Teaching vs Policing: Let's look at the educators of Spring Valley

  I’d like to preface my article with the clear admission that both teaching and policing are tough, sometimes thankless jobs. I’d also like to point out that they are not synonyms. Now I know when a single adult walks into an enclosed space with 15-35 wily teens they might disagree. I imagine it takes a firm hand and many teachers wish for the days when they were allowed to spank students, or maybe even strangle students. These are normal and even healthy thoughts to entertain when someone is annoying you and let’s face it teenagers are annoying. Only there’s a stark difference between fantasizing about dealing an annoying teenager bodily harm and actually doing so. One is a harmless coping mechanism and the other is assault.

  Any rational adult can tell which occurred at Spring Valley High school when Officer Ben Fields chock slammed a female student, right before he tossed her across the room. But I don’t want to discuss Fields. No point in beating a dead horse as it’s blatantly clear that he was dead to the left. Anyone who disagrees does not know the difference between discipline and child abuse and should not be permitted to work with children. Which brings us to the matter of both the teacher and assistant principle on that faithful day. As disturbing as I find Fields actions I am equally disturbed by the educators’ response. Both the teacher and assistant principle were reported to state that the officer’s actions were justified.

Time to call a spade a spade. We have two educators who failed in their duties to maintain order in the classroom in the face of a challenge to their authority. I’m certain they both felt disrespected  and embarrassed. My boyfriend has worked with both teenagers and small children and on many occasions he’s relayed to me the importance of asserting one’s leadership when outnumbered by many small faces. Because if you let one get away with trying you they all will and then you have pure bedlam. Often I’ve been amused by the clever ways he uses to wrangle the children without overstepping his boundaries.

We often forget that children are just tiny people with problems of their own. You never know what that little person may be baring on those immature shoulders. We also forget how smart they can be. Which is why I like to say never argue with a child because, well you might loose and how mortifying is that. These are things that every educator should seriously consider before accepting the sacred charge of molding young minds. And it’s why both educators who believe the officer’s actions were justified should take a long hard look in the mirror. They were annoyed and embarrassed by a new student they likely hadn’t gotten to know very well and so when she was assaulted they took pleasure in the belief that she got what she deserved.

   Teaching requires an immeasurable amount of patience, compassion and understanding so I salute teachers across the nation, you are underpaid and underappreciated. Yet and still to the two educators at Spring Valley on that faithful day I’ll say this. You chose this profession and with any professions you will have a million failures for every one success. You cannot take your failure out on the students. One of you should have thought of a way to bring order to your classroom without one of your charges being assaulted. Officer Fields is trained to deal with criminals and he acted based upon his training. You two were trained to deal with teenagers who by their very nature are obstinate little monster at times. It’s why the teen years are called the rebellious years. If you need an officer of the law to take time away from protecting the students from real threats to deal with this petty matter you should seek a new profession.

I get it. I have to deal with difficult people in my profession as well. I work at a bank in the claims department where I often have to deliver the news that people will not be reimbursed for charges they didn’t want to come out of their account taking away from their hard earned money. It’s my duty to deliver this horrible news to people in a way they can digest as well as direct them towards alternate solutions. As you can imagine people often do not take this news well and lash out. It’s easy to blame them on these occasions but I’ve learned to take each occasion as a learning experience and seek to better relay bad news with more patience and understanding  in order to better help my customers. I invite each of these educators to the do the same.