Crafty Mom Catches Teacher on Tape

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4352430&page=1
Megan Mijares' digital tape recorded mostly mundane moments at Memorial Elementary School's prekindergarten class, but then it captured the teacher yelling at the group of 4- and 5-year-olds. All of it happened without Megan's or her teacher's knowledge.

"You're just a bad kid," the teacher says on the six-hour tape. "You're mean to me, so I get to be mean to you." The teacher, who was not identified, continues to harshly scold the children.

"You are all just stupid kids. I swear to God," the teacher says. "You are just all stupid kids."

Mijares said at that point the teacher was responding to a boy who was moving slowly. (more at link plus video/audio)
:behindbar

I want to do this with my son's 6th grade teacher!!

Houston school officials confirmed a slapping allegation was reported to the principal. After an investigation, the principal found evidence the teacher slapped a student and she was disciplined. "She was suspended for one day without pay back in December," said district spokesperson Terry Abbott.

Click to expand...

slap my child and a 1 day suspension would have been the least of her worries.

sherri79 said:

slap my child and a 1 day suspension would have been the least of her worries.

Click to expand...

Exactly!!!

I am really concerned that the school would take that so lightly!
My God if one of our children slapped a teacher or even another student they would no doubt miss more then one day of school and probably get taken away in handcuffs...
This women slaps a child and no criminal charges are brought against her?? WTF is that?!?!

And how messed up are you to talk to a bunch of 4 and 5 yo's like that??
They reassigned here?? Great! How about fire her?
What is wrong with these people... How on earth can this women still have a job?

When my oldest was in elementary school she had a sub that used a ruler to smack hands. She hit one kid so hard the ruler broke.

I went to the school the next day and got nowhere with the sub (I quit trying to be "nice" after a few minutes). While I was talking to her I happened to look down at the trash can. . . the ruler was sitting there, broken from the day before.

The ruler and I made a visit to the county school board. The sub was fired. She's very lucky she wasn't left wearing a neckbrace and eating jello for a month.

Video was disturbing to me to say the least. While watching video, my first thought was boy, if a parent did the same thing it would be called abuse! Go figure... She should have been fired on the spot! Instead she was removed of duties from that classroom and sent to another classroom, great lets screw up some more kids. ETA: I'm not in favor of tenure

I can't even believe this..boy have I been living in a bubble! I just automatically thought that teachers are FIRED the minute they lay a finger on a student? Now as for the way the teacher was talking to the students that just breaks my heart & it is so cruel. One of my son's had a teacher once that was pretty hard on the kids and I went up there after a certain incident to confront her and she brought me to tears. I only imagined how she made the little ones feel. I won't get into what happened next because it's a long story..Anyway I hope this lady is never allowed to teach again. Poor babies being told they are stupid you know they will never forget that. :furious:

I always believed they were fired too for touching a child. Believe me it's not true, we had an incident with the principal of our HS at an after school function. They did nothing to him. A police officer told me that Teachers are the most protected people in this country....they are more protected than the police. I should have had him arrested for assault but I naively thought the BOE would handle it.

Taximom said:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4352430&page=1
Megan Mijares' digital tape recorded mostly mundane moments at Memorial Elementary School's prekindergarten class, but then it captured the teacher yelling at the group of 4- and 5-year-olds. All of it happened without Megan's or her teacher's knowledge.

"You're just a bad kid," the teacher says on the six-hour tape. "You're mean to me, so I get to be mean to you." The teacher, who was not identified, continues to harshly scold the children.

"You are all just stupid kids. I swear to God," the teacher says. "You are just all stupid kids."

Mijares said at that point the teacher was responding to a boy who was moving slowly. (more at link plus video/audio)
:behindbar

I want to do this with my son's 6th grade teacher!!

Click to expand...

I wish I had thought to do this with my son's first grade teacher. Not sure if it would have been available. Believe me, they believe the teachers words. When I sent my son to first grade, he thought he was the smartest kid around. We spent six years building his self esteem. She took two days to undo what we had worked so hard for. In two days he thought he was ugly and stupid. He's a senior in HS and just now is figuring out he is not as stupid as she made him out to be. My son has a very high IQ, he should never have made below an A. He barely passed until this year. This year he has made A's and B's.

Scary!!!!!!!!!!! She should be fired! She SHOULD have been fired when she slapped a kid across the face!

Your stories are breaking my heart. We've done the same with my son's self-esteem (worked on it with him for years), all from comments that 2 stupid teachers made to him. A preschool teacher told him he made a great class-clown...so guess what he tried to excel at for the next 3 years? Yeah. Being the class clown.

His current teacher is something else, but I think this is the year that he realizes what they say isn't necessarily true about them.

FLMom said:

When my oldest was in elementary school she had a sub that used a ruler to smack hands. She hit one kid so hard the ruler broke.

I went to the school the next day and got nowhere with the sub (I quit trying to be "nice" after a few minutes). While I was talking to her I happened to look down at the trash can. . . the ruler was sitting there, broken from the day before.

The ruler and I made a visit to the county school board. The sub was fired. She's very lucky she wasn't left wearing a neckbrace and eating jello for a month.

Click to expand...

That brings back some memories. I had a junior high English teacher who had a ruler with the metal strip in it. She was fond of calling you up to her desk and having you put your hand out while she smacked it once. When it happened to me, I told my mother. She went to the principal the next day and let loose. The teacher wasn't fired, but never used the ruler again.

My mother always embarrassed me on the first day of school. I can still remember it. She introduced me to the teacher and told them they had her permission to "make me behave", LOL.

Skip forward to when I'm grown and mom is back teaching as a sub for English in Jr. High. A student wouldn't behave and actually charged toward her with his fist raised. She put her hand up to defend off any blow that may come and her ring caught him on the cheek. Right away the kid wanted her fired. After a conference with the principal, parents and student witnesses, the kid was suspended.

Now the last one. My dad was a science and math teacher in high school. The days when I went there, he had a hammer in his drawer. Sometimes to get the attention of students in his remedial math class, he'd bang it on the desk like a gavel to get order. Always worked. Many of my friends told me later in life that he was one teacher who helped them more than any other. Very patient and could come up with a million ways to get across 2 + 2 = 4, so a kid could understand. Now years later and attitudes have changed, the classroom is not what it used to be and students can get out of control. There was a student who constantly harrassed a girl who sat in front of him. Not that it matters that much, but both students were black. When this kid grabbed the girls breasts, my dad got up and grabbed him by the ear and threw him against the wall. He then marched him down to the principal's office. My mom was sure he was going to be fired, but during the conference with his mother the next day, she thanked my dad. Said her out of control son needed a confrontation. He never had a problem with the kid later and he managed to learn some math.

My son's third grade teacher told him in front of his class he was stupid. I also went to the principal and demanded action. She admitted she did it and said he was never going to learn. The principal had my son tested in depth because of her rude comments and we found he had a 140 IQ with an auditory learning disability. He was placed in the Gifted Learning Disabled program which was a blessing. So, I guess I should be grateful to that teacher, LOL.

Telling children today they are stupid gives me goosebumps when I remember about my son's experience.

My brother had a second frade teacher who had a ruler with a metal strip as well, he was slapped on the hand with it on a regular basis. I can remember being told taht after one to many times he went up to the teachers desk picked up the ruler and slapped her on the knuckles with it. Now I am not saying that he should have done this but, until that point no one knew what was going on in that room. My brother was sent to the principle but, the teacher was fired. We later heard that very soon after she had a nervous breakdown.

My dd's SLP said that she's not very "artsy" or creative. She never knew why till one day she remembered that in K she had drawn a yellow sun with a smiley face, and her teacher said "Now Kathy, everyone knows the sun doesn't have a smiley face." Can you believe that?! So she never really tried in art class after that. All because of 11 little words.

I read all these horror stories and know that there are so many more we do not hear of because parents by nature often believe other adults.
There was an Admin Assistant at my daughters High School who made it a habit of telling the girls they looked like *advertiser censored*..
(not my daughter) But one of her friends who would be the last girl anyone would ever think that of!
It IMO was a disgusting thing to say and I would have had her fired.

I went ot a private Catholic School 1st-8th grade. Well up until I was in 4th grade we had nuns fro teachers. I have few stories...

I was in 1st grade and I remember my teacher/nun was terribly mean and one day I was punished and put on the bean bag chair in the corner of the room and the teacher herself turned on a tape recorded to record me crying and upset....I don't remember why I was put there but I beleive it wasn't my fault or so I thought. Anyhow that week at confrences the teacher played the tape for my mom & dad and my dad flipped out I remember him saying how could you humilate a child like that in front of other students and the tape records can you not here she is terrible upset adn why does she keep asking you to talk to so and so? Did you talk to so and so? and the have the guts to play to me here at confrences why were we not contacted right away?!?!?! I am going to have to ask my mom again if she can remember the details...dad passed away when I was 11.

In 2nd grade the sister/nun tied me to my chair with a jump rope because I would not stay in my seat:crazy: ....now I know I wasn't an angel...but the funny thing was I got up and walked around with the chair tied to my butt...I showed her :woohoo:

In 8th grade no more nuns but we had a math teacher she was the meanist human I have ever met in my entire life, not only did she ridicule me in front of the class for being dumb, but she made derogetory comments about my mom being a single working mom....gee sorry my dad died...what my mom wasn't to support me......well there were a few of us girls who decided to be STUPID and bring **advertiser censored* beer to school not beers and this only happend on the once occassion...well the 6 of us drank during the lunch housr.....well this Math teacher was the one to catch us and she was ADMENT that we and most importanly *I* was going to be EXPELLED and not just suspened. I will never forget the principal when to bat for use at the school board meeting etc and and basically said we were all smart young woman who made a bad choice and expelling us would not teach us any thing etc. Well it got so political and nasty that they basically froced her to resign if she did not back us being expelled. I will never forget I saw her walking out the doors with he things in a bix and said I stand up for my students who I beleived have been wrong you girls are great kids who made stupid choice and I wil lnot let the rest of your lives be runined and she walked out the door. Guess who then became the new principal....the EVIL math teacher. I keep in contact with my old principal who stood up for us and she is truley a wonderful person. I am very thankful for what she did for us.

I have had similiar bad experiences with teachers. My son, who is by far the most sensitive of my three children, had the kindergarten teacher from h*ll. No matter how I tried, I could not get her to understand how important it was to me that she encourage him rather than criticize him. She told me that she did not believe in "babying" children. I moved him to another school for first grade and made sure the principal knew what kind of experience we had in Kindergarten. She made a point of putting him with a very kind, nurturing teacher. He blossomed, he came home sometime the first week and said to me, Guess what mom, I'm not dumb, I can learn a lot of new things! Broke my heart to think how he had been feeling about himself. He has gone on to do extremely well!

I am an early childhood special education professional, I KNOW how important it is to make school a good experience for young children. Seems like there are some people working with young children that should not be, just don't seem to have the right temperament. I am sorry to hear of the bad experiences you all have had. I urge you to share these experiences with your prinicipal, and if that does not bring you the results you want, go above to district personnel.

I hate hearing these teacher stories.
I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but a part of me thinks that if teachers were paid/respected more, these things wouldn't happen so much. Professional, smart, dedicated people work at jobs in which they are paid well and recognized for their work.

I think the trouble can go both ways. I know today some teachers are 'physically' assaulted as well.

But in the remembrance of the good old days... I had a teacher in 7th grade Sister T (Theresa) and she could hit you with that chalkboard eraser with her back turned. No way you were getting all that chalk off your uniform before you got home so mom and dad always knew you were in trouble that day!

I would like to add that we've had many more good teachers than horrible teachers! The good teachers never make it to the news!

Grrr, this all makes me very sad, and angry because we really have no way of knowing what type of teacher our children will have until they experience them for themselves.
I remember getting a "paddling" in 4th grade. My teacher had loaned her paddle to another teacher and didn't feel like going to get it so she "paddled" me with a metal ruler instead. All that for chewing bubble gum in class! That seemed like an excessive punishment in my opinion-but I do sometimes wish the teachers had more control over their students now a days.