Another Public Eductation Fail

[MrBogosity]

Just goes to show it's not just cops who need to be recorded.  Public employees are not to be trusted.  Record them all the time.

It seems to me we wouldn't have to if only there were some sort of actual accountability for them. It's when they're basically immune to the same kind of prosecution or termination that you or I would be if we were to behave the same way that they think they can act like this.

[Virgil0211]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/stuart-chaifetz-father-wire-son-records-teacher-abuse_n_1447330.html

Aren't you glad the Government takes care of education?

"When Stuart Chaifetz sent his 10-year-old son to New Jersey's Horace Mann Elementary School wearing a wire, he couldn't have predicted the audio he would uncover.

The wiring came as a reaction to accusations from the school that his son Akian was having "violent outbursts," including hitting his teacher and teacher's aide -- claims that Chaifetz says are simply against his son's "sweet and non-violent" nature.

To Chaifetz's shock, Akian, a student with Autism, returned with a tape containing hours of verbal and emotional abuse from his classroom aide and teacher, which the father documented and published in an emotional YouTube video.

The Feb. 17 recording started with Akian's aide and the teacher, whom Chaifetz identifies as Jodi Sgouros and Kelly Altenburg, respectively, according to Collingswood Patch. The two engage in inappropriate conversations, like joking about their alcohol abuse and sex lives in front of their students -- all of whom suffer from conditions that prevent them from relaying the conversations to their parents.

"You would never get away with talking about your alcohol abuse the night before if this was a mainstream class," Chaifetz says in the YouTube video. "And that's the point, isn't it? They knew none of those boys could go home and tell their parents that the person who ran that class was under the influence the alcohol and was throwing up."

As the tape continues, the teacher and teacher's aide's behavior turned from inappropriate to cruel.

"Who are you talking to, nobody?" Altenburg asked Akian, who sometimes talks to himself. "Knock it off," Sgouros chimed in.

According to the video, Akian became upset, and starting crying.

"Go ahead and scream because guess what? You're going to get nothing until your mouth is shut," the classroom official is heard saying. "Shut your mouth."

Due to his son's anxiety, Chaifetz, who is divorced from his wife, has to reassure Akian that he will return to his care after the boy spends time with his mother.

"It's not a big deal," he said, describing the reassurance ritual in the video.

When Akian asked Sgouros for the same reassurance, however, she answered "no," sending him into an emotional panic.

Instead of compassion, however, the teacher's aide responded with cruelty.

"Oh Akian, you are a bastard," Sgouros said, according to the audio recording.

Although Sgouros, the classroom aide, was fired after the father presented the recording to school district officials, Altenburg remains employed, but in a different classroom.

"That my son's teacher was not fired and still works in the school district is an outrage I am not willing to allow to pass in silence," Chaifetz said in an email to the Huffington Post.

"She betrayed my son and caused him great pain. If some union rule or HR regulation has allowed her to keep her job, then the law needs to be changed so that the next time a teacher bullies a child, especially one with special needs, they will be immediately fired. For me to do nothing would mean I was treating my son with as much disrespect as they had," he added.

An online petition on Change.org and a Facebook page calling for the teacher's termination have already received attention.

Susan Bastnagel, Cherry Hill Public School District spokesperson declined to comment on Altenburg's continued employment, but told the Huffington Post that the incident is a "personnel matter that the district took seriously and handled appropriately."

Akian's troubling experience is not unique, nor is his father's method of exposing believed wrongdoing in the classroom.

"I have also been stunned by how many emails I have received from people with special needs who were bullied by teachers when they were in school, and from parents who have a situation that mirrors what I went through," Chaifetz told the Huffington Post. "These parents are desperate to find out what is happening to their child and have asked for help on how to wire them."

Thus was the case for the parents of a special needs student at Miami Trace Middle School in Ohio sent their daughter to school with a hidden tape recorder last fall, after the girl had repeatedly complaint about teacher bullying.

The revelation was shocking: the educators on the recording called the child lazy and dumb, and forced her to run on a treadmill with increasing speed.

"Don't you want to do something about that belly," former teaching aide Kelley Chaffins says in the recording. "Well, evidently you don't because you don't do anything at home. You sit at home and watch TV."

The girl and her father spoke to Ann Curry on the TODAY show last November, and in a tearful interview, the concerned dad touched on how the abuse had affected his daughter.

"She got to where she didn't want to go to school," he said, choking back tears. "She was ... starting to harm herself to keep from going to school and we knew we had to do something at that point."

Chaffins was forced to resign from her position.

Other bullying incidents like that of 15-year-old Julio Artuz at Bankbridge Regional School in New Jersey were exposed by hidden camera. Based on the uncovered video, the student asks his teacher to stop calling him "special," to which the teacher responded, "...I will kick your a-- from here to kingdom-come until I'm 80 years old."

UPDATE 1:05 p.m.: A previous version of this article named Jodi Rosenfeld as the possible "Jodi" referred to in the video. Stuart Chaifetz has since confirmed that this is not the teacher he refers to, according to Collingswood Patch."

This reminded me of something I went through in second grade.

I didn't have autism, but kids with ADHD can have difficulty with social development, adapting to social situations, and may experience delayed maturation. This is in addition to the inattentiveness, forgetfulness, difficulty maintaining focus on a single task, etc. In my second grade, I was put into the class of a teacher who seemed to prefer the more 'militaristic' side of education. He'd discipline children for swinging their legs under the table or touching their hair while he was talking. As you can probably guess, I ended up being his favorite 'trouble case'. I'd get singled out almost every day for doing something (glancing out the window during an assignment, blowing spit-bubbles, not looking directly at the teacher when he was talking, and so forth), which would usually coincide with me being put down in front of the class and sent to 'the corner' (think 'dunce-cap' treatment without the dunce cap).

On top of that, being singled out like that helped to make me a target for bullying. That year was when I started getting some rather serious abuse from my classmates. Old friends refused to talk to me. I got beat up regularly at the after-school center many of the kids at school went to. I'd get teased and mocked to and from school on the bus, during recess, and whenever they thought they could get away with it during class. My third grade teacher recommended taking me out of the 'gifted' classes in order to get me away from the bullying. The worst I got in first grade was one kid who would bug me during recess every now and then, but that was minor by comparison.

I got notes sent home by this teacher almost daily until my parents decided to sit in on the class and found out just what was going on. They complained to the teachers about it, but despite assurances, he was never fired or disciplined as far as we can tell. Last I heard, he was still teaching there. I wouldn't be surprised if union rules kept him there, though the staff at the school seemed not to give 2 shits about bullying. One of the more notorious female ones was actually given a citizenship award (despite regularly attacking a girl from our neighborhood). The only one who seemed to care at all about it was the aforementioned third grade teacher who called my mother about it to recommend that we not participate in the event.

Another thing about this teacher? He was eating at Joe's Crab Shack at the same time a friend of mine was. If you've ever been to Joe's, you'd know that the atmosphere there is something of a 'party' mood. She started dancing on the table (which isn't out of line there). He stormed over there and screamed at her to sit down. She hadn't been in his class for years, didn't even know he was there before then. This was just randomly out in public.

So, yeah.

I hope those teachers in the audio burn for what they did. Apparently, he released her name recently in order to prove (despite the school district's statement to the contrary) that the teacher named 'Jodi' in the audio was still working there.

http://www.cherryhill.k12.nj.us/

[yt]4oYqdjzFMWE&context=C4fbe420ADvjVQa1PpcFOiUJC89yUn2teTSdvehtm51Zvvf48yjxk=[/yt]

Is it wrong to hope that certain individuals on 4chan feel compelled to visit their personalities on those teachers?

[Travis Retriever]

Is it wrong to hope that certain individuals on 4chan feel compelled to visit their personalities on those teachers?

Probably, but then, given the circumstances, I don't give a shit.