Some (not) excellent examples of how (not) to be an excellent teacher.
TEACHING IS A (FE)BREEZE!
In February 2012, a teacher at Twillingate Island Elementary School, in Newfoundland, Canada, took a ten-year-old boy out of her classroom and into the hallway…and sprayed him down with Febreze odor eliminator. She told the student she was doing it because his fried fish lunch made him smell bad. She then made the boy spend the entire period in the hallway because of his fishy smell. The student’s very angry mother—who had made the boy’s fried fish lunch—and who said the incident caused other students to mock her son, demanded, and received, an apology from the school’s principal, and the anti-odorizing teacher as well. The teacher received a short suspension for the incident, and the school promised that similar spraying incidents would “never ever happen again.”
WE’RE GOING TO…NOWHERE!
In February 2013, all the eighth-grade students at Roseland Public School in Windsor, Ontario, were called into an assembly, and were told some amazing news: for their graduation celebration, they were all going to Disney World in Florida for their graduation celebration. A PowerPoint presentation was shown to the kids, showing them all the wonderful things they would be seeing on their trip, and travel and hotel brochures were passed around, along with permission slips. As the excitement in the room reached a peak, the teachers told the kids to yell out together, “We’re going to Disney World!” At the end of the assembly, one final PowerPoint slide was presented…which revealed that they weren’t really going to Disney World, they were going to a local bowling alley. It had all been a joke. Worse: one of the teachers took a video of the kids getting all excited…and then their heartbroken reactions when they found out they weren’t really going…and showed it to the rest of the school. The reaction from the kids’ parents, and from the community—and from just about everyone who heard about the bizarre prank—was pretty much the same: shock and disgust. “I have a lot of respect for teachers and what they do,” said Peter Topolovec, whose son was one of the pranked students, “but this was really stupid judgment.” A local psychologist, Noreen Chevalier, added that the prank amounted to “bullying.” The local school board released a public apology, but said the teachers would not be disciplined.
Canadian Alvin Karpis was the longest serving prisoner in Alcatraz (26 years).
In June 2013, a high school teacher outside of Montreal, Quebec, told her students that a stray cat had recently given birth to a litter of kittens on her property. She said she had tried to drown the kittens with a hose. That didn’t work, she said, so she put the kittens—all eight of them—into a plastic bag and filled it with water. That worked, she said, and all the kittens died. Except for one of the kittens, which had inexplicably survived being in a plastic bag filled with water. She killed that one, she told the kids, by beating it to death with a piece of wood. When the horrified students told their parents what the teacher had told them, dozens of complaints were lodged, and the school launched an investigation into the incident. The local SPCA, in the meantime, said that if what the teacher had told the kids was actually true (let’s hope it wasn’t!), the teacher would be guilty of animal cruelty, and could be fined as much as $25,000. As of press time, the incident was still being investigated.
YOU CAN’T BLAME HIM
Ryan Hazelton is a teacher at Mount Douglas Secondary School in Saanich, British Columbia. In June 2012, Hazelton requested three days off so he could take “an emergency trip to Vancouver to be with a terminally ill family member.” Hazelton was granted the leave…but the school later found out that he did not actually go to Vancouver “to be with a terminally ill family member.” He went to Los Angeles, California…to be with a Stanley Cup Finals hockey game. (It was Game 4, between the L.A. Kings and the New Jersey Devils. The Kings went on win in six games.) Hazelton admitted to what he’d done when confronted, and was put in the penalty box…er…suspended…for five days without pay.
Winnipeg was the first city in the world to develop the 9-1-1 emergency phone number.