This young student at a Madison, Wis. school drew Gov. Scott Walker behind bars.
This student drew Gov. Scott Walker behind bars and, says the student’s teacher, the governor being fitted with an orange jumpsuit.
Posted on 09/21/2013 2:10:19 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
MADISON — Some kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders in Madison public schools are apparently preparing for futures in either political cartooning or time on a psychiatrist’s couch.
Kati Walsh, an elementary art teacher at the Madison Metropolitan School District in July posted some of her students’ drawings of Gov. Scott Walker in jail. Walsh suggests her young Rembrandts’ ideas for their sketches popped up out of thin air.
“One student said something to the effect of ‘Scott Walker wants to close all the public schools’… So the rest of the class started drawing their own cartoons and they turned very political. They have very strong feelings about Scott Walker,” the teacher wrote on her blog.
“The cartoons started getting a little inappropriate so at this point, we stopped drawing and discussed what a political cartoon was,” she wrote.
If the drawings weren’t appropriate, why did the art teacher publish them on her blog? It turns out these weren’t the inappropriate drawings.
“I did not publish the inappropriate cartoons that depicted any harm coming to Walker,” Walsh told Wisconsin Reporter in an email. “I made them throw them away and we talked about how when you disagree with someone, it’s OK to disagree with them respectfully.”
Walsh said she published the drawings because she thought it was “an amazing teaching moment.”
She said she initially thought the picture of what appeared to be orange engulfing Walker’s head represented the governor set on fire, but after talking to the student, the art teacher said she learned the orange was supposed to depict a prison jumpsuit.
Walsh said she talked with parents about the drawings and how the class of 5-, 6- and 7 year-olds came to draw political cartoons in the classroom that day. She says the parents were excited and supportive.
Walsh has been politically active since Wisconsin’s controversial public-sector collective bargaining reforms, known as Act 10, were unveiled in 2011, according to a Wisconsin State Journal article. She signed the recall petition in the 2012 campaign against Walker, gathered signatures for the recall and participated in the strikes at the state Capitol and in Chicago — a show of solidarity with the striking Chicago Teachers Union.
Walsh also spoke out against the failed Madison Preparatory Academy charter school proposal to close the educational achievement gap in Madison. That effort failed to pass the Madison school board in late 2011 after a teachers’ union campaign to kill it.
“Children are much smarter then you give them credit for,” she told Wisconsin Reporter. “These children who are now growing up having protested at the Capitol with their parents and are going to union meetings and political meetings with their parents. They are listening and they have their own strong opinions about what is going on in our state right now.”
The art teacher in her blog insists she didn’t tell her kindergarten and first-grade students to draw cartoons depicting Walker in jail. She explains on her blog.
Walsh wrote:
“*Disclaimer: For those of you who don’t know me very well, I just want to make it clear that I did not talk about MY personal opinion of Scott Walker with these kids. I made it clear that it is important for everyone to feel comfortable expressing their own opinions through art. I did clearly state that I love our public schools and think it’s important for them to have a good public education. This should not be a controversial statement.”
“Many of the kids also have permission from their parents to chat with me about political things after my contract time,” she told Wisconsin Reporter. “Sometimes kids just start talking about stuff with me and I tell them that if they want to have a conversation with me about politics, they need to get permission from their parents and it needs to be after my contract time.”
It shows. Several of her tweets are images of teacher evaluations where her students wrote in the comments section “Walker sucks!”
Walsh asked that Wisconsin Reporter’s story not be used for publication. “You do not have permission to publish anything about me, my classroom or my blog before I see it first,” she wrote, apparently not grasping the concept of a free press. By the way, it is Wisconsin Reporter’s policy not to show sources stories before publication.
This young student at a Madison, Wis. school drew Gov. Scott Walker behind bars.
This student drew Gov. Scott Walker behind bars and, says the student’s teacher, the governor being fitted with an orange jumpsuit.
This passes for education in Madison, I guess. I call it indoctrination.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest jping list.
The parents probably agree with the teacher. Note that she says that the parents AND the kids are veterans of the Capital protests last year. Raising them to be good little Marxists.
Meh. It's Madison. It's not like any potentially future conservative, libertarian, or independent thinking kids are being converted. She's crapping in her own cesspool.
Trust me, the PARENTS of these kids go ALONG with this chit here in, ‘The People’s Republik of Madiston.’
> If I were the parents of one of those young school children, I’d be at the next School Board meeting demanding this teacher be FIRED.
Same here. Time to put a stop to the ideological indoctrination of our children. They should be in school to learn, not be programmed to obey tyrants without question.
Guess what the response from the Democrats would be if the cartoons insulted Obama?
She’ll just get a slap on the hand in public and a high five in private by the liberal public education establishment there in Wisconsin.
I'll just bet she did. It is a pattern on the left to throw firebombs from behind the protection of "education".
She won’t even get the slap.
it would be very predictable
They are children with sponges for brains who regurgitate what they hear at home and at school. If children actually had strong, independent opinions then teachers like this would have all either been fired or had nervous breakdowns by now.
They are listening to what? Their teachers one sided propaganda in the classroom
that’s on fire, not an orange jumpsuit ‘fitting’
she’s a bitchy sick commie madison liberal nutjob teacher expoliting her class of kids. and lying abouthow the drawing came to be.
like all tyrants liberals hide behind children.
Didn’t consciously influence the little tykes? How much does anyone want to bet the demented b&tch did quite a bit to influence them?
Hmm . . . now where have we seen this sort of thing before?
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