And people wonder why I only drink Brita Water from our filter . . .

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Being rude to a teacher is something that should not be tolerated -- there are very few jobs in the world where you can go up to your supervisor and say "You're a complete and utter piece of crap, and you shouldn't be in the position you are in!" without being summarily dismissed. It's a fact of life that on the jobsite you have a responsibility to control your speech. Enforcing that in schools -- early, as you said, joacqin, -- is vitally important.

They don't pay me enough to put up with a constant barrage of verbal abuse. And that's what rudeness is.

 

That is, of course, the great conundrum. If a child is born* without a conscience, with no concern for right or wrong or the suffering of others, are they evil? The greatest fiends in history have been condemned for behavior fitting that description, but if it was their nature and not their choice, are they still evil?

There's a huge difference between 'stupid teen' and 'twisted, sadistic freak'.

 

Not in my high school days....

 

And this is why many students have issues with teachers, myself included when it comes to my college professors. We're not looking for someone with an egotistical god complex to teach us. It's that kind of attitude that fires up the tensions between students and teachers because the teachers believe themselves to be "all-knowing" and the students no more than a slate to be written on. It's that kind of an attitude from a teacher or a professor that often times keeps the student from approaching when they need help because the teacher sees themselves as above the students. It should be a partnership. Without the students, the teacher has no job. Without the teacher, it's more difficult for a student to learn the basics needed to be productive citizens in the real world. Because my mother didn't act as "God" in her classroom, when she still taught, those students who actually wanted to learn knew they had someone in their corner and in fact came back year after year to show my mother how their grades had improved.

 

Not to toot my own horn, but I just finished teaching a Grade 12 English equivalency course this evening. One of my students (21 years old) said to me "LKD, you and Sean have been the best teachers I ever had. If I'd had teachers like you 6 years ago, I wouldn't have dropped out of high school ."

It made me feel good. It's experiences like that that make the job worthwhile. (FYI, not that you care, but Sean was her Biology teacher last semester)

I'm at a stage in my teaching career that I am willing to bend over backwards for any student who wants to learn, I don't care what their past has been. But I expect people to act decently when IN my class, I don't care how old they are. I treat my students with dignity and respect (and I'd bet both of my Berries that joacqin does too, even if inside he feels "godlike" ) and it can get some great results.

It can also go no-where fast if I'm dealing with an immature fool who equates calm, pleasant, compromising rationality as weakness. I've dealt with that sort too.

 

Well, that might require you to:

Although forwards (and in either case a lot of flexibility) would probably be easier.


Anyway, good on you, LKD. I'm sure it's moments like those that make teaching very rewarding.

 

Here's the rub, LKD. What the girls did wasn't criminal. In real life, an employer can and should fire you for playing such a prank on company time*, but your school isn't your employer. School, unlike work, is compulsory. Fortunately, the school was not without its tools, either. They caused these young girls to face the school-age equivalent of a job loss by kicking them off the cheer-leading squad.

* If, on the other hand, your employer fires you just because they heard that you did it in your off-hours, your employer can be sued for firing you based on hearsay -- getting fired is hardly a given for playing a prank like this on your own time.

 

Hey, who's picking on my Canadian buddy, LKD? So he gets a bit passionate sometimes - He, and other teachers, have a tough job, as many have been commenting on this thread. And as Aldeth points out, most of this comes down to poor parenting. Let me just say that it would be a sad day at the Chandos household if my girls were caught doing something like this. Justice would be swift and sure. The first week of school, I always tell the teachers, if my kids are a problem all they have to do is call or email me; I will fix it for them. Even if I think the people who run the Texas schools ARE Fascist, corporate, pigs.

 

I'm not sure about that. I cannot cite a criminal statute or anything like that, but tricking people into drinking pee seems to go beyond something that is simply "not nice". I imagine tricking people into drinking your pee could potentially cause harm to them - I imagine it can make you quite sick. That may not qualify it is as assault, but maliciously making people sick sounds illegal if you ask me.

 

Well, in Canada, we have a law on the books that means a person can be charged with "administering a noxious substance". Now I looked up the term "noxious" to see the dictionary definition (which may be different from the legal definition) and Wiktionary says:

While Webster's (linked from Wiki) states

Now much has been made here that there has been no lasting physical harm, but the emotional distress inflicted could be seen by some courts as criminal in nature. In that sense, it could be considered "hurtful" or "harmful", and definitely "unwholesome" aand "unpleasant". In that case, what the girls did could be classified as criminal. I'll leave it to the lawyers both Canadian and otherwise to evaluate the circumstances behind previous charges of "administering a noxious substance."

My point is that the severity of the crime is what is at issue here. Many of you think it is not a big deal. My point is that the crime / offense is bigger than what people are saying. Therefore the punishment should be greater. If we had more parents like Chandos, it wouldn't be as much of an issue, but as it stands, when the parents totally forfeit their responsibilities as so many do, the school must step in and deliver adequate punishments.

And as for a business, I'm not sure but if a person is convicted of a felony (I know this pee incident would likely be a misdeameanor, but whatever) is it not possible to fire that person regardless of if the crime was committed on company time?

 

Most people are "at will" employees, meaning you can quit your job at any time, and a company can fire you at any time, with or without cause. Unless you actually have a contract with your employer saying you will work for X time for Y salary, they can get rid of you for just about any reason they wish. Of course, even contracts usually have some type of parameters that would indicate if you were convicted of a crime they could give you the boot.

 

LKD, while I agree on the point of needing strong enough punishment to deter such trickery in the future, I'm not all that sure that those girls really understood the full ramifications of their actions either.

I've seen that exact same trick referenced in enough many places (including my own dear family members ) to make me assert that the "expected" response to it is getting grossed out, possibly seeking revenge via another trick, or in the case of Jackass-esque paid idiocy, chasing the perpetrators around with a whip.

Sure, it COULD possibly lead to all sorts of harm for the poor hapless victim. <Cue in a long story of someone who's been bullied all through his life and this trick being the final nail in the coffin before finally committing suicide.> But I'd hardly consider that much more likely than, say, dieing of a heart attack after someone pulls a scare stunt on you.

In other words - the girls need a hard talk with someone they consider authority, be it police, their parents or their friends. No scorn shall be saved until they understand why doing that is a Bad Thing (tm). And the victims - they most likely need to grow a pair. *BEFORE* they end up at ER for some other, in the grand scheme of things, rather minor wrongdoing.

 

My point is that the likelihood someone would actually get charged with anything for playing a prank like this is rather low. Case in point -- these girls in Texas were not charged with committing a crime, and school discipline most assuredly doesn't serve as a stand-in for the legal system. Kids that commit crimes in school aren't immune to legal consequences just because they did it at school. Quite the opposite, actually. We have all kinds of laws on the books that make it an even bigger deal to commit a crime at school. To double check my own logic, I called an old national guard friend of mine who is a small town sheriff. The prank violates no state or local statutes that he is aware of, and while he says he could probably find something to use to make an arrest, he doubts any charges would actually stick -- and he wouldn't pursue a case like that unless his hand was forced.

I would agree that a full suspension for as much as a week would be reasonable for this type of disciplinary infraction, but the level of punishment you appear to be advocating goes well beyond that.