Lesson Learned

A teacher at Fruitvale Jr. High has been put on paid administrative leave for poking his students with a push pin. The creative first year teacher was delivering a lesson on poetry. According to the article in the paper, parents were “outraged” and angrily “stormed the school.”

I’m not sure I’d be pleased to learn my son’s teacher ran around jabbing his students with a push pin. After all, there are diseases that can be spread. Duh. And I’m also not really sure how stabbing kids teaches them poetry. I do give him credit for trying something new. Nonetheless, a mob of angry parents storming the school seems like a bit of an overreaction to me. I keep thinking of that old salsa commerical and imagining one of them looking crossways that the others while saying “Po-e-tree! Somebody git a rope.”

I remember all of us sticking tiny needles in our thumbs in Biology. Do they not do that stuff anymore? I think I heard a lot of schools cut out the dissection portion of the curriculum. If so, that’s a shame. Trust me, I was not thrilled about trying to cut open that rubbery, stiff, smelly, little piglet. But there is something to be gained by the experience.

I think the thing I learned most is that we’re all in the same boat. Sometimes things get rough, but all you have to do is hang in there and before you know it you’ll be looking back fondly on the experience you never thought you’d live through.