Cheerleading teacher "resigns"

[Goofball]

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/servl...echnology/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]

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

[Husar]

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.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

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]

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.

[HoreTore]

Have you heard that teens these days actually have sex?

It's outrageous!

[Fragony]

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|]

.,,

[Louis VI the Fat]

Sexism!

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]

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]

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

[Faust|]

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

[CountArach]

Sexism!

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

[Sasaki Kojiro]

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]

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]

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]

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 :/

[Ice]

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]

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]

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]

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. But English and Science... uhm, maybe no. He had me teach the segment on evolution.

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...

[Husar]

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.

[Papewaio]

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]

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]

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.

[Don Corleone]

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.

[Crazed Rabbit]

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]

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]

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]

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.