Posted on 08/25/2011 5:56:46 AM PDT by Puppage
A New Jersey first grade teacher who wrote that she was a "warden for future criminals" on Facebook says she was speaking "out of frustration to their behavior."
Jennifer O'Brien defended herself Wednesday at an administration hearing that will determine whether the tenured Paterson teacher should lose her job.
O'Brien told an administrative law judge she wrote the post in exasperation because six or seven unruly first-graders kept disrupting her lessons. She said one boy had recently hit her.
The teacher posted her remark to 333 friends on March 28. However, it was forwarded and led critics to call her comment racist.
O'Brien's lawyer, Nancy Oxfeld, told The Record newspaper the post was a mistake but not racist.
A decision on whether she'll keep her job is expected in November.
With the ignorance among teachers, the unions to protect only teachers pay and benefits, and lack of parental attention to what their childrean are really learning in school, I have no doubt we are raising a criminal class. "Dead Ted" Kennedy, ignorant Bush, and anti-American Obama have sealed the fate of the US.
Nobody would have known that the miserable little thugs were black if they didn’t claim racism. Now everybody knows.
Huck, you made me laugh! Yes, we are even—thanks!
Another school board needs an education in free speech and 1st amendment rights. She needs to talk with Jerry Buell, who will be back in his classroom today after the Lake County Fla. school board was forced to re-instate him this week.
On the other hand, firing will free her to find a job in a more promising school district, hopefully.
:-) My mom hassled me constantly on grammar, but alas, even she couldn’t cure me of bad spelling!
These days, there are things I will not say to anybody but my father - alone with him in a car, with the windows rolled up. Or I will share it with God in the privacy of my silent prayers. But I won’t say them where they can be heard by anyone else.
Posting on Facebook should ALWAYS be uncontroversial. I won’t link to job news or opinions, political items, guns, etc. Cute cat videos are okay. News on interesting science (like that anti-viral medicine breakthrough) are good.
How does it compare to Camden? I always thought Camden was the absolute WORST city in NJ, if not the country...
They say the truth will set you free, I guess it set this woman free from a job.
Hello,FRiend!
Camden was never as big, or as powerful as Paterson was.
Camden flourished in the shadow of Philadelphia, across the Delaware River.
Paterson was a manufacturing behemoth—in its day it had manufacturing, business, a thriving downtown with big stores, it had the courthouse(still does), it had beautiful residential areas, working areas, etc.
It has fallen farther than Camden only because of the loss of a greater glorry, in my opinion.
Up on Garret Mountain (folks out West would laugh at NJ calls a “mountain”) you can overlook Paterson in its glory.
It is just a shell of itself, and just a place to drive through—quickly—not stop at.
Paterson was the birthplace of Colt,Rogers locomotives, where Holland invented the modern sub, etc. An economic powerhouse in its day.
Corruption, white flight, welfare, and minorities have combined to create a modern Democrat accomplishment—a failed urban city dependent upon government largesses and almost unruleable.
Fifty years ago, you would say you were from Paterson with pride.
Now, you would never admit it.
I lived next door in Clifton and watched it all happen.
Remember Joe Clark, the baseball wielding tough love principal? Well that was Paterson—Eastside High School—over 20 years ago.
You’d need a SWAT team now to walk those halls.
The poor teacher in this article is seeing the youts at 5-6 years old. I can only imagine the degree these kids have been unsocialized to.
Hell, I wonder how she can even pronounce their names.
Someone should start a private school and hire all of these teachers that are frustrated because they want to teach in an environment where parenting is taken seriously.
Whta's BOTH sad and scary is that many of these kids, in 10 years or so, will be having kids of their own...and another generation is condemned to failure..and absolute poverty
As did mine.
As much as I hated it growing up, I am most certainly happy that she did. Especially when I hear people speak in the business world, made up words & all.
My sister teaches in the DC - Baltimore area. She’s taught mainly middle schoolers in a wide variety of schools. Her combat stories are downright scary. She should have received several Purple Hearts from the union by now.
yah me no wat ur r talkn bout.
“The only way the comment could be deemed racist is if she made reference to the racial composition of her classroom.”
Perhaps statistics might show that the set, “criminals” and the set, “Blacks” overlap extensively enough in society today, especially parts of New Jersey, that the two sets can be legitimately equated, hence supporting this as a racial statement.
Yah? Wel, you don’t no no good inglish.
She was SO wrong.
many of those first graders are CURRENT criminals.
Thanks mom, for drilling me with stuff like "you lay something down and it lies there."
Patterson vs Camden. That’s a tough call, which tells you all you need to know. I’d guess Camden is worse, just because it’s basically an extension of the Philly sewer. But Camden, Patterson, Newark, and Elizabeth are all world-class crapholes. Trenton, too. Basically all our larger cities.
The greatest heroism is at times just speaking the truth.
Hooray for Paterson New Jersey First Grade Teacher Jennifer O’Brien, hero!
I’ve subbed in urban NJ schools and know exactly what she is talking about. The school administration is likely unable to give her any sort of way besides magic to deal with a few very troubled kids, and yet two of them in any classroom is enough to ruin the educational experience — the classroom order and quiet needed to learn — for the whole class for a regular teacher.
The troubled kids are likely from broken homes, have emotionally immature or unstable single moms with floating boyfriends, and are abused.
To handle such kids you need to take them out of a regular classroom and put them in a much more ordered and strict class with two or three firm and extraordinarily mature and patient teachers and aides until the ferals learn adequate proper social deportment.
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