During my time going to school in New York City, I saw a lot of things. However, I never once saw a teacher
pull a kid to the front of the
class so the other students could berate him. I also never had a substitute teacher show up drunk.
In Richardson Texas, Thomas Brownlee arrived at school with liquor on his breath and, one assumes, sadness in his heart. Another teacher figured out what was happening and the drunken doof was removed from the class. Apparently, he was "
too intoxicated to complete a sobriety test." In my opinion, if you're too drunk to take the test, that should mean you fail. Sort of like the SATs.
Once you get past "wow, that's really terrible" and move on to "that would make a great SNL skit" ("1+1 ain't 2! It's misery! You try being married to that woman!" etc.), it makes me wonder how many times this sort of thing has happened. In fourth grade, I remember our regular teacher, not a sub, had a nervous breakdown of some kind right in front of us. We were on our way to a field trip, and a substitute teacher was on his way to take over the class. "You don't realize what I do for you!" she screamed. It was fairly frightening while it was happening, but once she left, we actually all thought it was pretty funny. No one, as far as I know, was scarred for life; in fact, I think we were over it by lunch. I'm not excusing her behavior, which in retrospect was amazing and not in a good way. And showing up drunk to teach is a bad thing. I'm just saying that kids are resilient. Hopefully the school fires the inebriated educator and doesn't make a big deal out of it to the students.
image: Hoboken411.com
Note: this is not a photo of the teacher. Not as far as I know, anyway.
