Leaving our children in the care of teachers and school administrators is a pretty standard yet stressful part of many parents’ lives. Educating children and aiding them on their road toward becoming functional adults is a serious responsibility, and most teachers don’t take that lightly. In fact, most teachers deserve far more accolades than they’re ever awarded, and our appreciation for their work sadly goes unsaid far too often.
However, the following stories aren’t about those teachers who deserve gold stars; they’re about the teachers and administrators who deserve to be sent to the principal’s office themselves.
Taking candy
At an elementary school in Chicago, a 6-year-old girl was apparently placed in handcuffs after she stole a piece of candy from her teacher’s desk. Overreacting much? So the lesson here is that you can steal candy from a baby, but you had better not steal it from your teacher, or you will be unlawfully detained.
Dressing up like a princess
A middle school in Menifee, California, encouraged kids to dress up as their favorite Disney character for the school’s Disney Day, but it was apparently unclear on its preferences. A 13-year-old boy decided to go all out and dress as Princess Elsa from Disney’s smash hit Frozen as a joke, but his teachers didn’t find it all that funny. He was asked to change clothes and allegedly told that boys aren’t allowed to dress like girls.
Asking questions in class
Asking questions in class is typically something that is encouraged by most teachers. However, one teacher in Green County, Georgia, was apparently quite perturbed when one of his students asked a question during a lesson. His epic and unacceptable overreaction included telling the young female student that “clearly you are the dumbest girl that I have ever met,” and he continued to humiliate her in the recorded rant by saying that her only purpose in life would be to “have sex and have children, because you ain’t never gonna be smart.” We are assuming (OK, praying) that he is now unemployed.
Burping
Burping is rude, yes, but should it really be considered criminal? One school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, seems to think so, because one boy didn’t just get in trouble for burping audibly during P.E. class — he got arrested. Yes, seriously, he was arrested for burping.
The boy was fortunately never charged, though he was hauled to a juvenile detention center without his parents being notified. A civil lawsuit has since been filed against the school’s principal, a teacher and a police officer all involved in his arrest.
Mind your manners, kids. Otherwise you might end up in jail!
Dress code violations
The issues with school dress codes seem to fuel a never-ending battle between students, parents and hemlines. One teenage girl in Brownsville, Kentucky, was forced to kneel while wearing a skirt in front of her male principal so he could check the length of her skirt. But that’s hardly the only story involved in the dress code debate. There are tons of stories much like this one. Many schools are opting for school uniforms to eliminate this discussion entirely, but not everyone is completely on board with the proposed solution.
Loving ‘Star Wars’
For one seventh-grader in Rosenberg, Texas, his love of Stormtroopers was cause for him to cover up his attire. He wore a “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” T-shirt to school (not for the first time, mind you) and was told to zip his jacket because his shirt was believed to be a promotion of violence. If loving Star Wars is wrong, we don’t want to be right!
Making bad grades
Of course we all want our kids to perform well in school, and good grades definitely deserve some sort of praise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean bad grades should merit metabolic punishment, does it? One middle school in Tampa, Florida, initiated a practice that offered its students with good grades a premium spot at the front of the lunch line as incentive to achieve in the classroom. Their classmates who scored C’s or lower were moved to the back of the line to wait for their lunches. The worst part of it is that, according to reports of a student at the school, every student knew why the kids at the back of the line were there: because they were performing poorly in class. Fortunately this policy has since been canceled.
We’re all for encouraging kids to do better in school, but this Hunger Games approach was likely causing more harm than good.
Writing in cursive
Sure, cursive is becoming an antique concept to many students and teachers, but that doesn’t mean writing one’s name in cursive is cause for ridicule, does it? Um, no. It did, however, garner the fury and frustration of a teacher who was apparently fed up with the cursive signature of her 7-year-old student. She used the dreaded bright red ink to write her student a note next to the girl’s cursive signature on one of her assignments, which read, “Stop writing your name in cursive. You have had several warnings.”
Following instructions is important, yes, but is this sort of critique really necessary? It’s not like she was writing “my teacher is crazy” in cursive graffiti on her desk, which actually seems sort of understandable given this ridiculous reaction to a 7-year-old’s penmanship.
Being a boy with long hair
A 17-year-old leukemia survivor decided to do something pretty amazing for other kids suffering from cancer — he decided to grow his hair out long enough to donate it to Locks of Love, a nonprofit that makes wigs and hairpieces for kids with medical hair loss. However, his high school in Flint, Michigan, did not approve of his long locks, stating that he was violating the school’s dress code. Though the teenager was served an out-of-school suspension, he still didn’t cut his hair for the sake of his donation.
Being a girl with a shaved head
One third-grader from Grand Junction, Colorado, found herself in violation of her school’s dress code for a seriously misunderstood move. She shaved her head in support of her friend, who was suffering from childhood cancer and had lost all her hair from chemotherapy treatments. The following Monday, the third-grader’s parents were told that she couldn’t return to class because she was violating the school’s dress code policy.
School administrators met the next day to vote on allowing a student to shave their head during special circumstances — that is, to show solidarity with a cancer patient — and the girl was allowed back to school afterward. The saddest part? It wasn’t even a unanimous vote to allow the girl back into class; it was 3-1.
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