Listen, I’ll confess that I’m a bit biased where teachers are concerned because I get to go home to one every day. I’ve seen how much hard work goes into it, how many hours are spent on lesson plans, marking, field trips, and so on. Calling a teacher a glorified babysitter is sure to start a fight.
And that doesn’t even get into all the stuff surrounding teaching that you don’t expect to encounter: The politics and the diplomacy with other teachers, administrators, and parents. It’s not even remotely easy.
But one of the things that complicates everything is just that the stakes are so high. We’re all setting kids up for the future as best we can, but we can’t always agree on what’s the best way. For one teacher, that disagreement seems to have cost her her job.
Diane Tirado hadn’t even been in her most recent teaching position for a whole semester before she found herself at odds with the administration.
She had 17 years of experience, but was just a quarter of the way into her first year teaching eighth-grade history at West Gate K-8 School when things came to head, seemingly over a grading policy.
One day, out of the blue, she left this note on the board for her students. She had been fired.
The reason? She claims it was because she refused to give 50% marks for work that wasn’t handed in.
She felt that deserved a zero. However, she says the school had a “no zero” policy that just didn’t sit right with her.
The big trouble started over an assignment she gave her class two weeks to complete.
Obviously, not all the assignments were turned in on time. For those not turned in, Diane gave them a “star” as a placeholder in case they turned their work in late.
As she told Newsweek, “Every teacher does it. We don’t want kids to fail. We want kids to succeed.”
But when the time came to put in the grades officially, the school wanted her to give those kids 50%, even though they hadn’t turned anything in for her to grade.
And according to the school’s parent handbook , although an incomplete assignment should result in a grade of zero, the lowest possible grade is 50%.
Diane didn’t clearly didn’t agree with that policy, and took it up with her union and with the assistant principles.
That clearly didn’t go well for her, but she maintains that kids in her classes will earn their grades.
“If we are creating people of entitlement to the point where they’re expecting something for nothing what kind of world do you have?” she said to Newsweek. “Why should they work hard when they know they’re going to pass? A kid looks me in the eye and says, ‘I don’t have to do anything and you have to give me a 50.'”
According to Diane, those kids were backed up by their parents, who complained about heavy work loads.
“I got called down to the principal’s office because parents were not happy with me,” she told the NY Post. “It was ruining my life for weeks.”
Now, the school didn’t even have to give an official reason for Diane’s release.
She had only been on staff for two months, so she was still in her probationary period.
Nevertheless, they told Newsweek that grades had nothing to do with it, saying that “her performance was deemed substandard and her interactions with students, staff and parents lacked professionalism and created a toxic culture on the school’s campus.”
And the St. Lucie Public Schools District, in which West Gate K-8 is located, rejected the idea of a “no zero” policy.
They said that the zero applies to work that hadn’t even been attempted, despite that chart with the big red letters saying “NO ZERO’s (sic).”
So, here’s the question: Was Diane right to push to give her students zeroes, or should she have followed the administration’s guidance? Because teachers do have to set an example and follow rules too!
h/t: Newsweek