Tuesday, October 25, 2011

talking trash

Two trashy topics for this morning.  First, saw on the news last night the huge trash island floating in the Pacific. This is all the 'stuff' that was swept to sea after the tsunami in Japan. Wow. It is supposedly twice the size of Texas. Wow.  Of course no mention was made of what anyone is going to do about this hazard. Where would you even begin to try and clean up this mess?

Second, you need to be careful of what you say these days, even in locker rooms. Not being an athlete, I've always had a cliched vision of what a locker room is like at halftime. I've heard coaches yell at players; I've heard coaches yell at my two players. Can't say I've ever heard one yell like the audio tape a local high school football player posted on the internet for all to hear. But, what I heard more or less jives with what I expected to hear from a high school coach "talking" to a bunch of high school boys. This incident made local TV news and it was in this morning's paper. The coach has resigned from the football team and is now on paid administrative leave.

Guess this wouldn't be such a fly in my ointment except he teaches the honors pre-cal class the middle kid is taking. So, her teacher is now out of the classroom for who knows how long.

All because of trash.

2 comments:

Lisa Shafer said...

Which is trashier? The teacher who foul-mouthed kids, or the little snot of a kid who secretly taped it just to "punish" the teacher?
I didn't hear the tape, but, as a teacher, I have seen parents make kids sneak tapes into rooms before to try to "catch" teachers doing something. It's illegal in a lot of places. And it sounds like you've now lost a good teacher -- probably because some brat or their parents were upset over a low grade or not getting enough time on the field or some other petty reason.
Again, I didn't hear the tape. Maybe it was that bad. But I'm sure getting sick of the media vilifying teachers all the time. The kid who did this will get treated like a hero. And the tea party and others who want to blame teachers for everything will score another victory. And kids learn that if you don't work in class, you can blame your bad scores away by pointing out that the teacher isn't perfect -- anything to divert responsibility away from the kid actually learning anything.
Sorry about the rant. Feel free to delete my comment.

EYR said...

This story has now gone national....lovely. Lots of lessons to be learned from this: not fair to judge someone based on a 2 minute excerpt and you have to be so careful of what you do and say as phones/cameras/video is everywhere. The student(s) who did this are not being treated like heroes...just the opposite. And in a town our size, the rumor mill is working overtime. My concern is the academics....I want my kid's teacher back in his classroom teaching her honors pre-cal.