Radical--even for catholic school

[AlanFromWichita]

This entry was viewed by a teacher and the teacher tore the page out of her yearbook.

I’m coming late to this thread; please forgive me if this has been said before, and I’ll make it short.

I say the teacher was guilty of vandalism of private property. That property may be searched while on school property, and temporarily seized – such as if it is considered offensive – but not destroyed.

I see there has been a positive outcome, so I won’t make any more negative comments here.

Alan

 

[PatriceA]

Follow up-my daughter is happy with the new yearbook and has managed to get most signatures again. Old book returned to the school.

This yearbook was the first one my daughter has ever received and she has been in this school for 9 years with a class total of 24 children. Her devastation was the result of a precious item destroyed without her (name removed by moderator)ut or knowledge. She was not aware of the girls “b***h” entry. Thirteen year old girls are very emotional to begin with–she saves lollipop wrappers given to her by special friends. A treasure for a 13 yr old child is different than what most adults would view as treasures. I would never tell her that the way she feels is “wrong”.

I believe a hovering parent is one who micromanages a child’s life and shields them from pain and suffering. A loving parent is one who uses experiences like the yearbook to teach a child that life can be unfair and unfortunate. A parent must also teach a child what is right and wrong. Writing the bad word was wrong of my daughter’s friend. Tearing a page out of another person’s property was also wrong. Teachers are not perfect and, in hindsight, I believe this teacher acted the way she thought was right at the time. This could be a learning experience for her too. The principal backed my daughter—the message was clear.

Thanks to everyone of you for all the astute analysis and observations. It has been very helpful.

I’m curious. How did the teacher know that the entry was in the yearbook in the first place?

 

[starlight101]

If I lived in the USA I would be in your daughter’s year and I had two reactions to this thread: firstly, I was not surprised that this sort of language was used- even before I left primary school some of my classmates had started swearing. It’s not unusual in my experience for people to use swear words positively. The C and S words however, along with b**** I find offensive because they are so often used towards women in a derogatory way. Secondly, If this had been my yearbook and I had realised the language on it, I would have crossed out the word myself but probably not made a fuss about it. If the teacher had ripped the page out of my book I would have been angry with her (especially if I did not know the reason). I could probably sort the issue out myself, although I would tell my parents. I think some of my friends would have different attitudes and some would get very upset whereas others just wouldn’t care.

 

[Rence]

My daughter had her last day of 8th grade yesterday (Catholic school). One of her friends wrote the word “b***h” in an autographed yearbook entry-not to be mean but to be cool. This entry was viewed by a teacher and the teacher tore the page out of her yearbook. The page was filled with autographs from other classmates. My daughter was crushed that her book was defiled. I was disturbed! I do not condone the language but I believe this was an extreme over-reaction by the teacher. I was never called by the school except from my daughter who called in tears to relay the story to me. I sent an email to the teacher and begged her to give back the page so we could save the original autographs. I told the teacher to “white out” the bad word. My email never received a response. The principal ended up giving my daughter the page back with an apology for which I was grateful. As a parent, I should have been called right from the start, IMHO. I certainly should have received a response from my email if for no other reason than to tell me the problem was resolved. Am I over-reacting?

No, you’re not over-reacting. I’m very grateful to you, on behalf of your daughter, for standing up to her teacher who was clearly abusing her authority. It is completely out of line to destroy someone’s personal property, and property for which YOU paid. If the teacher had a problem with it, she should have confiscated the book, called you in, gave it to you personally and had you deal with it.

I would have made the principal replace the entire yearbook for the one damaged by the teacher. Out of line, and rude for not returning your email. You followed the correct chain of command, and by your account, did so gracefully. She was totally wrong. And again, I’m grateful that you took care of your child. It’s unreasonable to expect a 13 year old child to stand up to an instructor who would act so horribly to her. You were right to get involved.

Really, there is no point of crushing an 8th grade girl, on the last day of class, for an entry in her personal yearbook. She was just throwing her weight around and being hurtful, not helpful.

 

[Rence]

Follow up-my daughter is happy with the new yearbook and has managed to get most signatures again. Old book returned to the school.

This yearbook was the first one my daughter has ever received and she has been in this school for 9 years with a class total of 24 children. Her devastation was the result of a precious item destroyed without her (name removed by moderator)ut or knowledge. She was not aware of the girls “b***h” entry. Thirteen year old girls are very emotional to begin with–she saves lollipop wrappers given to her by special friends. A treasure for a 13 yr old child is different than what most adults would view as treasures. I would never tell her that the way she feels is “wrong”.

I believe a hovering parent is one who micromanages a child’s life and shields them from pain and suffering. A loving parent is one who uses experiences like the yearbook to teach a child that life can be unfair and unfortunate. A parent must also teach a child what is right and wrong. Writing the bad word was wrong of my daughter’s friend. Tearing a page out of another person’s property was also wrong. Teachers are not perfect and, in hindsight, I believe this teacher acted the way she thought was right at the time. This could be a learning experience for her too. The principal backed my daughter—the message was clear.

Thanks to everyone of you for all the astute analysis and observations. It has been very helpful.

You’re a wonderful, understanding, intuitive and kind mother.

 

[pammie]

Thanks for your very kind word Rence and thanks to everyone for your support.

Patrice, the yearbooks are given out on the last day of school. No one has seen them prior to this day. The teacher simply asked “may I see the book?” during a break and my daughter offered her book.

 

[KCT]

I don’t understand parents today. Getting involved in every little thing and coming to the rescue of kids on every little happening. Your kids will be unable to function as adults if you don’t let them learn to take their lumps and deal with stress, controversy, disappointment, etc. Let your **kid **work it out with the principal, teacher, etc.

Middle school teacher agreeing with you!

 

[sanctamaria17]

First, OP, I’m glad the situation was resolved

I agree that if the parents pay for it, they should get involved.

It’s not being a helicopter parent. It’s more of, “Hey, I paid x amount of money for this for my kid, you should replace it.”

Yes, kids should work things out with principals and teachers, learn how to do it, but parents should be back up. They’re not adults yet!

As for the use of the term, while it is vulgar, it really depends on context. There are some words I’d never use like sl*t, w*****, or “the c word”, but the b word can be used to mean anything. While I think the friend should be more prudent in her choice of words, it’s not like a teenager is NEVER going to hear that word. As for remarks about the 60’s and 70’s, bad words have been around forever. There’s a reason St. Joan of Arc labeled the English soldiers the Goddams: they were NOTORIOUS for their potty mouths!!

No, I wouldn’t use those words around a person in authority or in a church. However, with a close friend, probably, depending on the situation. There are also things you discuss with your close friends (like periods and dates) that you wouldn’t discuss with your boss or your priest. I would say there are words you have to be careful with, but if you’re not degrading another, disrespecting your parents (if they have rules about that sort of thing) or taking the Lord’s name in vain, you merely need prudence. Obviously, this wasn’t a prudent situation. Do I think the girl was necessarily sinning? Not really, just she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

[cmscms]

OP, I do not think you are over reacting and I will explain why. Children who are brought up properly respect the teacher and do not talk back. I am assuming this is how you brought up your daughter, to listen to the teacher. However as an adult, you and me both know the teacher can make a mistake. To ‘knock’ the teacher in front of you daughter is not fair to the teacher. That is why when an injustice happens, you need to step in because your daughter can’t. Your daughter obviously has reached the point in life where she is starting to see first hand the imperfections of teacher. It is time to teach her the next step (ie how to deal with inappropriate authority) which means you need to continue to get involved to a certain degree

Certainly insulting people is and always has been wrong…but calling a close aquaintance a name that you would not call “a random stranger on the street” or “Jesus” doesn’t seem wrong to me.

You don’t consider Jesus a close friend ? How sad

 

[DoulaMama]

Middle school teacher agreeing with you!

Well, I hope you keep that in mind the next time there’s major incident at school, (your own, one nearby, or just in the news) and the parent of the child that did it says “well, I had no idea what was going on”!

Think you’ll feel the same way???

 

[DoulaMama]

I don’t understand parents today. Getting involved in every little thing and coming to the rescue of kids on every little happening. Your kids will be unable to function as adults if you don’t let them learn to take their lumps and deal with stress, controversy, disappointment, etc. Let your **kid **work it out with the principal, teacher, etc.

I don’t get it. Kids today are hovered over to the extreme. Makes for incompetent adults with entitlement complexes.

So, yes, IMHO you are totally overreacting and I don’t know why you think the school should have called you or gotten you involved. The teacher might have overreacted in tearing out the page, but I mean-- get over it.

I don’t understand parents today, either…not being involved and knowing who their kid’s friends are, not knowing what their kids are doing…wondering why little Becky is pregnant at 14, little Angie has an STD at 15, or little Tony is smoking pot at age 10! I mean, these parents should just not worry and let society raise their kids…afterall, the world’s such a safe, fine place to exist in our time, don’t you think? Why not let them make their own mistakes??? Give me a break! Do you have school-age kids or teens?

A middle-school age child (and yes, they are still a child at that age) needs an advocate for difficult situations such as this.

Im my “entitled adult” opinion, the OP did not overreact and she did the right thing. Glad to know there are parents who get involved and don’t throw their kids to the wolves!

As far as dealing with stress, etc…hasn’t it been determined that each and every one of the school shooters from Columbine to the present suffered from some kind of intense stress or peer pressure that their parents admitted they knew nothing about BECAUSE THEY WERN’T INVOLVED???

 

[LongingForLight]

I think it is very difficult for a child to stand up to a teacher who has damaged their personal property. I think this is exactly the kind of situation where parental involvement is needed: When there is a major power difference that is being abused. No healthy adult would let another adult treat him or her like this, but I would also think it was reasonable for my child to be afraid of further reprisal if she complained due to the natural power imbalance between teachers and children.

Whiting the word out would have been fine. But removing an entire page of carefully worded messages of affection because one friend spoke poorly is not appropriate. The teacher behaved worse than the child. I hope she recognized this in hindsight and apologized at some point.

So glad to hear the problem was resolved. Rence was spot-on in her praise for the OP. I doubt I would have been so patient.

 

[Et_Cetera]

I would have been very angry. First of all, it was not written in your daughter’s book to be malicious, and she didn’t even write it herself. Her property should not have been destroyed. In my opinion, the teacher owes you something for destroying your daughter’s property. When I was a kid, a teacher took a yo-yo from me because I used it briefly during the end of the day (class was done, and kids would talk and play). It was on a Friday, so she took it for the weekend. Yo-yos were the fad at this time, and my cousins and I were having a yo-yo tournament, so my mother just bought me a new one for the weekend. It was probably only $10 or so, but I wasn’t really doing anything harmful, so the teacher ended up just wasting my parents’ time and money. If I recall correctly, I just told my mother that the yo-yo broke because I knew that she would have been mad at the teacher and would have gone into the school to complain, which would have made things tense for me when I went back to school on Monday. The point of this rambling is that teachers shouldn’t over-step their boundaries or go over-board on punishments for pointless “transgressions.” For example, your daughter didn’t even write the statement and my letting go of the yo-yo string didn’t cause any harm to anyone. And believe me, little third graders in a private school can do some pretty bratty things.

 

[leonie]

Still think it was silly to make a big deal about it to the teacher and principal.

I hope your daughter learns to respect adults. I think that that would have been a better lesson than going to war over a teacher in authority’s action undertaken to protect your daughter.

But, I can see that you aren’t open to thinking about it.

So, happy yearbooking.

 

[Et_Cetera]

Still think it was silly to make a big deal about it to the teacher and principal.

I hope your daughter learns to respect adults. I think that that would have been a better lesson than going to war over a teacher in authority’s action undertaken to protect your daughter.

But, I can see that you aren’t open to thinking about it.

So, happy yearbooking.

Because you’re certainly being open-mined…

Rather than learn to mindlessly obey adults, I think it’s more important that the poster’s daughter learn to question seemingly arbitrary rules and to stand up for herself. If the daughter feels that she needs to merely obey without questioning, then that behavior might carry over to adult life, where others could take advantage of her. It’s good to be nice and respectful, but sometimes another person’s behavior doesn’t warrant immediate kindness.

 

[SMHW]

Still think it was silly to make a big deal about it to the teacher and principal.

I hope your daughter learns to respect adults. I think that that would have been a better lesson than going to war over a teacher in authority’s action undertaken to protect your daughter.

But, I can see that you aren’t open to thinking about it.

So, happy yearbooking.

I don’t get how the daughter isn’t respecting adults.

She gave her yearbook to a friend to sign. That’s what you do with yearbooks. It’s what we did with our yearbooks when we were young. It’s what I hope my grandchildren (if I have any) will do with their yearbooks. She then gave the book to a teacher (as asked) and the teacher rewarded her by defacing the book.

Some classmates write things that are a bit crude, even in Catholic schools. I’m sure most of our classmates did. That doesn’t make it right but it’s what happens. Must our children forgo an old tradition because of what a classmate *might *write?

 

[Miserys_Fence]

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I don’t fault the teacher for being concerned, but he/she should have called the parents, and resorting to vandalism was WAY out of line.

“*****” is not an inherently obscene word; as one poster already pointed out, it’s the technical veterinary term for a female dog. It’s only the context in which it is used that makes it inappropriate–which can be said about a lot of words. The OP stated that the word wasn’t used in an insulting context (although I doubt it was used in the technical sense either).

Why does the teacher think he/she knows better than the parents what’s appropriate for this child? If she is not insulted by the word, and the parents are not insulted by the word, then why is there a problem?

Miz

 

[PatriceA]

Still think it was silly to make a big deal about it to the teacher and principal.

I hope your daughter learns to respect adults. I think that that would have been a better lesson than going to war over a teacher in authority’s action undertaken to protect your daughter.

But, I can see that you aren’t open to thinking about it.

So, happy yearbooking.

Just how was she not respecting the adults in the situation? So you would be ok with it if your boss at work just took one of your books and started ripping pages out of it? Or would it be disrespectful to object?