with students phallic symbolism in the Christian church.
In response to a request by the Rutland Herald, school officials Thursday released two letters to Van Stechelman associated with the firing. One is a brief notification of the board’s decision to terminate him in a 3-2 vote after an executive session on Nov. 8, and the other is a three-page letter from Superintendent of Schools Ed Brown, dated Nov. 6, informing Van Stechelman of Brown’s intention to recommend his firing.
“It is my determination that you engaged in conduct which is unbecoming of a teacher and that you have failed to carry out the reasonable directions of your principal,” Brown wrote. “As such, I will recommend your immediate termination to the School Board.” Van Stechelman, who taught social studies and psychology, said after the firing that he was extremely upset by the board’s action, and had received many phone calls of support from students and other community members the next day. He reiterated his appreciation for community support Thursday, but declined to comment much further on the accusations against him.
“There will be a time for me to comment and I look forward to it, but I don’t want to compromise my legal case,” he said. His attorney, Donna Watts of the Vermont affiliate of the National Education Association in Montpelier, said Thursday she planned to file a grievance on Van Stechelman’s behalf today. She also commented only briefly on the accusations.
“These are allegations and he’s going to address them with the board through the grievance procedure,” she said. Watts and Van Stechelman decided against filing an injunction in court this week to keep the supervisory union from releasing the letters.
In the letter that outlines the allegations against Van Stechelman, Brown states that during the week of Oct. 29 the teacher showed two “R”-rated movies, “The Blair Witch Project” and “American History X,” in two separate classes. The first film, he said, contains repeated profanity, and the second contains profanity, nudity and “graphic depictions of sexual acts.”
Brown says in the letter that Van Stechelman admitted telling his class that Principal Carol Gilbert would not have approved of the movies, but that he thought the students could handle it. He also accuses Van Stechelman of veering from a well-established practice of notifying parents concerning “the nature and content of movies shown to your students.”
In addition to the films, Brown wrote in his letter that during the same week, in a class called “Vermont, The Nation, The World,” Van Stechelman discussed the Christian church as a male-dominated institution, describing the physical design of the church as “phallic.”
When students said they didn’t know what “phallic” meant, Brown wrote, Van Stechelman instructed a female student to read the dictionary definition of the word to the class. Brown says in the letter that these deeds, and Van Stechelman’s alleged admission of them, in addition to another incident last year, justified the firing. In that incident, according to the letter, Van Stechelman spoke graphically about genitals in a psychology class he was teaching.
Gilbert, who received a complaint about the discussion, told Van Stechelman, according to the letter, to “never again engage students in a discussion of similar issues, i.e., issues of a sexual nature.” Asha Bammarito, 18, a senior at the school whom Van Stechelman has coached on the track team for years, said Thursday that idea of not discussing sex in a psychology course was silly. She took the class last year in which the controversial discussion took place.
Bammarito said Van Stechelman, whom she and many other students say they consider a friend, crossed a line with the movies but that it wasn’t reason enough to fire him. “He just should have been suspended, and he should have come back to school,” she said. If the movies were inappropriate, she said, they also served a purpose. “That is what real life is about and we’re high school students and we should know what is really going on,” she said. “He always did give people the opportunity to leave the classroom, and repeated himself about that ... Some of the movies were very violent but I think he did a good job of showing us and explaining to us what the world was like.”
Other Green Mountain students said showing “R”-rated movies was not unusual in their school. Senior Jacob Parker, 18, who has collected more than 100 student signatures on a petition in support of Van Stechelman, said other teachers had shown equally disturbing movies, also “R” rated and not always with parental notification. He listed “Apocalypse Now,” “The Matrix,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Green Mile” and “Schindler’s List.”
Parker said there was one positive result of the firing in the way it united the students. “The atmosphere at the school after the students hearing the news on Friday ... it was gloomy and just a sad feeling everywhere,” he said, “but there was one really good thing that came out of it. The student body came together — it was really something awesome to witness.”
Students have commented over the past week that they felt close to Van Stechelman — that he treated them like adults, like friends and could get them to talk. “He was the only one who really let us think, he made us think,” said senior James Cole, who took psychology with the fired teacher. “It’s horrible that he’s gone, because the only things I really looked forward to were discussions in his class.”
“In my mind it’s exactly what a teacher was supposed to do,” Cole said. “I don’t really understand why we can’t have adult conversations. ... He was always so careful about not offending anyone. ... He always makes it completely clear that any belief is fine in this class, any beliefs are accepted in this class. Everyone’s equal and we’re not discriminating.”
Brown said Thursday that there was no policy in the district regarding “R”-rated movies, but there was a policy stating that “all materials shown should be appropriate.”
Contact Donna Moxley at donna.moxley@rutlandherald.com.
They're always trying to demean the church, that's because they're leftists, not pedophiles.
And why wouldn't the teacher discuss the genitals in a PSYCHOLOGY class?? If kids want to take a grown-up subject like psychology, they should be expected to be able to discuss grown-up things.
I don't have the time, nor the energy to diagram all the logical inconsistancies in this statement. Did you even think before typing this into your computer?
Yeah, the guy is probably a liberal nut-job, and he shouldn't have been showing those particular movies in class without parental consent, but to make that kind of logical leap is just plain retarded.
Apparently they do. For the parents of course.
I think this is very revealing.
That must have been a short lecture.
On another point:
she said, they also served a purpose. “That is what real life is about and we’re high school students and we should know what is really going on,” she said. “
And the students think they can have adult conversations that mean anything?
You're missing the point...terribly. Sure, the topic of sexual references in the Bible is a legitimate one. But you're off the mark on WHY subjects like that are brought up by morons like this teacher. It's to steer the conversation toward SEX, not to denigrate religion. Put some chum on the hook, troll around, and see if you get any bites, get it? Furthermore, you can't just start talking about penises in Social Studies class (or Psychology for that matter) so you talk about phallic references in the Bible to give the conversation some semblance of nobility.
As far as the role of sex in Psychology, that's pointless for adults to even argue. For hormone-charged teenagers, however, one could teach an extremely comprehensive course for an entire school year, and not even address sexual topics...!
Unless the teacher stood to gain SOMETHING, whatever that may have been, why would he risk his career by having such tawdry conversations and showing inappropriate films...ones he KNEW his principal wouldn't approve showing to his students???
Next should be a brief notification of the termination of the 2 that voted to keep him.
Phallic is as phallic does.
Phallic is an adjective from the root word phallus. Get this! Phallus is defined by Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language as, "an image of the penis as a reproductive organ." If that's not sick, discriminatory and just plain vile, then I don't know what is. The first amendment wasn't meant to keep prayer out of school as much as it was to keep this type of asshole's philosophy from being spread by our tax dollars.
*sigh*
I was joking, folks. I thought such an outrageous comment would have made it obvious that I was making fun of the stereotypical predatory "coach" looking for babes.
:-)
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight..................that's why the comment, "He treats us like adults, as a friend" got the ol' spider sense tingling..........
Even his name sounds kinda dirty. ;) Seriously, folks, now watch. He'll just move to MY state and get hired instantly!
Now I see why the school board had a such a problem with this guy. No school should tolerate that thinking nonsense. What if it spread around the entire school?
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