Bad Words Lead to Teacher Suspension and Lawsuit

A Staten Island middle school teacher was suspended after eighth graders used vulgar words during a state-mandated lesson on behaviors that can transmit H.I.V./AIDS. The 26-year veteran teacher with an unblemished record wrote polite words for sexual organs, sexual acts and bodily fluids on the board in the classroom. She then asked students to supply terms they knew for those same things. Students provided bad words, took them home, shocked their parents, and caused the principal to suspend the teacher.

After spending over a year in the school system’s “rubber room” with full pay (for an explanation of the rubber room, check out the New Yorker), the teacher was reinstated. She’s sued the city, and a judge recently ruled that her suit can proceed, relying on the syllabus for the mandated class: “If students use different terms, make sure they understand the relationship between both sets of terms.”

A city attorney says the language the students were allowed to ”use in the classroom reflects extremely poor judgement by the teacher and is plainly not consistent with community values.” The community values of New York City? Staten Island may consider itself to be a cut above the other boroughs of New York City. Staten Island did try to secede from New York in the early 1990′s. Maybe another secession attempt is in the offing.

On the other hand, if the teacher recovers the $1 million she’s seeking, Staten Island may be forced out of New York City.  Maybe the recovery can be funded by the profits of The Real Housewives of New York City, another indicator of community values. Or perhaps the teacher in this case should have followed Benjamin Franklin’s advice: “Teach a child to hold his tongue, he’ll learn fast enough to speak.”

One employment lesson: An employee with 26 years of stellar performance isn’t immune from discipline or termination – but deserves the benefit of the doubt.