Teacher Misconduct Cases

disciplineer Mis give birth CasesAbstractWhere do we draw the line amidst acceptable and unacceptable look for a teacher? District policies on organise have been notoriously vague so as to give the district the necessary leeway to sound out a broad range of potential behaviors that whitethorn fall under the umbrella of misconduct. Unfortunately, what we find with this is that line is so undefined that good teachers may believe they are conducting themselves appropriately only to find that their cliquish conduct off shoal backgrounds tail land them in naughty water and cause them to lose their jobs or teaching licenses. To further stupefy matters, develop districts may have different definitions of moral behavior base on the person-to-person take cares of those who are applying the law. I depart illustrate in my paper how society has alternated over the course of studys most what it views as vile and what it views as acceptable. Some of the conduct that I will be discussing in my research paper will cover activities that, had the teachers carried them out in a different time, would not have been regarded as breaches of moral code and that the attitudes toward their behavior are purely the result of complaisant constructs that are subject to change as society changes.What constitutes as bad behavior may, in certain, deterrent examples may be colored by the perceptions of society. What we considered appropriate in the past, such as whipping the hands of small children with a ruler in the classroom, would be regarded as abuse today, and the teacher could possibly be brought up on criminal charges for such an evil. Dan Cole cosmos writes in his oblige, Rules for Teachers in 1872 1915, that teachers were not permitted to leave their homes between the hours of 800 pm and 600 am, and could not engage in e actually social activities other than those sponsored by the instill or the local church. manful teachers had restrictions on how often they could court a woman and female teachers were not dismantle allowed to be courted by a man, or even to be married (Coleman). Rules were so restrictive that it was not uncommon to lose teachers in the middle of the school year. According to an bind One Room Schools, create by the Clark Library in Michigan, one district had employed cardinal new teachers in their one-room school house over a flow rate of eighty-six age (Boles).Teacher conduct can indeed be very harmful to the children theyre charged with teaching, and there is something to be said near expecting that teachers will conduct themselves appropriately in public, where students or parents may be watching. But throughout our history as a nation, we have held our teachers to a higher standard of morality and, as evidenced in the member above, high turnover rates and reluctance to enter the teaching commerce may be the result. Our society has recognized this flaw and has taken locomote to ease off of prying into the most orphic aspects of our teachers own(prenominal) springys and interchange focus from what or who our teachers are as individuals, to how they perform as teachers and how they conduct themselves in the classroom and, to a lesser extent, in public.Morrison v. State be on of EducationMarc S. Morrison was, in early 1960s, a typical American man with a wife and a job. Mr. Morrison carried a General Secondary life history Diploma and a Life Diploma to Teach Exceptional Children in the state of California and he was employed as a teacher in the Lowell conjunction School District in Whittier, California. According to an article written by J. Tobriner for the Stanford Law School Library, Mr. Morrison maintained his employ custodyt with no record of complaints or misconduct in the classroom and only a minor incident which regarded his conduct outside of the school. His record reflected that he was a near perfect employee until he was asked to resign in 1963 over a brief romanti c encounter with another man.During his employment at the Lowell phrase School District, Mr. Morrison had befriended a fellow teacher, Fred Schneringer, who was also married at the time. In response to a period of financial stress that Mr. Schneringer experienced in 1963, Mr. Morrison offered his council and computer backup to his friend. This resulted in an emotional closeness between the two men that in the long run led them down a more romantic course of action in their long-time friendship. The two men booked in what was described by Arthur S. Leonard in his book, Sexuality and the Law An Encyclopedia of Major Legal Cases, as universe pseudo-intimate in nature, likely limited to cuddling or even self-gratification in one anothers company. There was no evidence or testimony to support that actual homosexual acts had been performed (Leonard). Bear in discernment that in the State of California in the 1960s, homosexual activities were legitimately felonious, and regarded as immoral on a social level. If a teacher engaged in il reasoned or immoral activity, the school board would be justified in looking into the case and potentially revoking the teaching certificate on the grounds of criminal activity or immoral behavior, precisely Mr. Morrison was never arrested for homosexuality, and he carried out his actions in a occult saddle horse with what he believed was a trusted partner.Legal or illegal, Mr. Morrison was ultimately hale to resign from his teaching positioning when Mr. Schneringer reported the incident one year after the fact to Mr. Morrisons supervisor. Over a year and a half(prenominal) after his resignation (two and a half years after the incident), the Lowell Joint School District had received notification that the incident had occurred with a fountain teacher, and they sought to revoke Mr. Morrisons life diplomas for his immoral and willful homosexual acts. (Tobriner)Mr. Morrison took the school district to court of the matter and the Supreme court of California ultimately ruled that the Lowell Joint School Districts policies specified that the conduct worthy of revoking deposition was limited to immoral acts which sire the teacher unfit to teach. Mr. Morrison did not extract his homosexual behaviors, did not engage in criminal homosexual acts, and his personal sexual leanings -which he did not further act upon- did not render him unfit to teach. For that reason, the school boards order to revoke Mr. Morrisons diplomas and certifications was vacated and Mr. Morrison retained his diplomas (Tobriner).Pettit v. State be on of EducationIn another court case in California, Elizabeth K. Pettit was an primary(a) school teacher in Los Angeles from 1957 until her arrest in 1967, which resulted in her imploring guilty to misdemeanor charges in connection to an act of indecency. According to an article in the Stanford Law Library, in 1967, Pettit and her husband had applied to a unavowed swingers club in Los Ang eles, California for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts with different partners. The club involved a formal application and laudation process for the purpose of protecting club members from the public eye (Burke).On December 2, 1967, the Pettits attended a gathering held at the private habitation of one of the members of the swingers club. Also in attendance that evening was a Los Angeles constabulary detective, police sergeant Berk, who had gained admittance to the club under false pretenses and was conducting a yardbird operation to catch and arrest party goers who were engaged in acts of indecency. Sergeant Berk witnessed Mrs. Pettit performing oral sex on triple different men other than her husband, in the full view of many spectators. She was arrested and charged with three counts of criminal oral copulation, but pleaded guilty to a lesser, misdemeanor offense of public indecency and was fined and placed on probation (Burke).Mrs. Pettit was dismissed from her teaching position and stripped of her teaching certifications. She sued the school board to have her certifications reinstated, arguing that the designer set with the Morrison case, as mentioned above, provided precedent that sexual conduct, when engaged privately, should be snub when determining the fitness of an individual to teach children. The courts did not see the Pettit case as be similar enough to the Morrison case to warrant its shape because it was ruled that Mrs. Pettit did not necessarily maintain a totally private sexual life as Mr. Morrison did, and she did engage in sexual activities that were illegal in the state of California. Additionally, Robert Willet writes in his 1973 law review, Unfitness to Teach Credential Revocation and expiration for Sexual Conduct, that it was revealed in the trial proceedings that Mrs. Pettit and her husband had participated in two televised interviews in which they donned masks and spoke frankly about their non-traditional sexual lives. I n spite of their efforts to disguise themselves, Mrs. Pettit was recognized by a fellow teacher and the school officials were notified. Mrs. Pettit was judged to have engaged in extramarital sexual activity and immoral behavior and this rightly gave cause to the school board to revoke her teaching certification (Willett).In todays social climate, it may seem irrational to intrude on the private sexual personal matters of a teacher, especially when those affairs were intended to be kept private. The Pettit and Morrison cases screening uninvited and unwelcome intrusions into the most private aspect of a persons life. Mr. Morrison and Mrs. Pettit took assistance to conceal their immoral acts from the public view, and were victims of conservative social set be applied in obtuse ways to their careers as teachers. American values have since changed, and while many may view these cases as being gross breaches of privacy, in the midcentury American era in which they occurred, these te achers did indeed better the ethics code established by their school systems.Attitudes over social morality change over time and I could see that very plainly when I challenged myself to find modern cases of teachers getting fired for their private sexual affairs. I found a handful of cases where teachers had the unfortunate experience of being terminate when their private sex tapes were sent to parents or affix on the internet against their wishes, but overwhelmingly, I found that my search results were henpecked by instances of sexual discrimination in Catholic and Christian private schools. One instance that stood out was a case reported by the element 109 Standard in which a Catholic middle school teacher who is a lesbian, was fired from her position in Butte, Montana because she had fix pregnant (Montana Standard). After teaching at the school for 10 years and having a satisfactory performance record, Ms. Shaela Evenson received notice that she was being terminated after sh e had announced the happy news of her pregnancy on Facebook. In posting her news, she revealed to parents and students that she had become pregnant out of wedlock and would be an widowed mother. This is not in keeping with the morality standards outlined by the aboriginal Catholic School District in Montana, and as such, Ms. Evenson was marked as a teacher who has engaged in conduct unfitting for an educator for this particular school system.There are so many instances of continuant teacher misconduct where children are placed in danger or influenced negatively by an educator. With all of these bad teachers in the school system, can we really afford to alienate good teachers whose primary offenses are being different and engaging in counter-culture behaviors in their own private time, apart from the school and the children? By and large, our culture is moving away from dictating the private lives of our teachers, as we can see a clear progression from the policies teachers were held to in the 1800s, when the minutia of their personal lives was scrutinized, through a period of time when teachers tested the boundaries of the moral clauses of their contracts and fought for ground in the pursuit of freedom to maintain the private life of their choosing. I believe the hard-earned ground these teachers fought for the 1960s is providing the foundation for teachers today to be allowed to live their lives as they see fit. The social change that has taken place will help citizens maintain a barrier and have respect not to pry into a teachers personal life. This will especially come into satisfy when teachers have the unfortunate experience of having embarrassing media publically posted without their consent. We cannot support an environment that demonizes teachers and allows people to launch witch-hunts to ferret out any teachers who, female genitals the privacy of closed doors, enjoy their lives on their own personal time.ReferencesColeman, Dan. (n.d.). Rules fo r Teachers in 1872 1915. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from http//www.openculture.com/2013/09/rules-for-teachers-in-1872-1915-no-drinking-smoking-or-trips-to-barber-shops-and-ice-cream-parlors.htmlBoles, Frank. (1998). One Room Schools. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https//www.cmich.edu/library/clarke/ResearchResources/Michigan_Material_Statewide/One_Room_Schools/Pages/Teachers.aspxBrady, Josie. (n.d.). Education in the 1800s. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from https//www.education.ne.gov/nebooks/ebooks/Education_in_the_1800s.pdfTobriner, J. (n.d.). Stanford Law School Robert Crown Law Library. Morrison V. State wag of Education. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from http//scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/morrison-v-state-board-education-27498Leonard, Arthur. S. (2013). Sexuality and the law an encyclopedia of major legal cases. New York, NY Routledge.Burke, J. (n.d.). Stanford Law School Robert Crown Law Library. Pettit V. State lineup of Education. Retrieved March 17, 2017, from http//scocal.st anford.edu/opinion/pettit-v-state-board-education-27763Willett, Robert. E. (1973). Unfitness to Teach Credential Revocation and Dismissal for Sexual Conduct. California Law Review, 61(6), 5th ser. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from http//scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2571context=californialawreviewMontana Standard Staff (2014, August 23). Teacher fired for pregnancy sues Butte Catholic schools. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from http//mtstandard.com/news/local/teacher-fired-for-pregnancy-sues-butte-catholic-schools/article_9f3df7ce-29a7-11e4-805b-001a4bcf887a.html