Poll: Should this TX teacher have been fired for telling a student to "Go back to Mexico"?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ll give my opinion in the thread, but for the OP I’ll link to the story (for other links google Shirley Bunn Mexico suspended) and try to stick to just the facts:
Shirley Bunn, 63, is a junior high math teacher in Arlington, Texas a community in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area (pop. 365,000, of whom about 30% are Hispanic). She has 24 years of teaching experience and has won “Teacher of the Year” award twice in her community (Arlington, not D-FW). Most of her colleagues and students say she is a good teacher. For obvious reasons some of her supporters point out that she has also volunteered numerous times with Hispanic agencies in Arlington.

This past September she was administering Title 1 forms to 8th Grade math students. (Title 1 is a Federal program aimed at helping at-risk students by funding tutoring/special ed/counseling and other types of programs; it’s geared mostly at elementary schools, but as Texas alone receives hundreds of millions per year from Title 1 so it’s a major portion of many school’s budget.) While she was administering the forms a student with a history of disruptive behavior kept interrupting her saying “I’m Mexican. I’m Mexican.” She told him that there were Spanish language forms available at the administrative office, and he again kept repeating “I’m Mexican. I’m Mexican.”

Ms. Bunn said, in front of the class, “Then go back to Mexico!” This caused a major firestorm in the area, with many demanding she be fired immediately and many on the other side seeing absolutely nothing wrong with it and probably the majority caught in the middle.

The school suspended her with pay until a hearing. This week she was reinstated as it was not considered a fireable offense. She has apologized and said (I’m paraphrasing) that it just slipped out because she was in a bad mood, stressed, and the kid was being obnoxious.

In your opinion: do you think she should have been fired, or just disciplined, or that no real issue should have been made at all, or other?

2

I don’t blame her a bit. Kid was being obnoxious. Yes, it was a mistake to say it out loud, but shit happens. Everybody needs to unbunch their panties, ship the kid back to Mexico if he is so insistent, and get on with life.

3

With 24 years of experience you would think she would have been able to bite her tongue, god knows how many obnoxious kids she’s had to deal with. But with that being said, I don’t think it is all that big of a deal, although it was inappropriate. The media eat that shit up though and it usually gets out of hand.

4

I voted no, it was wrong but not fireable.

Teaching in a public school is never an easy job. Teaching in a puberty school (junior high) has got to be tougher yet, and teaching math harder still. Add to this the importance on jotting and tittling all the federal forms she had to get out, plus whatever was on her plate before and after she got to work, and the fact we all have bad moods, and it’s easy to understand very high stress.

Few things are more annoying than an obnoxious student. For those who’ve never taught, they don’t just get on your nerves but they can completely upend an entire class. (I’m not saying this one did necessarily, but he did have a history of disruptive behavior.) My take: she was in a mood, he was being obnoxious (because I’m sure that by 8th grade he would know that Spanish translations are available for everything) and she had answered him, and she snapped. To quote Chris Rock, “Not saying it’s right, but I understand!”

I don’t snap at students routinely or regularly and in fact I’m known for my ability to keep my cool with some real stunners, BUT it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it, and unless Mr. Rogers was once a teacher I doubt there’s anybody who has ever taught who doesn’t think it. I have made smartass comments before- never routinely, we’re not talking once a week or even once a quarter- but sometimes they slip out, nothing really serious but… sometimes you speak before you think. Whether anything I said was as bad as what she said depends on how bad you think “then go back to Mexico” was- I will say I’ve never mentioned race or ethnicity, BUT…

I just really don’t think it was that nasty of a comment. I don’t think she meant it as a slur against Mexicans- all she’s saying is a clearly not-serious “Then why don’t you go there!”, the same as you would probably say if you were feeding a group of kids and one kept saying “At my house we have lemonade! At my house we have lemonade!” If an American student were in a Montreal classroom and kept saying “I’m from Boston! I’m from Boston!” when the teacher was trying to do French language paperwork, I’m pretty sure that if the teacher was stressed the same thing might have happened, and I seriously doubt it would have ever made the news.

It’s lunacy that a comment that isn’t a slur about a student’s race or religion or even nationality (she wasn’t saying anything is wrong with Mexico [though of course plenty is wrong with it, just ‘I wish you were somewhere else, not here’) but a two second moment of frustration should damage a good teacher’s career. A letter in her file, maybe a probation (and I think the rest of this year would suffice) and send her on her way, content in the knowledge you wasted public money paying a teacher to stay home for 4 months instead of being in the classroom all as a salute to hypersensitivity.

5

Plus, the comment was in English, a language we already know the kid doesn’t understand, so why should he be offended?:wink:

The irony is that if he’s here illegally the press surrounding this may expose that info and end up making him “go back to Mexico”. Not that he’s the reason this became a sensational news story (albeit one I just can’t get worked up about).

6

That’s the kind of thing that sounds really bad because that’s how it’s usually meant, but I can imagine someone saying it without thinking and not meaning anything bad by it. If there is no other indication, in 24 years of teaching, that she mistreats Mexican students, then it sounds like it was just a one time lapse in judgment and I don’t think she deserves to be fired.

Of COURSE she shouldn’t have said it though. The people commenting on the article mostly think it was just great that she said it :rolleyes:

7

I think you have to really project to call it racist. I’ve lived internationally and now back in the US. I do get irritated at foreigners that figuratively get in my face about bad things in America. I’m fine to have a warts and all discussion, but find generally find it obnoxious for a non-citizen to just slag away at how bad something is in America and how great it is back (insert country here). “Don’t let the door slam your ass on the way back to (insert country here).”

Sheesh, if (insert country here) is such a paradise, then WTF are you doing here (especially if a permanent resident or actually a naturalized citizen)?

Now if the teacher has said something like “why don’t you swim back over the border” or something similar then that would be a different kettle of fish.

8

There was an incident in Alabama a couple of years back with a science teacher who got into an argument over with his students when he refused to scale a test that many of them failed. He basically said that enough students had done well on it that it obviously wasn’t impossible to pass, and that since the problems used equations and formulas and mathematics to get the correct response the answers were basically either right or they were wrong- this wasn’t subjective like an essay. He further said that because he believed the main reason so many students did poorly was that they didn’t study enough or pay attention in class, he wasn’t going to reward them with charity grades.

Except, he didn’t say charity. He said “welfare”. This being an Alabama public school, which in most cities are predominantly poor black and where often the majority of the class is on some form of welfare and welfare in fact has a racial charge (even though there are more whites on welfare than black the ‘welfare queen’ stereotype is black due to the disproportionate percentage of blacks on welfare), there was a momentary shitstorm.

Two things kept it from going AC360:

1- the teacher himself was black
2- the teacher was from a family that had received welfare when he was a child

Literally, the first day there was fury, but when those two facts emerged it quieted instantly. Had it been a white middle class teacher like Shirley Bunn, it probably would have been a national news story, just as this one would have been a ‘who cares?’ story if Shirley Bunn was Mexican.

9

It’s the kind of phrase that is probably highly inappropriate, probably highly racist, and probably a firing offence.

In this case it was appropriate and not racist. It hopefully also taught the kid a lesson about integration. No problem at all and I am glad to see that almost everyone at least partly agrees with me, given the results of the poll.

10

I haven’t read the links, so based on your OP, I say no.

11

I answered wrong, but not fireable, but there might be other circumstances when I would answer differently. For instance, if she had a history of making similar comments to students. As a one-time thing though, she shouldn’t be fired over it.

12

The article said she once referred to some students as “the Mexican Mafia” in a(n apparently not very) confidential conversation with the school counselor. That’s the only reported instance, and it wasn’t in public.

13

The context is important. The student was being disruptive and saying “I’m from Mexico”. That made the teacher telling him “Go back to Mexico” fall within the bounds of acceptable. It was directed specifically at something this particular student was saying at the time not at Mexican students in general.

She ideally shouldn’t have lost her temper with the student but this was probably not a sign of racism. And if she’s generally a good teacher (which appears to be the case) it can be excused that the student picked the wrong day to annoy her and she lost it.

14

Why would the kid expect a spanish form in an American school ?

15

If the kid had been yelling “I’m from Arkansas” the teacher probably would have told him to go back to Arkansas. I. Don’t think she did much wrong at all and the kid sounds like a little shit.

16

Because there is a huge number of Spanish speakers in Texas, including both immigrants and heritage-language speakers? Because there is no official national language in the USA? Because it is important to assess students’ math abilities accurately, something that might not happen if they were taking a math test with directions in English? Because like it or not, Spanish is the language of a significant percentage of Americans? (I think a bit north of 10% as a native language, and Wikipedia says just over a third of Texas.)

17

Context is important, and it is clearly a mitigating factor, but the statement is still a little loaded. If a white teacher, well-known for addressing white students as “Son” or “Boy”, accidentally referred to a black student as “Boy”, we’d all be a little upset because it’s recognized as a racist term, regardless of the teacher’s good intentions when he said it. I don’t think that hypothetical white teacher should be fired for that, and neither do I think that Ms. Bunn should have been fired. I could see asking her to stay home for a couple days in order to sort the situation out, but since she has no prior record of racist comments or actions, she should have been brought back much sooner.

18

Because Spanish is one of the languages spoken in America.

19

This TX teacher has said a lot worse. Mind you, I teach 16-18 year olds, so it’s a very different thing, but you don’t thrive in a racially diverse school by being super-sensitive to race. Instead, you’ve got to find a kind of humor in it.

20

The school district is 36% Hispanic, so many of them probably speak EFL if that.