A few weeks ago a local middle school science teacher was fired.  A recurring story on the local news since that happened has been the ongoing war being waged by students, teachers and even some teachers from the district trying to get that teacher re-hired.  I've never met the teacher who was fired but I do know his father, not that this has anything to do with it.  All I can say is that I heard even back when I was in high school that students raved about how much fun this teacher was and how great of a teacher he was.

Apparently, this teacher was fired for laughing and making a comment about his lack of drawing skills when the students in his class thought his drawing looked like a phallic image.  Apparently there was also a few other similar instances where he either laughed with or failed to punish students for laughing at rude or sexual comments that students made.  Frankly, if that is all it takes to get a teacher fired then we may as well fire all the teachers that any students like.  Actually, we can even fire some teachers that students don't like.  We can start by eliminating all the science teachers at the middle school and high school I attended followed by 60-70% of the math and social studies teachers at those schools and I'll also name a bunch of PE and English and art teachers to eliminate.  The simple fact is that the best middle and high school teachers tend to be the ones who are in touch with their juvenile side.

Thus, those reasons for his firing just didn't really make sense.  Then I learned that parents and students believe that he was fired as part of the ongoing conflict between the administration at that middle school and... pretty much everyone else.  That got me thinking about the situation and I realized that I needed to do a little research.  See, last I'd heard the principal at the school in question was a lady that had been the assistant principal at the middle school I attended.  I thought if she were still principal then we had a pretty good explanation of why there was conflict.  Upon researching I learned that last year was that lady's last year in that job and that she'd been replaced by a lady who was one of the assistant principals at the high school I attended when I was there.  All of a sudden the whole situation made even more sense.  The simple fact is that in my middle school and high school careers I never once met a teacher, student, or parent who liked either lady.  They are both mean-spirited people who always seemed to be on the lookout for opportunities to pick fights and wreak havoc.  Actually, it was sport among students at both schools to create derogatory jokes regarding the two women and one of the quickest ways to improve your standing in the pecking order at school was to create a really good new joke.  Actually, there was a beloved teacher who quit from my high school right before my freshman year because he claimed that the now principal of the middle school made the school a "hostile work environment."