Comments on: Ohio: former school teacher sues because she has a phobia of children

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:47:00 +0000

Sort of like how you just did?

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:55:00 +0000

According to the article, no 6th graders in that school, only 7th and 8th. She had been working with 9th graders (technically, offering classes for higher levels, but no one would take her classes once they’d been with her for a year). It’s a small shift from the POV of physical appearance; she wasn’t dropped down into a 3rd grade classroom.

Have you spent time recently in a middle school? 7th and 8th graders are not young children. They don’t look, smell, dress or act like young children. It’s actually not as much of a continuum as you think. Puberty hits hard. There’s a reason why our educational system has moved this age out of the grade schools….they really aren’t children anymore.

It’s an excuse, not a reason.

By: Marc Mielke

Marc Mielke — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 02:23:00 +0000

The River’s Edge. Seeing a kid kick Dennis Hopper’s ass (shortly after I saw Blue Velvet) gave me a pretty lasting phobia of children.

By: Marc Mielke

Marc Mielke — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 02:21:00 +0000

Someone claiming to have had her class compared her in the other thread to the character Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series. After reading that, I’m prone to condemn her on general principle.

By: Marc Mielke

Marc Mielke — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 02:19:00 +0000

I’ve taken a joint or drink when offered. Does that count?

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 02:03:00 +0000

This is what the internet is for. 4chan told me so.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:55:00 +0000

It’s more like you had a fear of silly analogies, and were employed to listen to wiretaps of mob bosses being investigated for rigging kangaroo-boxing matches, and then were ordered to start monitoring this thread.

By: Alan Ball

Alan Ball — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 23:54:00 +0000

She had a real hard time growing up.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 23:22:00 +0000

I’m pretty sure that at every point of my life, I would have turned down brain damage no matter how much it was paying.

By: SedanChair

SedanChair — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:39:00 +0000

Ohhh you’re a hater! I keep forgetting how many people on the internet are haters.

By: gwailo_joe

gwailo_joe — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:26:00 +0000

The Shining Omen Exorcist…
The detox scene from Trainspotting…How can ya not love the lil’ darlins?

By: gwailo_joe

gwailo_joe — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:22:00 +0000

Come now: condemning random strangers from ignorance is more than half the fun of this entire exercise…now stop reading this and get back to work, you!

By: Sparrow

Sparrow — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:40:00 +0000

It’s more like you had a peanut allergy and worked in a factory producing Kit Kat bars, where you worked for years without incident, and then they transferred you to a factory producing chocolate coated peanuts.

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:39:00 +0000

Aging is a continuum. The point at which kids are young enough to trigger her fear is arbitrary but real, and neither you nor I knows where it is. It may well be that there are enough kids in the middle school (my middle school was 6-8th grade so she is likely exposed to kids several years younger not just the ones she teaches) who fall below that threshold to make it a problem, while at the high school (9th graders as the youngest) there wouldn’t have been.

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:36:00 +0000

There is a difference between an actual medical phobia, and a popular term that is used to describe hatred rather than fear. Agoraphobes don’t go out and demand that malls and fields be walled off into tiny cubicles.

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:34:00 +0000

If that someone was offered a multimillion dollar contract at 18 and was instructred to play in ways that unnecesarily increases their risk of brain trauma and the people in charge could have agreed to make simple changes to reduce the risk and their parents are the type to value athletics more than intellect and have been drilling that into them their whole life…

Than yeah, they probably do have brain damage, but it isn’t their fault, they were victimized.

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:01:00 +0000

I get the feeling a lot of the commenters on this thread have never had to deal with the fallout when your child has a bad teacher for a year. Basically, they lose the year of education. You’re lucky if you don’t have to pay for professional help to get them back on track.

And in the case of a foreign language teacher, this can be a problem potentially for every year the child is in that school, not just for one.

I’ve worked with schools enough to recognize the signs for what’s going on here: this is a particularly horrible teacher who has been negatively impacting two foreign language departments in a school for decades and they have been unable to get rid of her because she knows just how to use the system to get what she wants, which is a guaranteed paycheck and pension for doing the least amount of work possible.

Seriously, read what the students have been going through who have had to deal with this teacher over the years. This isn’t a discrimination lawsuit….this is a troll laughing all the way to the bank.

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:51:00 +0000

No, it’s more like you start working the mail room in a clown college, do lousy work for a few decades, then tell them you have a clown phobia, and 10 years after that announcement they don’t need as many people working in the mail room but rather than fire you they offer you a job in the administrator’s office (which has a window so you know you will occasionally catch a glimpse of one of the clown students), and you accept that transfer and work there for a year and a half before quitting so you can sue them.

By: chgoliz

chgoliz — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:45:00 +0000

But here’s the thing: she decided to keep drawing a paycheck for 1 1/2 years despite knowing she couldn’t do a good job in her position. Ethically and legally, that’s fraud.

Besides…junior high school students these days on average are taller than their parents, the boys’ voices have changed to their adult register, the girls menstruate and get pregnant….they’re not young children. Claiming that moving down ONE GRADE was that detrimental to her health is also fraud.

Personally, I think the school district moved her as a way to “convince” her to retire because she had been such a horrible teacher for so long (you might want to read some of the eyewitness accounts in the other thread) but thanks to union rules couldn’t be gotten rid of.

By: Tavie

Tavie — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:12:00 +0000

I thought I was having a cookie problem for a second! But people still have things to say about it so it’s all good.

By: Ryan Hannay

Ryan Hannay — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 19:15:00 +0000

If you need someone to warn you that hits to the head are dangerous then you probably already have brain damage.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 19:03:00 +0000

Don’t forget Village Of The Damned.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 19:01:00 +0000

I think the school ending its face-to-face language classes should be a bigger story than the lawsuit. The lawsuit is one teacher’s complaint. The end of face-to-face language classes is an issue that potentially affects a lot of students.

By: TheKaz1969

TheKaz1969 — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:56:00 +0000

here I thought I was just experiencing deja vu…

By: Tynam

Tynam — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:45:00 +0000

Try actually reading the article, instead of condemning random strangers from ignorance.

By: Aloisius

Aloisius — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:39:00 +0000

As long as there is a reasonable accommodation the school system can do to deal with her disability, then she’ll likely win. Ironically, putting her Middle School class online might be considered a reasonable accommodation, but might also lead her no longer being necessary.

By: Egan Budd

Egan Budd — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:36:00 +0000

Her favorite films:

The Ring
Rosemary’s Baby
Children of the Corn
Chucky

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:25:00 +0000

Her real disabling fear is a fear of retiring on just her pension and not some extra sweet lawsuit bucks too.

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:24:00 +0000

I’d say that colleague of yours was actually allergic to any sense of shame.

By: Cameron Postelwait

Cameron Postelwait — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:19:00 +0000

lots of extreme homophobes eventually come out…