Being around a pile of children can be stressful, especially when they won’t listen to you. I could never be a substitute teacher because I remember how we acted. They weren’t going to be around long enough to rat us out to our folks at parent/teacher conferences and we’d probably never see them again. Now that I’m an adult, I feel bad for how I acted, but I wasn’t the only one who acted that way.
I’m just glad I didn’t get the sub some kids in Texas got recently.
The Daily Caller reports that a Texan substitute elementary school teacher “got booted from a classroom after she duct taped at least 10 students’ mouths, according to a Thursday statement.”
The substitute teacher, who has not been named, taught at Maxdale Elementary School in Killeen, Texas, according to a CBS News report. “The 10 students whose mouths she duct taped, as well as three other students who had reportedly duct taped their own mouths, received attention from the school nurse but were deemed uninjured.”
Maxdale Elementary School and the Killeen Independent School District have issued their mea culpas and promised they were doing whatever they could to make sure their students were safe and sound. In fairness, there was only so much they could do.
The important thing is that it looks like the teacher was dealt with and dealt with quickly. But it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
Texas doesn’t require substitutes to have professional licensing, unlike regular teachers. They do, however, require a criminal background check. It seems that this is another example of how a background check doesn’t really find what someone is capable of doing, only that they haven’t done it yet.
Most Texas districts require substitute teachers to have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, though there’s no experience requirement, which means this unnamed teacher may have just found out the hard way that she’s not cut out for educating kids. She wouldn’t be the first to learn that, either, though most figure it out before they treat their students like hostages or kidnap victims.
Seriously, one phone call with demands for a pile of money and a helicopter ride to a non-extradition country and she’s looking at becoming breaking news.
Fortunately, none of the kids were injured, but this kind of behavior is ridiculous. It should not be tolerated, and it seems the Killeen Independent School District and Maxdale Elementary School aren’t doing that, thankfully.
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