Two suspended teachers

Summary and my opinion

The articles “Suspended Teacher Defends Book Assignment” and "Museum Field Trip Deemed Too Revealing" tell us stories about two teachers who have long, high performance teaching experience, but nevertheless have faced with discharging from school. The first article is about Connie Heermann, who taught at Perry Meridan High School. Reason for Heermann's discharge was that she assigned book, a collection of essays created by at-risk teenagers, which contained swearwords and sexual underlying messages and weren’t approved by administration before. Administrators accused Heermann that she had assigned this book without their approval, while Heermann has affirmed that she waited for the answer from them, but couldn’t get it. Heermann supposed that the reasons of this weren’t only the content of book, but also polemics in the district - the departure of the superintendent and protests over a 2006 student play. Heermann also noted that she received permission from almost all parents to use this book.

The other article is about Sydney McGee, who taught in Wilma Fisher Elementary School. Sydney McGee, a teacher with 28 years experience, was fired from school, because she had taken students to the Dallas Museum of Art. After this outing, the parents of one of her students had complained that their child saw nude art at museum and Ms. McGee was suspended. This case has confused many people. The Director of museum noted that they had never faced such situation. Over the last years a lot of students toured the museum, but none of them ever complained about nude artworks. The principal of school accused Ms. McGee for “not displaying enough student art” and wearing “flip-flops” to work, and also noted that time used uselessly while touring to museum. For her own plea, Ms. McGee claimed that the tour was held according to route. She also marked that until this case her performance always had been perfect and almost all parents defended Ms. McGee.

While reading two above-mentioned articles I paid attention to some information. First, system of education in the U.S. is quite innovative and non-stereotyped. The evidences of this are following moments: assignment of new book for studying (even if this is the collection of essays containing swearwords and sexual overtones), the tour trip to museum. Such classes promote more attractive and interesting learning. The only comment is that I am not supporter of educating of swearwords and sexual overlying messages. Today all of media channels, street, etc. are saturated with swearwords, dirty press and of course these factors influenced on manner of our children, but I think that school shouldn’t encourage this and inversely has to criticize it in an unobtrusive way.

 Second, I was surprised by the reaction of parents, who complained that their child saw nude art in the museum. If we are talking about museums, we have to know that in almost every museum of art we can see artworks of ancient world and mostly these are nude pictures and sculptures, so I don’t understand the reaction of parents.

While talking about discharging of teachers from school in above-mentioned cases, I think that such type of punishment is very strict and undeserved and has to be reviewed. May be in the first case Connie Heermann has to be warned about unauthorized actions (assignment of book without approval), but in second case Ms. McGee didn’t do anything wrong.