No, the USD 259 substitute teacher didn’t follow procedures and probably used poor judgment in forcing some students to clean up a small pile that may or may not have been human doo-doo that one of them may or may not have produced.
In truth, this story doesn’t seem to be that big.
More revealing were Wichitans’ reactions to the incident: Some seem eager to believe the worst urban myths about horrific conditions in the schools. Others expressed a frustration that teachers don’t have the authority to discipline kids without being second-guessed and undercut by parents and administrators.
The fuzzy facts so far don’t seem to lend themselves clearly to either camp.
What are readers’ takes on the incident?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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17 Comments
My impression is that the teacher did exactly the right thing. The school superintendent and other chicken little types think she should have treated the blob like anthrax or worse. What a bunch of wimps.
When we took discipline out of the school we started teaching disrespect.
Right now the worst punishment a child can receive is to be sent home for around 3 days. Very likely both parents work and would need to scramble for child care. Most likely the child would stay home by themselves for the three days.How is that discipline for the child?
Thank Dr. Spock. His theory has been accepted as gospel by the knowing legisltors and educators.They don’t want to hurt the little egos, but what needs to be hurt is their little butts.
Wake up people, this is what happens when you trust the government to take care of your responsibility.
What grade were these hooligans? Anyone older than potty training age knows what a bathroom is for. That poor substitute is being hung out to dry for perfectly reasonable and responsible actions. Too bad the parents of those students involved haven’t done their part of instilling responsibility into their kids.
Boy could I tell some stories! For five years I worked as a custodian at a Middle school.
I have too many examples of the failure of both educators and parents when it comes to discipline to list here.
One of the worst in my opinion, was the day that I witness a encounter between the Principal and a female student.
The Principal confronted the student about her failure to report the prior day for in school detention. Her response was, “I don’t care” to which the Principal told her he would call her mother.She shouted, “ARE YOU F##KING STUPID OR f##KING DEAF…I SAID I DON’T CARE!”.He walked off repeating that he was going to call her mother. To her continuing to yell at the top of her lungs her prior statement down the hallway.
The other side of the coin is when a student did receive punishment. The parent would come to the school and make a scene in the office even threating phyical attack.
The one time I blew my top was the day I was called to the first floor and from one end to the other was a sea of trash. Two boys had went from one class room to the next. gathering the trash then dumping it in the hallway. I had to use a snow shovel and shuttling can loads to the dumpsters.
After I finished, the vice Principal called on the intercom. I asked what they were going to do about these two boys. He said no one had actually seen the boys doing it. So they could not say who trashed the hallway. So what could they do?
I shouted, “hold everyone after school for an hour, forty five minutes, thirty minutes, ten minutes, five minutes..Give them the finger when they walked down the hallway. But do something!”.
There should be teamwork between parents and teachers. A bowel movement in the back of a class room is NOT an accident. If the child had wet their pants that would be different. But it would not be unreasonable for a teacher to force the student who did this act to clean it up. It teaches two valuable lessions. One you are responsible for your actions. Two, if you cause sh&t you should clean it up.
We’ve lost control of our kids, because too many parents want to be their kid’s friend, not their mentor, disciplinarian, and role model. Add all the trash thrown at the kids on TV, in music, etc. and it’s not hard to see why the little darlings are so rude and out of control.I’m surprised that parents of the children (4th graders) who had to clean up the poop (or whatever it was) haven’t filed a lawsuit yet.
This whole post is about one thing:
Keeping the shit stirred up.
Since the sub did not know who committed the act and was unable to get an answer from the students as to who was responsible; she should have called for the custodian to dispose of the mess. That’s what subs are trained to do – based on the training they receive from USD 259 on biohazard risks. The principal should have been called down to the classroom as well.
Before moving to Wichita from Houston, my wife served one year as the interim principal of an elementary school just NE of Houston, after the principal died of cancer.
I assume that some of the students wanted to test her. One student intentionally clogged and overflowed the toilets in the boy’s restroom. My wife called the mother and instructed her of what her son had done and that he was going to be forced to clean up every bit of the mess. My wife put the rubber gloves on his hands and put the (by then crying) boy to work. I was concerned that she might get in trouble and make the TV news for taking the correct action, but such never happened.
The following week, another boy went into the cafeteria and punched holes in many of the milk cartons. She put him to work cleaning up the mess.
Word got around in a hurry. There were no more messes to clean up for the remainder of the school year.
That’s what we need more of, holding kids accountable for their behavior. Your wife is my idea of an effective educator, Rodney. Too bad there aren’t more like her.
Damoon,Your parents lost control of you, and their parents lost control of them, ad infinitum. The Roman writer Juvenal made the same complaints about the kids of his day, and I recently found a translation of an Assyrian clay tablet from about 2700 BC that said it too! Somehow, we’ve managed to survive all that rebellion and complain about it, while conveniently forgetting our own youthful transgressions. This new generation will also survive adolescence and bitch about their kids. Just think; you managed to improve. This batch will too.
I sure hope you’re right, Jed. I have to admit, I get a kick out of watching my grandkids act up and then watching my kids trying to deal with them. There is justice after all!
PS I shudder to think of what the nuns would have done to us had we done the same thing. Behavior problems were rare when I was growing up because we were scared to death of the nuns! It wouldn’t hurt a thing if kids today had a healthy fear of authority.
Damoon,I go out of my way to spoil my grandkids. It’s my revenge on my kids for what they put me through when they were young! YES!And a PS to you; a population having a helthy fear of authority is a perfect set-up for an authority that wants to manipulate them, something we see a lot of lately.
Good point….. but I still think kids need to be a little afraid of their parents. I know when we got in trouble at school, we got it got it twice as bad at home. That alone kept me out of a lot of trouble when I was growing up.
NoJoCo makes an excellent point. I have been a substitute in the USD 259 district for more than three years. Each year, we are required to sit through a video on blood borne pathogens, as well as other biohazards. Although “poop” isn’t specifically mentioned in the video, it is pretty clear to me that this incident would require proper disposal methods that a sub teacher is not prepared to handle. We have been trained that whenever a child is behaving inappropriately, our first course of action is to call for help from the office.Although I fully understand this sub-teacher’s frustration and anger, there is absolutely no excuse for what she did. And while I sometimes wish that I could discipline unruly children in a manner that I think might be effective, I would never risk my job to do so.