BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUSI recently read on one of the News item blogs that a Teacher removed an ear phone from a boy's ear, and landed in trouble. Fired !!Up until now $55.000 later still fighting the injustice of the dismissal .He had asked the two boys who were sharing and ear phone piece each to remove them and pay attention to the Math class he was trying to teach them. They took no notice." The Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal found Robinson had engaged in serious misconduct by removing the headphones unexpectedly and recklessly. It said his actions were likely to adversely impact the student’s wellbeing, that his actions could bring the teaching profession into disrepute, and that it was an unreasonable and unjustified use of force.
Robinson was censured and had conditions imposed on his employment for two years. An allegation that Robinson had hit the student, made by someone else in the classroom, was thrown out.
Robinson appealed the tribunal’s decision to the district court, which upheld the decision.
He then applied to the Appeal Court for leave to appeal the decision. The Appeal Court this month declined the application, rejecting all of Robinson’s grounds for appeal.
On Tuesday, Robinson said the saga had been “farcical”, had cost him $55,000 so far “and could cost another $20,000 yet”.
He conceded it had been an “ill-conceived attempt” to take the phone off the student and said he would have happily paid for new earphones.
“I was doing my best to control some of the most unruly behaviour I had witnessed in my 40 years as a teacher. I have never been abused like that in my life. I just flicked the earphone out of his ear. I should have just turned around and left them to it,” he said.
“My advice to any teacher is do not, under any circumstances, feel any responsibility for the welfare of your students, because it will cost you big time." source
What was this teacher supposed to do. Ignore the two boys , and just allow the students to do what ever they like in his class or remove the ear pieces himself?I was thinking of this news item and it made me think back to the days of my Primary school lessons. A country school with two rooms .Remember the reading lessons, Policeman E makes " i " say "I" …Price.Another one "i" before "e" except after C. . Piece .. Ceiling. Not to mention we all in those days learnt to sound out the letters. Remember the charts. A a for apple, B b for bear, C c for Cat, D d for dog. Every letter in the alphabet with a sound that all little kids knew .We knew punctuation. Remember Victor Borge?I always remember my eldest started school in 1956 and there were still retired teachers who were recruited during the war. A Miss Guppie. She must have been pretty useless because my young fellow still could not read after several terms so up went the chart on the refrigerator door .. Pictures of the apple , the bear , the cat and dog all the way though to "Z". By the end of the school holidays he was reading and totally in control of all words I don't think they use phonetic spelling any more which I feel is a shame because it helped with all reading , there are exceptions, but they can be remembered.What has happened to the education system when teachers are dismissed for trying to do their job and the students rule the class room? Surely too the parents are to blame as well, because they should not be trying to down grade a teacher's authority , they should be supporting his or her efforts. I know there are always exceptions but in this case the teacher was right. He did not hurt the boy he just removed the ear phone.They certainly would not have liked Mr Gormsby!If you want to watch the whole series go to this linkOf course, no one wants a Mr Gormsby. But we do need to bring back education and get rid of the irresponsible indoctrination that is happening in our schools today.We could list a number of things that we don't agree with, all this pronoun nonsense . Mother - Father, girl - boyhis and her, Not to mention pretending that men can have little babies, We have to get back to basics , stop this name changing , acknowledge that Men and Women are different.Thank goodness, otherwise what a boring life it would be .Can we please protect our little ones and our young from the insanity of the world? If we don't, what can we expect them to grow up to be?I think I preferred Policeman E to the law enforcement I see today. At least he knew the rules.