At Manual Arts High, a caring teacher is at the end of his rope

[n2doc]

By Sandy Banks
September 24, 2011

Art teacher Jeremy Davidson skipped the annual back-to-school-night at Manual Arts High this week.

He'd walked off the job the day before — after 10 years at the mid-city campus — done in by a group of unruly ninth-graders who'd hijacked his sixth-period drawing class.


While Davidson was "trying to give a lesson on shading," the troublemakers were "whacking each other with rulers, throwing paper across the room, getting up and walking around."

They blocked the door when he tried to close it, talked over him when he tried to teach.

The first time it happened this semester, he summoned security "four times during the period and help never came."


more

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0924-banks-20110924,0,7726078.column

[ChandlerJr]

1. There was a time in this country when a teacher in HS smacked me

upside the head for smarting off and when I whined to my parents about it my Old Man smacked twice as hard.

There was no next time.

[customerserviceguy]

2. This teacher's just out of a job

He's not unemployed AND having some lousy parent's attorney suing his ass off, too.

My ex-sister-in-law quit her US teaching job about a year ago, and moved to New Zealand, where teachers are still treated with respect.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Jeremy Davidson was not destined to be an inner-city school teacher.

He might do well someplace else but not in this particular school/neighborhood/classroom/environment.

I don't envy him that setting, but there are teachers who can deal with it and deal with it masterfully.

If the expectation is that teaching can't occur unless and until all the parents are on board and security is in place, it's gonna be a long wait and the kids, and society, are going to be the losers.

:patriot:

[Smarmie Doofus]

5. Good grief. nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Sounds like the administration at his school decided not to support him

Teachers who deal with unruly kids masterfully call for help when they need it and help arrives. None of us are in this alone. Every good teacher knows that.

[NYC_SKP]

7. I think you're right and that school needs to make some serious changes...

All of my full time teaching was with at-risk youth, many gang-bangers and such, and the last four years was in a juvenile hall with long-term incarcerants.

I have a lot of fond memories and there were a couple scary moments.

I feel for the teacher, I feel even more for the kids in that district who aren't provided an appropriate education and who are unlikely to see changes any time soon.

[femmocrat]

4. He was in an impossible situation:

"The class average is 42 students for 11th and 12th grades, and 32 for freshmen and sophomores. Davidson's sculpture and photography classes had 60 and 65 pupils — and a budget that allocated about $2 for supplies for each student, he said."

He deserves credit for sticking it out as long as he did, IMO. I taught at an inner-city HS a long time ago. Art, vocational and consumer ed. and such courses are a "dumping ground" for all of the discipline problems and unmotivated students who aren't focusing on math and science. I lasted two years.