Teacher Suspended for Spirit Day Incident (Can someone explain this to me?)

[WillParkinson]

Teacher Suspended for Spirit Day Incident

Jay McDowell, a high school teacher in Michigan, has been suspended for a day without pay due to an incident with an antigay student on Spirit Day last Wednesday, reports The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus. Following a recent spate of gay teen suicides, October 20 was designated Spirit Day by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and supporters were asked to wear purple clothing to show solidarity with anyone, gay or otherwise, who'd been the victim of bullying.

An unidentified student entered McDowell's Howell High School classroom and said, "I do not support gay individuals," according to David Boeving, an alum of the school whose younger brother is currently a student there. Boeving says McDowell asked the student, who was wearing a belt with a Confederate flag belt buckle, to leave the classroom.

http://advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/10/26/Teacher_Suspended_for_Spirit_Day_Incident/

[sfwriter]

1. Not enough there to tell...

Curious... Sounds like he sent a disruptive student out of his classroom, but why suspend him for that. A kid walks into my class and says ANYTHING to my students he would get sent out just for interrupting us.

If there is more to this, like a bigoted school hierarchy, we'll find out.

[WillParkinson]

2. Thanks..

I didn't understand it either. It really didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

[joeybee12]

3. I do not support Jewish individuals" "I do not support black individuals"

Would he have been suspended if he told the kid who said either of those to leave?

[ashleyforachange]

4. something is missing....

It seems like there is something missing to the story but it was WRONG for them to suspend the teacher. Kids need to learn to accept everyone and/ or at least show some respect even if they don't agree.

[Drale]

5. If a group of kids had gotten together

and beat the living shit out of that kid they would have been suspended and possible expelled. But when it comes to gay and gay supporting individuals there is not fucking justice.

[montanto]

6. While its not much info to go on,

here is a teacher's perspective: Taking the bigoted comment out of the equation, if I were to kick any student out of class for any type of behavior without a formal note to the dean, I would get into trouble (and have gotten into trouble for this very thing). When a student misbehaves, the teacher needs to stop class, write the offensive comments up, send the student through proper channels to the proper authority, who, in turn, does absolutely nothing about it. If that doesn't happen (documentation, authorization to leave the class), since the teacher is legally responsible for that student during class time, the teacher is guilty of neglect and setting an unauthorized, pass-less student loose upon campus. If the asshole bigot were to get stabbed in the head with an icepick during that unauthorized, unsupervised time, it would be the teacher's fault, and the teacher would lose much more than a day's pay, and so would the school.

Me? I'd have done the same thing and taken my chances. Its the quickest way to get rid of the problem and the least trouble to the good students. This guy got caught at it, as I have been, and the admin was overzealous in prosecuting the complaint, as they sometimes are even when they are sympathetic to the cause. There are so many eyes on teacher and school administration behavior that its difficult to make an unquestionably "right" move, except the blindly legalistic one.