From CTV Edmonton

Edmonton teacher suspended for handing out zeros

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CTV Edmonton: Does no-zero policy coddle kids? Veronica Jubinville reports on an Edmonton, Alta. teacher who was suspended after giving students a grade of 0. Some say the policy is fair, but others are worried kids won’t learn if they can’t fail. CTV Edmonton Morning Live: Career likely done An Edmonton teacher who was suspended for the remainder of the school year for handing out zeros feels he will likely be terminated permanently come next September. CTV’s Laura Tupper reports. CTV Edmonton: Teacher shares his side of story An Edmonton teacher is speaking out after he was suspended from a local high school, reportedly because he gave his students zeroes.

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Physics teacher Lynden Dorval spoke with CTV News on Thursday, May 31.

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CTVNews.ca Staff

Date: Fri. Jun. 1 2012 9:07 PM ET

An Edmonton high school teacher said he’s been suspended for handing out zeros to students who didn’t complete their work, bucking a “no-zero” policy at the school.

Lynden Dorval said he doesn’t agree with the school’s behavioural code that bans awarding a grade of zero for incomplete work.

Instead, the policy introduced at Ross Sheppard High School almost two years ago treats unfinished work as a behavioural problem and not an academic one.

“So of course the student’s marks are only based on the work they have actually done,” Dorval told CTV Edmonton Thursday.

“It’s just like in real life, there are always consequences for not doing things,” the 35-year veteran teacher said.

Dorval’s marking system didn’t sit well with the school’s principal Ron Bradley, who sent a letter to the Edmonton Public School Board asking for a replacement teacher.

The letter cites three incidents where Dorval reportedly went against the policy, dating back to 2011.

It also outlines a meeting where Bradley told Dorval to remove the zeros and replace them with the school-sanctioned codes.

The school board wouldn’t confirm the reasons for Dorval’s suspension. It did state it was a staff discipline issue.

However, Schmidt said teachers are expected to follow assessment plans.

“When an assessment plan has been put in place at a school level, it’s my expectation that every staff member will stick to that plan,” he told CTV Edmonton.

Dorval told CTV the zeros he gave to students weren’t permanent, saying it’s important for students to learn about the “real world.”

“The students know that in my case they’re not permanent zeroes, it’s just an indicator that they have to do something about it because this is how their mark is going to turn out if they don’t,” he said.

Dorval’s suspension has prompted a wave of reaction from parents who are calling into radio stations, penning opinion columns, as well as calling the school, the board and the Education Department.

Many have dubbed Dorval the “Hero of Zero” who has stood up to those who allow children to get away with not doing their work.

“We’re hearing from parents. They’re seeing this in a very over-simplified kind of way,” Schmidt said.

“What we’re trying to explain is that students can fail courses if they don’t do the work. Kids are not given the opportunity to game the system.”

Meanwhile, students are somewhat perplexed by Dorval’s suspension.

“If the student didn’t do their work, why should they get any mark at all, so a zero sounds fine to me,” Dimitri Muzychenko told CTV Edmonton.

Another student, Mohamad Al-Jabiri, thought the punishment was too harsh.

“What is he supposed to do? Like he’s not going to run after the kids, it’s high school, right?” he said.

While Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson is keeping an eye on the situation, he does not plan to get involved, according to his spokeswoman, Kim Capstick.

“We don’t have a policy on grading. Albertans elect school boards for this,” said Capstick.

Dorval plans to appeal his suspension on the grounds that the principal went beyond his authority. The teacher also hopes to ignite a discussion on caring versus coddling.

With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Veronica Jubinville and files from The Canadian Press

Read more:http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120601/teacher-suspended-marking-zeroes-120601/#ixzz1wvfJvauT

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The Academics Weigh in on Abuse of Teachers by Falsely Accusing Them

This article from CBC covers some important points, but the most important one is the first – there are no statistics.  One of the reasons is that every accusation is hush hush.  Even when cleared, a teacher is supposed to return to the classroom, grateful and silent.

False abuse accusations against teachers ‘on the rise’

By Mark Gollom, CBC News

Posted: Apr 24, 2012 5:05 AM ET

Last Updated: Apr 24, 2012 5:00 AM ET

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The number of false abuse allegations being made against teachers by students is difficult to determine as there is no central database or available statistics about the issue. (istock)

Falsely accused teacher2:52

Abuse of Teachers7:10

False Allegations of Abuse6:30

Teachers across Canada are having their reputations ruined as increasing numbers get falsely accused of abusing their students, or acting inappropriately with them, experts say.

“We are getting more and more ‘teacher-talk’ evidence and teacher narratives that clearly indicate that false accusations are on the rise,” Jon Bradley, associate professor of education at McGill University, told CBCNews via email.

“Active parents are making things, in some cases, very difficult,” he said.

University of Ottawa faculty of education professor Joel Westheimer told CBC’s Ottawa Morning that incidents of false allegations used to be fairly rare in both Canada and the United States.

“In recent years they’ve been growing dramatically,” he said. “More and more teachers are being accused of often frivolous [things].”

Westheimer slammed school administrators for being “spineless” for automatically ordering investigations regardless of how credible the allegation of abuse may be.

“In the short term you prevent lawsuits, and in the long term you prevent people from entering the teaching profession.”

The issue is making waves following the case of an Ontario substitute teacher who was accused of abuse after telling a grade 5 student not to throw out his banana.The Children’s Aid Society recently concluded the abuse allegation was unfounded.

‘Parents too quick to point fingers’

In an article published last year for the Canadian Education Association website entitled, False Accusations: A Growing Fear in the Classroom, Bradley wrote that some lies are being told about teachers by students who, “find support in parents and friends who are far too quick to point fingers.”

McGill University education professor Jon Bradley has studied false accusations against teachers. He writes that students who make such allegations, ‘find support in parents and friends who are too quick to point fingers.’ (CBC)Local teachers unions and other educational authorities are “struggling to identify such incidents,” he wrote. But at the same time, he wrote, they appear “ill-equipped to develop realistic procedures and plans that safeguard due process and the reputations of those falsely accused.”

The number of false allegations being made against teachers is difficult to determine as there is no central database or available statistics about the issue.

But in a study conducted at Nipissing University, entitled “A Report on the Professional Journey of Male Primary-Junior teachers in Ontario,” nearly 13 per cent of male educators said they had been falsely accused. The study had 223 respondents across Ontario.

“I think it’s pretty prevalent,” said Professor Douglas Gosse, one of the authors of the study.

“There’s a general belief among many teachers that the pendulum has swung too far,” he said, adding that male teachers in particular seem to be targeted more.”

“We all want to protect our children but I liken it to racial profiling. I think we have to be very careful that we don’t have these prejudices because of the person’s gender and at the same time we definitely have to take any accusation quite seriously. But some of them are unfounded.”

Gosse said it’s problematic that records about false abuse allegations aren’t being kept.

“I think that information should be documented and I suspect that the number of cases that are simply dismissed are huge. I can’t say if it’s a majority or not but I know that many, many of these incidents are dismissed because of lack of evidence.”

Teachers are often devastated by these allegations, which can drag out for many months, he said.

“The men that we interviewed were under extreme psychological stress. It affected their family, their wives, their children. Even when it was resolved, it still had long-lasting psychological damage.”

Accused teacher committed suicide

In his article, Bradley wrote that in one particular case, a teacher accused of physical assault committed suicide, even though he was cleared of the charges and the student recanted.

“While it may never be proven, his family (and many colleagues) share the view that [he] sought this drastic release because he could not bear the stain of a false accusation and the thought that his whole career was on the line,” Bradley wrote.

It’s also difficult to determine how many teachers leave the profession because they’ve been falsely accused, he added.

Bradley said children must be protected and teachers who would abuse students must be expelled from the school system. But there must also be mechanisms that protect the rights of innocent teachers, he said.

And little is done to hold students accountable for making up stories, Bradley added.

“In case after case, parents leap to the defence of apparently ‘abused’ children and, when the dust has settled, offer no compensation to the aggrieved teacher,” Bradley wrote. “This skewed arrangement puts more emphasis on unsupported adolescent narratives than on verifiable facts.”

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Follow Up to Falsely Accused Teacher

Some comments of my own on the next CBC article:  A few years ago I went hunting for scholarly articles on abuse of teachers and false accusations.  I found nothing.  Virtually everything was about children.  Male teachers are certainly at risk and one article I found stated that women over forty are at risk.  It didn’t speculate about why.

My own speculations?  Women over 40 are more vulnerable. They may need the job due to divorce or vested interest in the pension plan as a single person or due to starting their career teaching late or having interrupted it for family.  Yes, men need theirs, too, but at 40 a woman teacher often has a lot further to go before she reaches her 85 factor (that’s the sum of her age plus years of service) and even then she gets less.

A teacher with uninterrupted years of service from the age of 25, can retire at the age of 55.   He won’t have the maximum pension possible, but it will be respectable.  Should he choose to go on to the age of 6o i.e. 35 years of service in this scenario, he will retire with the maximum pension possible.  That is only if he starts teaching at 25 and is uninterrupted until age 55 or 60.

How is the pension calculated?  It is 2%  of the average of the 5 best years of salary per year of service up to 70% of salary.  This hypothetical teacher who started young can retire with either 60% or 70% of salary depending on when he opts to retire.

Now let us look at the woman of 40.  Let us assume she delayed entering teaching until she was 35, ten years older than the other teacher.  She will be 60 when she reaches her 85 factor but she will only receive 25 x 2 = 50% of salary as pension.  Should she hang in there until 65, she will have reacher her 95 factor. but she will only receive 60% of salary as pension.

In many cases a woman teacher is in her second career and cannot afford to quit teaching unless she has worked out a good fall back position for retirement.  Women know how close they are to an impoverished old age.

Women over forty are less attractive.  It shouldn’t matter.  It does.  As a (male) friend of mine put it, watching a twenty something preen as her looks got her to the front of the line at a club and a drink that someone else paid for: “Enjoy it, sweetheart, because in twenty years you will be invisible”.   A female teacher over 40 better have several arrows to her bow or she had better be out running to stay in shape and to run in the cancer races with the board supervisors.  It’s a good idea ladies, to die your hair blonde, wear some snug leather skirts or jackets and occasionally show a little cleavage.  Look around at women who are now becoming vice principals or principals.  There are a few invisible women but most of them are only seen without makeup when it melts off their faces at the end of a race.

So women over 40 lose part of their value just by virtue of their age.  For some they are valued less because they are women.  Sure their education,  hard work and character are valued (by some) but for some people, they are valued less because they are teachers.  There are a number of reasons why teachers are automatically devalued.

People with the same education and years in as teachers figure that if the teachers were worth anything, they would be doing a job that pays more.  People with less education may resent authority figures.  And for some people the simple act of telling someone to do something is seen as bullying.  A woman asking their son to do something is even worse.  This is anecdotal, but my observations have been that mothers (and fathers) are most likely to come to the defence of their sons.

Most people underestimate the education, experience and skill it takes to run a classroom.  Because the 30 people in the room are children, it can’t be that difficult.  It’s really babysitting and that is … women’s work.  Many parents think they know better; I have had one lout, a director general, tell me in front of his son that the book he had chosen from the ones I had offered for study was boring,  The DG had found a book intended for a thirteen year old boring.  This man also presumed to tell me how to run my classroom.

Woman teaching geometry, from Euclid's Elements. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Why Do Students Want to Take Down Teachers

Teachers (Photo credit: iwannt)

In a recent post, I quoted words used in a search that ended up at my blog.  I listed eight incidents of which I had direct knowledge. In each one a teacher had been the target of an attempt to take him or her down.

The first question is why.  As you probably surmised from the list, most these students want to get back at the teacher.  Usually the student didn’t get the mark desired, sometimes the student was disciplined for misbehaving and sometimes there was a personality clash.  Occasionally a student was mentally ill but usually there is an element of revenge when students set out to take down a teacher.

The second reason is because she can.   Without believing she can take down a teacher, a student’s thoughts of revenge remain a daydream, a bitching session with a friend or some complaining over supper.  Thoughts of revenge dwindle over time and the student may come to terms with the source of annoyance.

When revenge is not a reasonable option, a student has an opportunity to learn better ways to deal with perceived unfairness. Perhaps she may acknowledge to herself that the mark or the discipline were earned even if the student thought they were a little excessive.  Perhaps she may talk to the teacher about what is bothering her.  Perhaps she may enlist her parents’ help in talking to the teacher.

However, in England, the USA and Canada, there are many cases that demonstrate students can take down teacher or at the very least, make their lives hell.  And they can do it with relative ease.  How do they have that power?  Why are children able to cause such havoc in the lives of hard working, caring, decent adults?

Initially students are believed when they make a charge of sexual assault or a vague form of harassment.  This is a hangover from the days when the standard belief was that children don’t lie.  This standard was a reaction to a long period when adults refused to believe children who claimed that apparently respectable adults were molesting them.

That refusal was understandable.  Even Freud, who had at first believed women when they described early traumas of molestation and incest, was persuaded by colleagues that the women must be making it up.

^{1. There is some controversy as to whether Freud did indeed change his mind.  Chief proponent of it seems to be J. M. Masson in his 1984 book, The Assault on Truth.  Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory.}

We now realise that if a child can lie about taking a chocolate bar or other things, she can lie about more serious things.  Most children have been brought up to understand how wrong it is to lie and very wrong to lie about serious things. Unfortunately, some children tell the truth, some exaggerate and some do lie.  And some lie deliberately to hurt other people.

Because of the climate of believing children on the subject of abuse, teachers and others are often perceived as guilty until proven innocent.  Whatever happens in the courts, in the disciplinary hearings run by their employers it becomes clear that the burden of proof is on the adult to prove herself not guilty.

All of this makes teachers an easy target.  At the very least they will suffer the pain of being removed from the class while the accusation is investigated.  What more they will suffer, I can only leave to your imagination.

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