Creative Writing Teacher Gets Canned

Well it says she resigned under pressure

But why in hell was she getting pressure for something someone else wrote?

In this article off of Raw Story it says

She said the district indicated she had not conducted her classroom in a professional manner...

Click to expand...

If that's accurate than the only thing I can figure is they weren't happy that she didn't control her students' expression.

Since when is Jesus a fairy tale?

Like. I could understand it if the writer had written the story to mock the other student, and then the teacher encouraged it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Idk. I don't feel knowledgeable enough to have much of an opinion on it.

Though I will say distributing medical marijuana to the sick sounds much different than just giving marijuana to the poor.

chompers said:

Since when is Jesus a fairy tale?

Click to expand...

To be fair, the article says 'fairy tale or legend'.

Mr Flibble said:

Well it says she resigned under pressure

But why in hell was she getting pressure for something someone else wrote?

Click to expand...

Good question. She did not have control over what her students turned in.

What sort of student would be offended by that? A dope-peddling Jesus sounds hilarious.

RightHoJeeves said:

What sort of student would be offended by that?

Click to expand...

I'd imagine that there'd be several. Religious people can get sort of cranky when you start using their icons in manners they don't agree with. See Muhammad, Depictions of.

Well it was not just turned in. It was during peer review. Does the teacher read things before they get peer reviewed? Do students have guidelines over what's acceptable and what's not acceptable? Then again I don't think a teacher could have predicted dope-peddling Jesus. If the teacher allows drug use to be mentioned in stories, and the teacher allows Jesus to be used in stories, then what's there to stop dope-peddling Jesus from existing?

Mr Flibble said:

Well it says she resigned under pressure

But why in hell was she getting pressure for something someone else wrote?

Click to expand...

My guess is she got pressure because a student didn't like the fact that she allowed the Jesus story to be shared? One article mentions this:

Guarascio said she felt targeted, harassed and forced to resign. She has one last message for her students.
“If they have something to say, say it,” Guarascio said. “Not everyone's going to agree with you. But that doesn't make your point invalid or worthless. Tell your story.”


So it sounds like she's all for the student sharing the story even if it might offend others.


...which, based on what I've read about the event, I'm all for. A dope-peddling Jesus? I want to read the hell out of that story.

If it was during a peer review, I would imagine that the teacher just started picking students at random the next day when the assignment was to be completed, to share out loud. I recall teachers often doing this, and especially if a student raised their hand because they were particularly proud of that story... Yeah.

Dope peddling Jesus. I'm not Christian, and that sounds right up my alley.

I think the wording "dope-peddling Jesus" is unfair to the writer. The description in the article sounded like a sincere retelling; describing it as a joke makes the offense seem justified.

Mr Flibble said:

Well it says she resigned under pressure

But why in hell was she getting pressure for something someone else wrote?

Click to expand...

I suppose the argument might be that she should have known that the story was inappropriate for K-12, and either told the student in question to rewrite it, or omitted it from the peer reviewing exercise. Someone could also say that she should have delineated acceptable story content more clearly.

But unless there's more to the story we're not getting (like if she handled the peer review process in way that was disrespectful to the students who were offended by the story, which was their right, of course), I really don't agree with what happened to her. The story sounds like normal adolescent irreverence, and even if she didn't handle it as well as she could have, it should just have been one of those "apologize, learn, and move on" sorts of things. But our society is still really conflicted over both drugs and religion, and of course, there sometimes is that one student, parent, or administrator with a vendetta. It's entirely possible the student who went after her wasn't religious at all.

I'm assuming this was either in "right to work" state, or she was teaching at a charter or private school. This is the kind of shit that happens in the absence of those teacher's unions everyone likes to lambaste these days.

Locke said:

I'd imagine that there'd be several. Religious people can get sort of cranky when you start using their icons in manners they don't agree with. See Muhammad, Depictions of.

Click to expand...

Though high school kids aren't exactly the age group most known for their piety in the US, since that's the age you rebel against everything your parents believe in. Though come to think of it, I did know a couple who became religious to tick their non-religious parents off.

I obviously come from the background of living in what is often said to be the world's most secular country (ETA: Sweden), but I'm baffled. WTF? In a democracy that values free speech (which the US supposedly is, as far as your constitution goes), people will make fun of stuff you believe in. It's their right, just as it's your right to believe whatever you want. School needs to prepare you for living in a pluralist world so good on those kids for being taught what that means. A school that teaches you that free speech is evil and that the world will adapt to your wishes if you just cry loud enough is not doing its job.

Should add that I am a believing Catholic and personally, I find the idea of a dope dealing Jesus far less offensive than when he's kidnapped for the purposes of oppression, intolerance and economic selfishness. That offends me.

RightHoJeeves said:

What sort of student would be offended by that? A dope-peddling Jesus sounds hilarious.

Click to expand...

An intelligent, would be my answer. I'd be extremely offended by it, but I can't quite figure out how it would be any of my business.

I suspect there's more to this story than is being told. There almost always is. In this case, a dope dealing anyone, whether Jesus, Snow White, or Martin Luther King, shown in a good light would probably get a teacher fired who approved the story.

Teachers generally do not get fired for what a student writes, but for how the teacher handles what a student writes.

Also in this case, none of us have read the story, and none of us know anything about the teacher, what she did or didn't do in response. Controversy is always better than truth.

Flicka said:

I obviously come from the background of living in what is often said to be the world's most secular country (ETA: Sweden), but I'm baffled. WTF? In a democracy that values free speech (which the US supposedly is, as far as your constitution goes), people will make fun of stuff you believe in. It's their right, just as it's your right to believe whatever you want. School needs to prepare you for living in a pluralist world so good on those kids for being taught what that means. A school that teaches you that free speech is evil and that the world will adapt to your wishes if you just cry loud enough is not doing its job.

Should add that I am a believing Catholic and personally, I find the idea of a dope dealing Jesus far less offensive than when he's kidnapped for the purposes of oppression, intolerance and economic selfishness. That offends me.

Click to expand...

Free speech is not, and cannot be, absolute. This is especially true in a school setting. No one, anywhere, is teaching that free speech is evil, but this does not mean anyone can say anything, at any time, without consequence. There are always consequences.

Freedom of speech only means you can say aloud what you choose to say - it does not mean freedom from being held responsible or accountable for what you choose to say.

Jamesaritchie said:

Free speech is not, and cannot be, absolute. This is especially true in a school setting. No one, anywhere, is teaching that free speech is evil, but this does not mean anyone can say anything, at any time, without consequence. There are always consequences.

Click to expand...

IMO, you reach a point of allowing consequences for expressing political, religious or other beliefs where a state can no longer credibly claim to uphold basic human rights and call itself a modern rechtsstaat. But not everyone thinks a modern rechtsstaat is a good idea. "No one, anywhere, is teaching that free speech is evil" is simply not true. Lots of people in lots of places do, because lots of people throughout the world are of the opinion that free speech is, indeed, evil.

YMMV, obviously. But if you travel too far down the slippery slope, you have exited the territory of "preserving basic human rights of expression" and entered oppression country. Exactly where that line is, and if crossing it is entirely bad, is something people will disagree on.

Jamesaritchie said:

Free speech is not, and cannot be, absolute. This is especially true in a school setting.

Click to expand...

Maybe, but marijuana Jesus is a pretty ridiculous place to draw the line.

Furthermore, students' freedom of speech is generally more protected than faculty's freedom of speech, and I don't think choosing not to censor a student's writing can credibly be considered speech by the teacher.

Jamesaritchie said:

I suspect there's more to this story than is being told. There almost always is. In this case, a dope dealing anyone, whether Jesus, Snow White, or Martin Luther King, shown in a good light would probably get a teacher fired who approved the story.

Teachers generally do not get fired for what a student writes, but for how the teacher handles what a student writes.

Also in this case, none of us have read the story, and none of us know anything about the teacher, what she did or didn't do in response. Controversy is always better than truth.

Click to expand...

I agree that there may well be a lot more to what happened than we know. There usually is. Also, sensitive topics require sensitive handling and to acknowledge that this too is part of writing ought to be an obvious part of her job.

But then, firing/pressuring to quit religious controversy is also very sensitive and an employer needs to be aware of that too.

Jamesaritchie said:

Free speech is not, and cannot be, absolute. This is especially true in a school setting. No one, anywhere, is teaching that free speech is evil, but this does not mean anyone can say anything, at any time, without consequence. There are always consequences.

Click to expand...

This wasn't someone (In this case the teacher.) writing a story where they killed the President, or killed other students of another religious or ethnic group, or other LGBT students. This was a parody about a dope slinging Jesus, written as a homework assignment. Certainly offensive to very religious Christian and Muslim students, but in no way a threat to anyone. If anything, it is certainly no reason to fire the teacher instead of giving the student detention. The teacher didn't force said student to write that exact story, they simply gave an assignment which the student then completed.

So in all your talk about how free speech cannot be absolute, you ignore that this is for all appearences the teacher getting punished for their student's right to free speech. That is intolerable. That is not free speech or freedom period.