And it was funny… 
Only in their ID photos.
Obviously a Pastafarian. You just can’t trust them.
I agree.
Maybe it wasn’t dinosaur season when he wrote that?
I’M A FIDDLER CRAB! IT’S FIDDLER CRAB SEASON! SHOOT ME!!! SHOOT ME!!!
Also, here’s some text that is not in all CAPS.
Bad teacher. I remember way back when in 7th grade my teacher gave us an assignment to write whatever. I wrote a very great story about finding a dead possum in the woods and how it makes a person think about mortality. Kinda deep for a seventh grader. Got an A plus. On the flip side, my friend wrote a story where the protaganonist has to fight off people with a nailgun. It was a touch graphic. The guy put one right in the brainpan. Do you know what grade he got?
He got a B due to some run on sentences, word choices, and comma splices. Teach new damn well all he was doing was writing an action movie.
Of course he should have been arrested. He never once mentioned getting a dinosaur hunting license. Clear intent on poaching, if you ask me.
So the mother still doesn’t get it? Even though the article clearly states that he wasn’t arrested for what he wrote, but for flipping out and having a tantrum. And she feels that the school should have called her and said…what, “oh, hi, your son is freaking out and yelling and screaming when we asked him to explain something he wrote in class that was a bit concerning, can you come down and help out? What, you’re at work? And you can’t leave until your boss gets back from her lunch break, and you work 40 minutes away if the traffic cooperates? So it’ll be at least 90 minutes before you can get here? Sure, that’ll be fine. We’ll let him scream and rage out in the hallway, though, because the resource officer really doesn’t want to listen to such language, which btw was NOT on any of our vocabulary lessons. Teenagers can be so emotional! Yeah, whenever you can get here is fine. See you soon!”
Thing is, if the kid was yelling and screaming and saying bad words, THAT DOES NOT JUSTIFY AN ARREST. That sort of awful behavior is on the spectrum of what a school can expect (all dopers were, of course, at the opposite end of the spectrum, were kind and well-mannered and smelt of cinnamon rolls). They should be able to handle it without handcuffing the kid.
Handcuffs should be brought out rarely: a child is extraordinarily violent and endangering other children, or a child has been arrested for a serious crime such as dealing meth at school. Being an angry little shit isn’t handcuffable.
Yet if the kid had actually assaulted another child they wouldn’t call the police because they’d want to ‘handle it internally’. I think it’s pretty simple, if the staff feels threatened it’s a police matter, if it’s another student in danger it’s just a disciplinary matter.
Where do you get that from?
Just in comparison to the opposite in cases of bullying where some schools take virtually no action. Relating the two extremes to the same school was just to highlight the irony. The conclusion isn’t based on reality. The reality is that the perception of fear or lack of it seems to play a larger part in these publicized incidents than the use of common sense and deliberation. I agreed completely with your post.
Oh, I agree. We really don’t know what the situation was because all we’ve been told is the boy was “irate”. I have been the mother, called to drive 2.5 hours to pick up her eighth grade son from a school week at camp because he refused to zip his jacket. I am well aware he probably got mouthy and I am also aware that the teacher was overreacting…he wasn’t going to get frostbite like they claimed, and he’s always run a bit hot (and not just hot-headed). My son is lucky nothing worse happened to him, because the school districts we experienced seemed more concerned with getting him out of their hair than helping him at a rough time in his life, and it really set a pattern for him that he has had trouble with his entire life. In fact, it wasn’t until the school told him (shortly post-Columbine) that they considered him a “ticking timebomb” that he realized just how much negative power he had over them, and unfortunately he did not use that power for good.
I just felt the mother’s assertion that she be contacted before anything was done was a bit naive. Having also found out after the fact about the various rounds of discussions and conselling and police involvement that went on when my daughter hit a rough patch in high school (and being told by the superintenant of schools that he fully expected she would end up being a street-walker) I have learned that schools are not the wonderful places of education and support they were when I was a kid. And I speak as someone with a degree in secondary education, who has been a substitute teacher in many area schools, and whose sister and sister-in-law have been teaching for decades.
What kind of person doesn’t trust an eighth-grader to zip up their jacket if they started to get cold? I’d trust an eight year old to do that, provided they actually had their jacket with them.
So just what charge is there for plotting to kill an animal that has been extinct for millions of years?
How about charging the teacher with a lack of reading comprehension?
I guess parents need to make sure the kids don’t have “Janey’s Got a Gun” and “Taking Care of Business” on their iPod playlists.
He doesn’t have to shoot you now. He can shoot you when he gets home if he wants to.
That’s what I thought about on the whole 2.5 hour drive to Mohican. He was wearing the jacket…they just wanted him to zip it up as well. Yes, it was winter. Yes, he should have done what he was told and zipped both it and his mouth. Yes, it was stupidly controlling thing for a teacher to get huffy about, especially with a kid they already knew was liable to dig his heels in if pushed.
There were four incidents, starting in fourth grade, that made me realize the school and the teachers were more concerned about the rules and their graduation rates than the actual students. Each time, the school’s decision to be hardcore had a detrimental effect on my son when some compassion and understanding would have kept him motivated and on the right path. In all those years of elementary school and middle school and high school, despite all his teachers telling me at conferences that he was quiet, polite, funny…there was only one teacher…one…who seemed to care that he was hurting and give him some extra attention and encouragement. Nowadays you can get an IEP for just about anything, and extra help, extra testing. But no one cared, and I was naive and trusting. Even the principal in elementary school whom he had adored, who knew my son’s dad had just walked out on us…even he shocked me by telling my son he was a crybaby when the fresh pain of his dad’s rejection got the better of him one day.
So yeah…teachers can be petty and controlling. It’s a hard job, and not every kid gets the warm fuzzies from their teachers.
I don’t.
