Student suspended after finger gun incident

[Oldgringo]

Alright it's time for a quiz:

1. Name teachers and public school employees in your district who did not support the current POTUS?

2. What is a POTUS?

[ScottDLS]

But these are educrats. How dare you suggest that they don't know what's best. In fact you should be listening to them and make dang sure that your children listen to them (over you)

Maybe we need more Edu-cans, than Edu-crats...or maybe even Edu-tarians, or Edu-pendants...

[chabouk]

Terroristic Threatening is PC 22.07.

I do not see how the allegation fits the statute.

[7075-T7]

My better half is a teacher (8th grade math) and they have to put up with all types of crap from the students. The student always has a "aten't I cute" story, and of couse it's going to look like they didn't do anything wrong. I side with the teacher, the student could have threatened her before, etc. The news is famous for leaving out critical details.

I'm amazed to see the teacher hate on this forum, or ones ready to hang them out to dry. Anyone who thinks teaching is an eazy 8-3:30 with summers off job, doesn't know a teacher. /rant.

[Crossfire]

My better half is a teacher (8th grade math) and they have to put up with all types of crap from the students. The student always has a "aten't I cute" story, and of couse it's going to look like they didn't do anything wrong. I side with the teacher, the student could have threatened her before, etc. The news is famous for leaving out critical details.

I'm amazed to see the teacher hate on this forum, or ones ready to hang them out to dry. Anyone who thinks teaching is an eazy 8-3:30 with summers off job, doesn't know a teacher. /rant.

I forwarded the story to my daughter, an 8th grade language arts teacher in a district very close to Cy-Fair. I cannot post her reply here, as it would take me too long to clean it up!

Just remember, you only heard one side of the story - the girl's. Mom wasn't there. She only knows what her little darling told her. The teacher and the school aren't commenting. My daughter's response was that the school CANNOT comment because it would violate the child's privacy, and said child could have a record of ISS, AEP, etc, placements a mile long. She also said that, if it happened as the paper reported it, then yes, the school over reacted. But, she feels highly doubtful that the only side of the story presented is the complete story.

Teachers DO have a tough job. They have to keep both administrators and parents happpy while still educating the little darlings that don't always want to be educated. Just keep that in mind when you read these things.

[timdsmith72]

Maybe the teacher needs to be dropped into Ciudad Juarez for some perspective.

Now you're talkin'!

+1 for that! I was there not too long ago to attend a funeral for a member of my wife's family who was gunned down in the streets. It was the first time we had been there for a long while. That place doesn't even resemble the way it was a few years ago. Sad, because we use to love going there to visit family. I don't think we'll be going back after this last trip.

[Excaliber]

When our son Thane was a sophomore in High School, we had a go-round with the principal about her concern over our son's "mental stability."

Her concerns:
He was a minority - anglo in a mostly hispanic school.
He was a member of the school's JROTC.
He was on the JROTC air-rifle team (and a pretty good shot).
He enjoyed talking about guns and hunting with his JROTC instructors.
He was enrolled in the martial arts, and doing well in Tae-Kwon-Do.
He was a Christian, and spent his lunch time alone, studying or reading his bible instead of hanging out with the other students. He was also outspoken about his beliefs in class.
- (he said he wasn't interested in the usual "guy chatter" that happened during lunch. "The friends I have, boy and girl, are like me - they want to study and get good grades instead of dating.")

The problem:
Several of the boys decided our son was a prime target for taunting, and were making his school days rather unpleasant.

Her solution? she wanted to send Thane to counseling to make sure he didn't "go Columbine" on his tormentors. She said she "couldn't do anything" about or to the bullies until they "actually did something physical."

We said no on the counseling.

Well, eventually the bullies decided it would be fun to start tossing rocks in his general direction, trying to spook him. He did his best to ignore them until one of them did actually hit him in the face right above his eye. His reaction? He picked up the offending rock, stood and glared through the blood at the bullies until they backed down, pocketed the rock and walked off without having said a word. IIRC, he didn't have too many problems with them afterward. He later graduated near the top of his class without "going Columbine" on his classmates, or even being in an actual fight.

That particular principal moved on sometime before Thane graduated. Last I heard, she was in admin at the local university where she didn't interact much with the actual students. And the high school did much better without her, with fewer "disciplinary problems."

Back to the OP - finger guns? a teacher "in fear" of a "terroristic threat" due to a finger gun???? Someone has no sense of perspective.

There is a thing that puzzles me.
I often wonder why
We label this thing "Common Sense"
When it's in such short supply?

I had some experiences with similar performance by educators when my son was in school. He complained that he was being harassed and threatened by a group of boys on a repeated basis. He was concerned because he was an accomplished competitive martial artist (black belt) by that time and I had strictly instructed him not to use those skills in school.

I followed protocol and notified the school of the situation and asked the administration to take appropriate action to stop the bullying. They promised to look into it, and did nothing. The situation degraded further and my son reported that he was now being physically harassed, punched, and kicked and was in fear of actual injury, and that the school staff assigned to oversee playground activities saw what was happening and took no action.

Since the school had failed to fulfill its responsibilities to protect my son, I fulfilled mine. I instructed my son that the next time things got physical he should use both his training and his self control to counterattack the leader of the group, take him to the ground, and secure submission without doing damage to anything other than his ego. I knew he possessed the skills to do exactly that.

A couple of days later he reported that another incident had occurred, he had reacted as instructed and achieved the assigned results. I went to work at police headquarters the next morning and waited for the phone call. I didn't have to wait long to hear from the principal who was irate that my son had used martial arts skills in his school.

I reviewed the history of the situation with him, reacquainted him with use of force justification under the state's penal law, and reminded him that he and his administration were clearly negligent in failing to protect my son from a known bullying situation that had been formally reported to him through his own protocols. I also told him that if the bullying continued, he could expect my son to continue to take appropriate action to defend himself. I further advised him that if he was dumb enough to attempt any disciplinary action against my son, my attorney would be happy to deal with him on that issue and civil remedies would be aggressively pursued.

Outcome: The situation didn't recur because the leader of the bullies didn't want to be on the losing end of a fight he couldn't win. Predictably, he and his group became friendly toward my son. The administration took no action for obvious reasons. Problem solved.

As I tell my wife all the time, it's all in how you talk to people.........