Teacher Placed On Leave For Hanging Foreign Flags

[Duke_of_Rat]

[QUOTE=Polycarp]
Once somebody reads 18-11-205 (4) (a) (IV) to the court, and they dismiss charges against Eric Hamlin with apologies, perhaps the court will take the opportunity to give a lesson to the unnamed Carmody Middle School principal and Jeffco Public Schools spokeswoman Lynn Setzer on the subject of frivolous charges, the purpose behind the law and how it does not apply in this case, etc.
[/QUOTE]

I hope Eric Hamlin gets to fly a flag made out of the termination papers of the principal.

[Hampshire]

So if a kid builds a treehouse and wants to fly a pirate flag (skull and crossbones) from it he’s breaking the law?

[Bricker]

“Under state law, foreign flags can only be in the classroom because it’s tied to the curriculum. And the principal looked at the curriculum, talked to the teacher, and found that there was really no curriculum coming up in the next few weeks that supported those flags being in the classroom,” said Jeffco Public Schools spokeswoman Lynn Setzer.

However…

But Hamlin [the suspended teacher] said although his curriculum may not speak specifically about those flags, they are used as reference tools for world geography.

“It’s much along the lines of a science teacher who puts up a map of the solar system. They may not spend every day and every lesson talking about Mars, but they want the students to see that and to see the patterns of the planets and the order, and the students will observe that and absorb that learning visually,” Hamlin said.

There seems to me to be lttle question that Hamlin’s view, if adopted by the school administration, be sufficient to trigger the “instructional or historical materials” exception in the law.

So it’s my assumption that the administration is looking for some excuse, however thin and flimsy, to go after this teacher or these flags.

[JustAnotherGeek]

[QUOTE=Jodi]
IMO that doesn’t matter, your supervisor tells you to do something, your response is not “No.” Not unless it is something you feel so strongly about that you’re willing to risk losing your job over it.

At the end of the day, I think you’ll find that regardless of how the flag issue shakes out, the administrative leave will be upheld.
[/QUOTE]

Your supervisor can’t tell you run naked across the parking lot. (Ok, that’s a wee bit extreme.) The point is that there are limits on what constitutes a valid “something” that a supervisor can tell you. Telling a geography teacher that they cannot use flags in their lesson is something the principal should be raked over the coals for. Especially when the teacher had done so for the previous three years.

How much do you want to bet on the administrative leave being upheld?

[Alma]

I see there is a Six Flags in Denver. I can’t find any pictures of the entrance, but I wonder what they display.

[mhendo]

[QUOTE=Jodi]
I’m not getting the outrage.

The guy was placed on leave for subordination. IOW, the principal told him to take the flags down and he refused. The principle appears to have believed that having the flags up was breaking the law. Now maybe he was wrong, or maybe he was right but the law is stupid. IMO that doesn’t matter, your supervisor tells you to do something, your response is not “No.” Not unless it is something you feel so strongly about that you’re willing to risk losing your job over it.

At the end of the day, I think you’ll find that regardless of how the flag issue shakes out, the administrative leave will be upheld.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, shame on him for defending the integrity of the education process.

And i think you meant “insubordination.”

[saoirse]

[QUOTE=mhendo]
No. He wasn’t arrested or charged. He was put on leave by the school district for refusing to take down the flags.
[/QUOTE]

If it had been me, though, there would have been an arrest.

[QUOTE=Hampshire]
So if a kid builds a treehouse and wants to fly a pirate flag (skull and crossbones) from it he’s breaking the law?
[/QUOTE]

It’s pretty clear that it has to be a public buiding. You gotta work a little harder to have PART 2 ANARCHY - SEDITION on your record.

[mhendo]

[QUOTE=Alma]
I see there is a Six Flags in Denver. I can’t find any pictures of the entrance, but I wonder what they display.
[/QUOTE]
Except for subsection (2) dealing with flags likely to cause a breach of the peace, the law applies only to flags flown on public property and buildings. Six Flags can fly what it wants.

And i think subsection (2) is stupid also.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

This smells like a Principal trying to run off a teacher he doesn’t like, without ticking-off the Union.

Or, perhaps, a Union-busting effort? :dubious:

[silenus]

[QUOTE=saoirse]
If it had been me, though, there would have been an arrest.
[/QUOTE]

Me, too. There would have been charges of assault, battery, breach of the Peace, and quite a few others before I was hauled away, probably in chains.

That said, the administrative leave will stand, because it isn’t the courts business. The teacher was insubordinate. That was strictly an internal discipline decision by the school district. The principal may get a letter of reprimand placed in his file, but that’s about it. In my opinion, both the teacher and the principal are idiots here.

[Jodi]

JUSTANOTHERGEEK –

Your supervisor can’t tell you run naked across the parking lot. (Ok, that’s a wee bit extreme.)

If that’s part of whatever bizarre job you have (Streaker for Hire?), sure she can. The point is, if you’re asked to do something in the course of your job, you don’t simply refuse to do it unless you expect consequences, including suspension or firing.

The point is that there are limits on what constitutes a valid “something” that a supervisor can tell you.

Of course there are. And those limits obviously would include a principal having oversight over the manner and means by which a teacher in his school teaches a given curriculum. When there is a state law that on its face at least appears to give minimal support to the principal’s conclusion, I don’t think the teacher is a very strong position to say “I’m not going to do what you as my supervisor ask, because I happen to disagree with you about the applicability of the law.”

Telling a geography teacher that they cannot use flags in their lesson is something the principal should be raked over the coals for. Especially when the teacher had done so for the previous three years.

First, it appears the principal justifies his decision at least in part on the fact that the teacher was not using the flags as part of his lesson; the teacher’s curriculum “did not speak specifically to those flags” which were instead more general “reference tools.” Second, I can’t agree that the principal should be raked over the coals for trying to comply with the law as he understands it, even if the law is stupid. The problem is with the law, not the principal (or the teacher, for that matter). Third, the teacher had not taught at that school for the last three years; this was the first year he taught there, and the principal took issue with the flags on the second day of school.

How much do you want to bet on the administrative leave being upheld?

I don’t know; five bucks? Ten bucks?

MHENDO –

Yeah, shame on him for defending the integrity of the education process.

Not sure where I said or implied “shame on him,” but hey, feel free to read into my posts whatever floats your boat. My point was that if you defy the directive of your supervisor, to not have that picture in your cubicle, or not wear that T-shirt, or not include that cartoon in your instructional materials, or not decorate your classroom in a given way, I think it’s a stretch to be shocked – shocked! – to find yourself disciplined for insubordination. When Boss says “You go do , where is inarguably related to how you do your job,” the realm of acceptable answers does not include “No.”

And i think you meant “insubordination.”

I did, thank you.

I agree the law is stupid, badly written and overbroad. I think BRICKER may be right that the whole dust-up may be a pretext for the principal to sandbag the teacher. But if that’s so, the teacher walked right into it. As I read it, the teacher was not put on admin leave for hanging up the flags, but for refusing to take them down. I don’t find that nearly as outrageous as if he’d been suspended for hanging them up in the first place.

[Jodi]

[QUOTE=silenus]
That said, the administrative leave will stand, because it isn’t the courts business. The teacher was insubordinate. That was strictly an internal discipline decision by the school district. The principal may get a letter of reprimand placed in his file, but that’s about it. In my opinion, both the teacher and the principal are idiots here.
[/QUOTE]

This is my position too; just said much more succinctly.

[TheBoneyKingofNowhere]

[QUOTE=Alma]
I see there is a Six Flags in Denver. I can’t find any pictures of the entrance, but I wonder what they display.
[/QUOTE]
Funniest thing I’ve seen all week.

[mhendo]

Update

Teacher In Flag Flap Reinstated But Must Rotate Flags Out

The Jefferson County School District said Thursday that it has reinstated a geography teacher who was placed on paid administrative leave because he refused to take down foreign flags hung up in his classroom.

The school district said Eric Hamlin will be back in class at Carmody Middle School on Friday and so will his flags.

However, the school said that he can only have the flags up for six weeks at a time and then he will have to rotate them out, since state law makes it illegal to display foreign flags permanently in schools.

Did the principal and the jackasses at the school district never think of this option before ordering him to take down flags that had been up for two days?

[Contrapuntal]

[QUOTE=mhendo]
Update

Teacher In Flag Flap Reinstated But Must Rotate Flags OutDid the principal and the jackasses at the school district never think of this option before ordering him to take down flags that had been up for two days?
[/QUOTE]
They were just trying to queer the action on Jodi’s bet. They played their hand a bit too early.

[Polycarp]

Jodi et al.: While I concur that an employee should not be insubordinate to the directive of his supervisor, especially when such a directive is founded in applicable law, let me point out that teachers are professionals, charged with a duty to uphold certain ethics. If the supervisor said, “We’re not going to teach evolution this year, because the School Board President is a fundamentalist and doesn’t want us to,” or “We’re not going to teach the curriculum segment on the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, because it always makes the kids think they can get away with things,” is he honorbound to agree to that?

If you, Jodi, were still working in the State Attorneys Office, and your supervisor told you to rip up a habeas corpus petition validly coming through your office, because if the court saw it they’d grant it and free the petitioner, who is the undesirable boyfriend of the granddaughter of the State Party Chairman, so there’s political pressure to keep him locked up – are you going to honor that instruction? If Qadgop is told by the warden not to order medicines that will keep a fractious prisoner alive, because they’re too expensive, is he obliged to honor that order?

Granted these flags are nowhere that cleancut an example, but they’re within his professional judgment as an educator, and not clearly a violation of law or completely outside what an educator might reasonably use for classroom materials. What I’m arguing is that you’re defining a clearcut principle of “no insubordination” and I’m saying that there are times when one’s professional ethics requires one to courteously tell one’s boss to autocopulate. Is this one of those times? Dunno, but I personally think the principal and the school district created a tempest in a teapot – with the teacher not wholly without fault either.

[JustAnotherGeek]

Well, shoot. Now I can’t tell who (would have) won.

[Jodi]

CONTRAPUNTAL –

They were just trying to queer the action on Jodi’s bet. They played their hand a bit too early.

Ha! Saving me five bucks. Possibly ten.

POLYCARP –

While I concur that an employee should not be insubordinate to the directive of his supervisor, especially when such a directive is founded in applicable law, let me point out that teachers are professionals, charged with a duty to uphold certain ethics. If the supervisor said, “We’re not going to teach evolution this year, because the School Board President is a fundamentalist and doesn’t want us to,” or “We’re not going to teach the curriculum segment on the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, because it always makes the kids think they can get away with things,” is he honorbound to agree to that?

Well, yes. If the school district has a policy in place that forbids the teaching of evolutionary theory or constitutional law then, yes, the teacher would have an obligation to comply with that or quit. If he failed to comply with it, he would be insubordinate and subject to discipline. It’s not that you can’t engage in acts of civil disobedience in the realm of your job, it’s just that you should not expect those acts to be without consequences. And your employer does not necessarily act unreasonably in applying those consequences. But honestly, I have a hard time casting this teacher’s problem as presenting an ethical delimma. What, he can’t teach geography without flags? Doing so is against his values?

If you, Jodi, were still working in the State Attorneys Office, and your supervisor told you to rip up a habeas corpus petition validly coming through your office, because if the court saw it they’d grant it and free the petitioner, who is the undesirable boyfriend of the granddaughter of the State Party Chairman, so there’s political pressure to keep him locked up – are you going to honor that instruction?

A habeas petition would be filed with the court and not the AG’s office, and therefore ripping it up would only cause the petitioner to have to mail us another one. But if you are asking if I would do something dishonest or unethical because I was told to – of course not. But that’s hardly an analogous situation to the one presented here. Unless you think teaching geography without flags is dishonest or unethical.

If Qadgop is told by the warden not to order medicines that will keep a fractious prisoner alive, because they’re too expensive, is he obliged to honor that order?

No. And if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle. These sort of “thou shalt act dishonestly and unethically or thou shalt be fired” hypotheticals have nothing to do with the OP, where a teacher was told to take down what were essentially decorations in his room – having no other discernable impact on what he taught and how he taught it – and he refused.

Granted these flags are nowhere that cleancut an example, but they’re within his professional judgment as an educator, and not clearly a violation of law or completely outside what an educator might reasonably use for classroom materials.

If by “not as clean-cut” you mean “so different as to be irrelevant,” I agree. As to the rest: Says who? Under what standard does his professional judgment as an educator trump his principal’s professional judgment that the teacher’s choice runs afoul of the law? “Not clearly a violation of the law” – school districts are almost as interested in avoiding things that might violate the law as things that clearly do, because they can get sued for the former as easily as the latter. You seem to posit some unwritten rule that if something is not “clearly” illegal, the teacher is entitled to a presumption that it’s okay, even if his principal disagrees. I don’t see that.

What I’m arguing is that you’re defining a clearcut principle of “no insubordination” and I’m saying that there are times when one’s professional ethics requires one to courteously tell one’s boss to autocopulate.

Sure, I’d agree with that.

Is this one of those times? Dunno, but I personally think the principal and the school district created a tempest in a teapot – with the teacher not wholly without fault either.

And I agree with this. My only addition is that if in fact you as the teacher decide that you need to tell the school to “autocopulate,” you really have no reasonable expectation that there will be no adverse consequences. Hence my disagreement with those who seemed absolutely shocked and outraged that the teacher’s clear insubordination might result in discipline. Just because you act out of the belief that you are right and they are wrong, and conscience, honor and common sense dictate you act like you do – that doesn’t mean your actions won’t still have consequences. And you’d better be prepared to face those consequences before you act.

[silenus]

Poly - Gotta disagree with you here. The principal wasn’t asking the teacher to violate any law, nor was he asking him to violate his ethics in any way. Teachers are hired guns, and must do and teach what they are told to. Period. If you don’t like the fact that the school board told you to teach Subject A, then quit. You have zero ethical leg to stand on if you remain employed by that district. “Professional ethics” means don’t hit on your students, not teach whatever you want to.

The principal was an idiot, but he was correct in his actions in disciplining the teacher.

[Rubystreak]

[QUOTE=silenus]
Poly - Gotta disagree with you here. The principal wasn’t asking the teacher to violate any law, nor was he asking him to violate his ethics in any way. Teachers are hired guns, and must do and teach what they are told to. Period.
[/quote]

Oh, this is just NOT TRUE. My boss (now former boss, since the bastard resigned a few weeks ago) wanted to overrule a grade I gave. More specifically, ordered me to change a grade, and would not allow me to give a child who was legitimately failing my class by quite a bit, an F. The reasons were not based on sound pegagogy (don’t want to hijack this thread by detailing the reasons, but they had nothing to do with my grading or teaching) and I refused.

The union got involved and it went up to the superintendent. I was told that the principal is NOT within his perview to alter my grades or order me to change them. I could have filed an official complaint, but I chose not to. My boss pissed off many other people in similar, even more extreme ways, and was ushered out the door.

If you don’t like the fact that the school board told you to teach Subject A, then quit. You have zero ethical leg to stand on if you remain employed by that district. “Professional ethics” means don’t hit on your students, not teach whatever you want to.

Do you really think it works that way? This is why we have unions, so that people can’t just fuck with kids’ education based on the whims and vagaries of politics. What’s so insulting about this is that you guys seem to think that we teachers are in the fucking Army and must follow orders or face the firing squad. We are professionals and our ethics come into play when choosing what to teach and in fighting censorship, for example. We have a lot of autonomy and about these things, as we should, as any professional would. We’re not robotic transmitters of information.

The principal was an idiot, but he was correct in his actions in disciplining the teacher.

No, he was meddling and made an ass of himself. The teacher didn’t do anything wrong and was correct in telling the principal not to interfere in his teaching curriculum, unless he was actually breaking the law or harming a student. Principal jumped the gun on this one. The school district has lawyers galore, and he should have checked with them before taking disciplinary action.