What would you think if she were your kids math teacher?
A summary:
A Grafton Virginia high school math teacher is back in class after being suspended for scaring her class by jokingly threatening to gun them down. Charlotte Hoskins says she was reviewing math answers when she told her class that next time they’d better know the facts. Some students asked “Or what?” So she replied or she’d just shoot them. After some student oohs, she noted that they’d be safe until Christmas – her husband wasn’t getting a gun until then. Her analysis: “This day and time, it’s hard to joke with students,” “You have to be careful what you say.”
The teacher definately should have realized that it would have been in bad taste to even joke about something like that with the shootings that have taken place the past two years. I would have to know if this teacher had been disgruntled over things in the past to know whether or not she’d follow through. Unfortunatly even the slightest things of that nature need to be taken seriously.
Most teachers know not to say things like this. You’d certainly have to be a tad “wacky,” to utter something like this. However, the statement was a joke. That’s all it was. Those who thought otherwise are making a big deal over nothing.
Whether or not she was planning on following through aside, she’s too stupid to be teaching. Even if she somehow thought that this was a funny joke, she would have to have been buried in a hole for the last 5 years to think that this was something that would be taken lightly.
Even if none of the shooting incidents had taken place, this would be an inappropriate thing to say to your students. You don’t go around threatening to kill people, whether there’s a precendence for similar incidences or not.
She shouldn’t be teaching. My child would be taken out of the class.
This is kind of a hard one to call. My gut instinct is that the teacher probably should have known better, but since they are high school students they probably could have told that she wasn’t serious.
I mean, if she’d repeatedly threatened them with such punishment then it should be brought up to administration, but I think if it just happened once some of the students should have gotten together and talked with the teacher if they didn’t find it funny. A teacher worth his or her salt would take their feelings into consideration and definitely make some sort of apology in the next class.
If, on the other hand, it was a bunch of elementary or middle school teachers, then it would have been inexcusable. Teachers are still unquestionable authority at that age and more often than not what they say comes close to gospel. Ergo, scared kids.
I think if she had just said something along the lines of, “Look at these test scores! Am I gonna have to shoot you?” in a joking manner, some people would have gotten upset but those people would no matter what. However, she took it too far when she went on about how they were safe until Christmas because her husband wasn’t getting a gun until then. That’s where she crossed the line, IMO.
In my circle of friends and associates, I could say this no problem. But I am not an ambassador of a community like a teacher would be.
I personally think the whole thing is ridiculous. It’s patently obvious that the teacher did not really plan to gun the children down. Even the people who suspended her would admit to this.
The fact that it was tasteless would enter into it. Especially after all the schoolyard shooting deaths. This may be the contribution that suspended her, but I doubt it.
What it boils down to is the “zero tolerance” policy that many schools have instituted, which is one of the most ass-backwards things I have ever seen. I’m not going to boil down into the basics and why I think it’s all screwed up, I’m sure there’s a thread in Great Debates following this right now.
My opinion, if it means anything to you, is that the teacher should have know better than to make that joke. But the fact that she had to monitor herself for making such an innocuos joke points to a deeper wrong in our society.
In a former life, Spritle was an high school teacher.
I found that you MUST use humor to move the class along, regardless of the subject or level you teach.
I also found that you can joke around with higher level kids more than lower level kids; they “get it”. (By “it” I mean the subtle nature of many jokes or sarcasms. I don’t know what YOU were thinking. )
Further, I found that these kids have had 16, 17, 18 years to build up TONS of emotional baggage and are now at that “self-discovery” age where the baggage can be amplified and have PROFOUND effects. There was a student in my honors chemistry class who, I thought, was the model “girl-next-door” type. Quiet and kind of shy, very smart, attractive, athletic, just one super kid. When I commented to another teacher about how happy I was that she got a full scholarship to a major college, he said that she certainly deserved it, what with the tough time she had growing up.
Spritle is curious by nature, to the point of nosy. Spritle pried. When the girl was younger (8 or so) her father called the family into the living room. He pointed a gun at the mother and the two girls and said that they were the reason he was so unhappy. He then said “You did this to me” and stuck the gun in his mouth and blew his brains out. Fine! If you want to kill yourself and screw up you kids, you’re an ass. If you blame them and then make them watch, there is an extra special place in hell for you.
This teacher was stupid. Not necessarily for what she said, but because she did not think of the repurcussions or how it might be taken. She does not deserve to teach those students any more.
Spritle suspects that she will be “voluntarily” transferred at the end of the year.
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