At this time of year, I always find myself getting a bit anxious. Why, you might ask? Not because I fear that my poor innocent babies can't make it on their own for eight hours without me -- hardly -- but because I am still traumatized by The Very Bad Teacher.
The Very Bad Teacher taught music at my daughter's school and was known for being intense. He was heavily into music and had started up some famous choir in the neighbourhood and was extremely intent that his music pupils and his school choir were the best in the city. He put on a Spring Fling one year that rivalled some Broadway mega-musical -- it was completely and utterly over the top. But the school kept winning prestigious music awards and the ruthlessly ambitious principal at the time loved the attention he was shining on the school; she wanted a huge job at the board of education, and he was helping her get there.
The Very Bad Teacher was so intense, however, that when a child acted up in class, he didn't hesitate to scream obscenties at them or, oftentimes, grab them by their shirt collars and physically hurl them from the classroom. My daughter and her friends -- straight A students and athletes who got good music marks and participated in the choir -- began to come home with horror stories. One of the girls was told she was ugly and an embarrassment to his choir when she turned around to speak to a kid behind her. When a group of parents suggested to the principal that The Very Bad Teacher seemed to have some anger management problems, she immediately turned it around on the kids, calling them tyrants, despite the fact that just a few weeks earlier she had awarded some of them the Principal's Award for outstanding conduct and for setting an example for others. The fact that we had spoken to the principal infuriated The Very Bad Teacher, and we were soon forced to remove our kids from the choir, and then from the music class, because he literally began terrorizing them. Our complaints to the board and the trustee, meantime, went largely unheeded -- they sided with the principal.
Now before anyone says it (40 and No Boat), let me be clear: I am not one of THOSE mothers who believes their child can do no wrong. I pooh-poohed my daughter's complaints at first, told her to respect authority figures, and deal with it. But before long just about every parent in the school was hearing the same stories. And the principal began refusing to even speak to parents who wanted to voice their concerns, or to show up for PTA meetings where he was discussed. I ended up in mediation with the principal, some parents threatened to sue, but still the music teacher remained in the classroom.
Three years later, the same teacher actually picked my son up after he'd fallen out of line in a square dance and hurled him to the ground. My son was 10 at the time, the littlest kid in his class, and shy ... he had never been in a whit of trouble before. This time, I went straight to the board and avoided dealing with the principal. In a month, The Very Bad Teacher had been reassigned to a board job and was out of the classroom.
I am actually still angry about it, mostly at the principal. She clearly had a whackjob on her hands and yet refused to even return parents' calls. She too is no longer a principal and didn't get the job she'd hoped for. I hope my complaints about her to the higher-ups had something to do with it.
7 comments:
My God. He sounds like the teacher I was talking about in the other post. She'd taught my mom so she must have been there since the middle twenties at least before she got around to me in 1955.
She broke a girl's arm, she screamed, she called me a bastard (true but inappropriate). I'm still angry 50 years later. She singled out one kid a year and that was my turn in the barrel. I walked out of her class midway through and spent the rest of the year studying in the school office (with their blessing).
Finally they forced her to retire. She was crazy as a loon.
Did you ever see the movie Pulp Fiction. Right after the male rape scene Ving says Bruce he was "going to get some pipe swinging brothers from the hood, come down here and get med-evil on his ass!"
I am thinking along the same lines.
Fess up, you can't sue anybody on the internet. Apparently most of what one reads is not to be believed.
The only reason people get away with deplorable things like that is because those who know whats going on shut their yaps because noone wants to offend anybody. It is the same for pedophiles and abusers.
Don't get me started on holier than thou religions and their secrets.......
At the same time I am big believer in what goes around comes around.
I also practice and teach the only thing a bully understands is bullying, so never hesitate to give back regardless of size, age or sex.
In closing because you are such a rockstar mom, I am sure your son will not even remember this goof and will grow up to be a great person. If their is any lasting damage a law suit might be in order.
So far, I haven't had to deal with a teacher like that. My daughter went to a school where she had different teachers for all the subjects so I sort of took the easy way out and if she had a weaker or partially crazy teacher, I just said, "Well it's only French. Thank Gawd she doesn't have him (or her) for all the rest too."
When I think back on it, I wonder if I should have sued the school/teacher/board after he pushed my son. This was the second child of mine that he'd done it to. I had warned them the first time he was a danger and was basically told to shut my piehole and go into mediation with the principal so she and I could learn to get along better in the years to come, since my son was still in the school.
I wonder if I made a mistake not suing their asses.
In Grade 3 I had a bad teacher. She was about 82 with 3 hairs on her head. She was also the local preacher's wife. I got my first detention in her class in mathematics because I didn't get at least 5 out of 10 on the timed slide show quiz. I still believe to this day that I am not good in math. Laverne was the slow kid. No he wasn't developmentally delayed he just went along at his own pace, which was slower than the rest of the class. She screamed and yelled at him but nothing changed. She actually bent him over his desk and spanked him with the ruler. He just sat down and continued at his own pace. The rest of us were scared witless. I never told my parents, suspecting they would side with the authority figure. Times have changed but bad teachers are still out there. I say sue the bastards!
Gosh, that sounds an awful lot like my high school band teacher, Mr. G. He was brilliant, but volitile. He would scream like a banshee if things didn't go his way, and he often threw things. I was lead flute in my band (this one time...at band camp...) and when I spoke back to him he demoted to sitting beside the basoon (something I deserved 100%). Unfortunately it didn't end there, and the next band class he threw his directors music stand at me. I never went back. I believe after several more complaints, he too was reassigned to a task where he did not deal with students.
Mad musicians!
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