Cheerleading teacher "resigns" [Archive]

Goofball

11-14-2007, 18:12

Okay, so an English teacher performs a cheerleading routine for her class, then gets suspended for same, then "resigns."

What the hell is the big deal with what she did?

Here is the video that made it on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW_LFCPhDyA

While it appears to have been edited to make the routine look sexier than it actually was, it still doesn't look like anything you wouldn't see 15 year old girls performing at a high school football game, most likely to the cheers and proud approval of their parents.

Here is an article:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071114.wcheerleaderteacher1114/BNStory/Technology/home

Can somebody please enlighten me as to what all the uproar is?

Also, there is mention about a book she assigned that a parent complained about as being inappropriate. Has anybody read it?

Is there more to this that I'm not seeing, or has puritanism really begun to take over in U.S. schools?

Fragony

11-14-2007, 18:17

Could we please expect a little professionalism from teachers? I'd fire here.

Husar

11-14-2007, 18:26

This is outrageous!

You can actually see her bum!
Teachers shouldn't have a bum, I demand Burkhas for all teachers, male and female.

Well, guess the book might have to do with it, if not, see above. :dizzy2:

Big King Sanctaphrax

11-14-2007, 18:38

Ms. Mallon returned from her suspension a few weeks later. She was again in the spotlight after a student's father complained about a book she assigned, “Jake Reinvented.”

The parent said the book was not appropriate for his 14-year-old daughter, a student in Ms. Mallon's freshman English class.

The book, by Gordon Korman, has been described as “The Great Gatsby” for teens. It tells the story of a cool and popular high school student who is exposed as a fraud.

Hmmm. In my high school English Lit. class we just read...The Great Gatsby.

Blodrast

11-14-2007, 18:40

Could we please expect a little professionalism from teachers? I'd fire here.

English teacher and cheerleading coach Cristina Mallon ...

(emphasis mine).
While cheerleading doesn't belong in an English lecture, one can't blame her for lack of professionalism, since cheerleading IS part of her profession. :beam:

HoreTore

11-14-2007, 18:56

Have you heard that teens these days actually have sex?

It's outrageous!

Fragony

11-14-2007, 19:09

Have you heard that teens these days actually have sex?

It's outrageous!

Nothing to do with it, teachers aren't supposed to be buddies.

Faust|

11-14-2007, 19:20

.,,

Louis VI the Fat

11-14-2007, 19:41

Sexism! :furious3:

If this was a male teacher showing a football routine in front of class, he would be applauded for it.

This is hatred for, fear of, and compulsive obsession about female physicality. I think Husar actually hit it on the mark with his Burkha comment.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

11-14-2007, 19:50

The video was clearly made by some little perv to get his jollies with later.

I don't know why she did it but it's hardly something to be fired/forced to resign over.

Geoffrey S

11-14-2007, 21:32

Not very professional of her. I'd be interested to know what explanation she gave.

Faust|

11-14-2007, 22:10

it's sad to see... that's all.

CountArach

11-14-2007, 22:23

Sexism! :furious3:

If this was a male teacher showing a football routine in front of class, he would be applauded for it.
I thought this was a football routine :laugh3:

Sasaki Kojiro

11-15-2007, 00:46

Nothing to do with it, teachers aren't supposed to be buddies.

The best teachers are very personable with their students. No way should she have been forced to quit.

Proletariat

11-15-2007, 01:08

I wonder how many students in that classroom had their first 'wow, I'm smarter than this idiot' moment during her cheer-leading routine.

Papewaio

11-15-2007, 01:15

Well which is smarter the English teachers or the Physical Ed ones?

Here in Aus the Phys Ed course is far more popular so you need higher stats to get into it and it is more competitive to get a position.

Most of the English teachers I had were just cookie-cutter alternative types whose only reason they passed uni was because they balanced the duality of poo-pooing the social norm/authourity while sucking up to their lecturers... and being English Lit types it was more then just figurative.

Proletariat

11-15-2007, 01:21

Ice

11-15-2007, 01:30

Nothing to do with it, teachers aren't supposed to be buddies.

Why not? Some of the best/intelligent professors/teachers I've had have been more or less a friend of mine.

I honestly don't understand the uproar. If it really offended people that much a simple "don't do that" would have been more than enough.

Evil_Maniac From Mars

11-15-2007, 01:32

when was the first time you looked at a teacher and realized you were brighter than him or her? I was in fifth grade (around 10 years old in the states) and my teacher was trying her darnedest to explain what 'irony' meant and it was so bad it was awkward to watch.
Every single history teacher I have had since I was about thirteen.

Ice

11-15-2007, 01:35

Every single history teacher I have had since I was about thirteen.

You need some better professors then. I've had a few which have blown my mind in the amount of knowledge they possess. They were pretty good professors.

Don Corleone

11-15-2007, 01:42

I dunno which is smarter, but a teacher who mixes one with the other, in the fashion the teacher in the op did, is prolly more stupid than either.

Pape, when was the first time you looked at a teacher and realized you were brighter than him or her? I was in fifth grade (around 10 years old in the states) and my teacher was trying her darnedest to explain what 'irony' meant and it was so bad it was awkward to watch.

Edit: Interesting about the fight to get into Phys Ed for teachers, too. Nothing like that here :/

I was in the fifth grade too. I had a retired boxer for a teacher (Rollie Pier). Nice guy, but it was clear he'd taken a few too many shots to the head. Math was pretty good, he used sports to teach us fractions, percentages... even algebra. And he was really good at current events. And I suppose it goes without saying that discipline was not an issue. :boxing: But English and Science... uhm, maybe no. He had me teach the segment on evolution. :yes:

As for the teacher, I think it's a right and proper thing that her teaching career was terminated. Now, it just so happens I have an open requisition in my department. If she could find a way to work mixed-signal circuit design in with the English and cheerleading, things just might get very interesting at work...
:study: :cheerleader:

Husar

11-15-2007, 01:43

I must've had pretty good teachers then, with a few exceptions of course.

And the sports teachers weren't exactly the brightest among them. :sweatdrop:

Papewaio

11-15-2007, 01:45

Pape, when was the first time you looked at a teacher and realized you were brighter than him or her? I was in fifth grade (around 10 years old in the states) and my teacher was trying her darnedest to explain what 'irony' meant and it was so bad it was awkward to watch.

Can't remember when I first thought that, but by senior high school I thought it about the majority of teachers... thankfully being in the 'smart/hard class' stream I got to deal with the really intelligent ones... but I felt sad for the 'dumb/easy class' stream as it wasn't the students who where dumb.

I still can remember at 13 getting 9/10 on a science test. The teacher came by to see what happened as he was surprised that I had got it wrong. 'What is the hottest planet in the solar system'... I said Venus, the answer key said Mercury.

I think it is more a reflection of how little resources are intelligently being applied to our school system... that with a little extra time in a library an average student is better off then listening to 80% of the teaching curriculum... and unfortunately too many teachers don't second guess the curriculum.

I think the only reason that I did so well at science was from watching David Attenborough... so in the end TV was a better teacher for me then school.

Don Corleone

11-15-2007, 01:48

Can't remember when I first thought that, but by senior high school I thought it about the majority of teachers... thankfully being in the 'smart/hard class' stream I got to deal with the really intelligent ones... but I felt sad for the 'dumb/easy class' stream as it wasn't the students who where dumb.

I still can remember at 13 getting 9/10 on a science test. The teacher came by to see what happened as he was surprised that I had got it wrong. 'What is the hottest planet in the solar system'... I said Venus, the answer key said Mercury.

I think it is more a reflection of how little resources are intelligently being applied to our school system... that with a little extra time in a library an average student is better off then listening to 80% of the teaching curriculum... and unfortunately too many teachers don't second guess the curriculum.

I think the only reason that I did so well at science was from watching David Attenborough... so in the end TV was a better teacher for me then school.

If they were looking for peak surface temperature, they were correct. But in terms of an integrated average temperature, I think you were right. Mercury is solid iron and has no atmosphere. It heats up, sure, but the dark side is frigid... like -150C and lower. Venus on the other hand has a dense methane atmoshphere that traps the heat in.

Husar

11-15-2007, 01:51

I think it is more a reflection of how little resources are intelligently being applied to our school system... that with a little extra time in a library an average student is better off then listening to 80% of the teaching curriculum... and unfortunately too many teachers don't second guess the curriculum.
We had a math teacher who was ranting about the curriculum and how it abandoned the classic explanation of the limes or limiting value or how it's called. He never managed to teach me a lot though, for some reason I couldn't understand mathematics the way he explained it. Unfortunately he was by far not the only one, but the worst nonetheless. :sweatdrop:

Don Corleone

11-15-2007, 01:54

Crazed Rabbit

11-15-2007, 01:56

Maybe, Goofball, it's not the Vast Idealogical Puritan Ensemble of Radicals (VIPER), just that a teacher shouldn't do cheerleading routine while she's supposed to be teaching a class.

BTW, my junior honors (!) english teacher couldn't spell government. Course, he was a football coach as well.

CR

Husar

11-15-2007, 02:05

Aah, Husar, that's a shame. He was trying to get you through to that epiphany where you realize that Mathematics is simply a language like any other, the language that nature speaks. Once that happens, derivatives and integrals are never again so mysterious, as you have an intuitive sense as to what's going on and it ceases to be a bunch of formulas for rote memorization.
That might even be true.
I still have mathematics at university though, but those professors usually start out good and lose me somewhere in the process of explanation. Got myself some cheap book lately and the professor who wrote it seems to be a genius in that he explains it short and with step-by-step examples. I seem to have understood the stuff I listened to for many hours in just about two hours or so...
Well, some practice and at last the exams will have to show whether the book is actually sufficient, but I hope it since the explanations seem great, at least for me.

How one can see the multiplication of matrices as a language is beyond me though. ~;)

Papewaio

11-15-2007, 02:14

Well multiplying matrices is just doing multiple sets of algebra at once.

Algebra is a language, so multiplying matrices is to algebra what English Literature is to English. More information in a more symbolic format.

Evil_Maniac From Mars

11-15-2007, 02:32

You need some better professors then. I've had a few which have blown my mind in the amount of knowledge they possess. They were pretty good professors.
I meant teachers before the university level. Every professor I know, on the other hand, is absoloutly brilliant. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear.

naut

11-15-2007, 02:51

Nothing to do with it, teachers aren't supposed to be buddies.Um, I completely disagree, the best teachers I ever had were the the ones who could interact with the class and individuals on a personal level. They'd also be strict when they needed to be, but it was the friendliness that got the class interested and involved.

Geoffrey S

11-15-2007, 08:18

Not quite the same as a cheerleading routine in my opinion, though.

Dumb teachers? My English teacher at high school, for seven years. Quite frankly, since I'm English, I was infinitely better than her at speaking English, something she took really badly. That, and she was a poor teacher in general. The other end of the spectrum was my first Dutch teacher at high school, who made the mistake of telling my parents that my Dutch skills were so poor that there wasn't a chance I'd be able to finish at that particular school. My father, whose Dutch skills still aren't good, practically exploded...

Peasant Phill

11-15-2007, 09:51

On the topic of cheerleading in front of your English class:
I can't see how that fits in the matter given*. Not that she should be fired for it but surely given a warning (not for 'corrupting' those young minds but for wasting lesson time).

On the matter of the 'inappropriate' book:
I'm sure that the book isn't more inappropriate that what that same teen can see on TV between 6 and 12 pm and with a lot more cultural value. It's the job of the principal to defend the teacher on this matter.

On the matter of feeling smarter than your teachers:
I must say I never really felt smarter than my teachers on the matter that they teach, more course idiots like they say here. I had this French teacher that was absolutely horrible with everything except French (the poor thing was on prozac to). An economics professor that had a really short attention span so that we had to correct her a lot (she knew what she was talking about, she just confused graphs a lot). And a HRM professor that used his course to tell us how to import cars the cheapest (his exam was unfortunately on HRM).

On the matter of teachers being close to students:
I consider 'bonding' between students and teacher a great tool to generate respect and motivation. I have still fond memories of my last year of high school where there was interaction between teachers and students during and after class on a lot of subjects.

* The students probably just nagged about her giving a demonstration of her cheerleading skills until she did.

CaesarAugustus

11-16-2007, 00:55

I dont see what was so wrong about that, it's not if she pole-danced naked in front of her class. Cheerkeading in front of one's class isnot very professional, of course, but no reason for her lose her job. The people who complained are making it seem way to big a deal, I surprised she even got suspended.

has puritanism really begun to take over in U.S. schools
Looks like it has.

CrossLOPER

11-16-2007, 01:54

Wow. This is considered inappropriate now?

I mean never mind the fact that the cheerleaders are wearing tube tops and skirts that would otherwise be forbidden in a school setting, WE CAN'T HAVE THEM SHAKE THEIR BUMS!!!!!!!!

Lord Winter

11-16-2007, 02:35

On the book,

I have a feeling thats not the problem along, theirs plenty of books like the Chaoclot war or what not that are preaty questionable but are taught almost as a standard. and Peasent Phill does have a point I thought in high school you were suppose to be trusted with everything up to PG-13 and most R was okay to with prior aprovel.