Bite me

SHE WAS ONE OF THE BEST TEACHERS I'D EVER SEEN ANYWHERE, intelligent and passionate about education. She had 19 years' experience in the Clark County School District, plus academic standards higher than the Himalayas. Her accelerated-placement honors science students, who loved her, often graduated from high school with as much knowledge as students in advanced college science programs. One day, while I was teaching in an adjacent hallway, she walked into my classroom, stopped and stood shaking uncontrollably, then shit her pants in front of my class.

"Mr. Mosher, I think Ms. Competence just shit her pants," one student discreetly whispered to me.

For the previous month she had been tortured by a supervisor, another woman, under the school principal's orders. To harass her, the supervisor would bolt into her room unannounced constantly throughout the school day, to check Ms. Competence's grade book, lesson plans, attendance sheets and so forth. All of which were always perfect.

Competence's crime? She had approached her principal, a man, to dispute her supervisor's annual evaluation of her. In the evaluation -- which is placed permanently in a teacher's employment records -- was this phrase: "Ms. Competence is too emotional for a teacher." (Footnote: Her principal and supervisor both had the intellect of a rutabaga.)

For questioning this one sentence in her evaluation and, subsequently, the administration's authority, Competence's honors classes were ripped from her schedule the following year. Instead, the principal forced her to teach bonehead science classes -- excessively large groups of 9th graders who had behavioral problems and loathed science. When the teachers' union failed to represent her competently against such brutal intimidation, a common story, Competence left the district. Why? Because her standards were higher than the Himalayas.

Thousands of teachers in Clark County have been treated as shabbily as, or worse than, Ms. Competence by the district and union. Combine this with the abusively low wages for teachers here, and you have the recipe for a mass exodus of educational talent from the valley.

To deal with this issue, that biennial carnival of crackheads in Carson City, our state Legislature, has been attempting to create, through Assembly Bill 459, a Teacher Bill of Rights. Apparently the U.S. Constitution hasn't been enough to protect teachers.

AB 459 is a legislative confession that the school district has been operating as a terrorist organization to destroy teachers. Unfortunately, this Teacher Bill of Rights is a clever ploy to divert the public's attention from the fact that the Legislature itself has been terrorizing teachers financially by refusing to raise the revenue needed to pay them a living wage in Las Vegas. Although AB 459 promises local teachers the right to legal representation in meetings with administrators, how many teachers on pitifully substandard salaries will be able to afford a lawyer? It's a bill without bite, created to give an impression that legislators have been doing something for teachers, when they haven't. Even with these bogus rights, abuse of teachers by vicious principals will continue. What teachers really need is a Bill of Bites -- to empower them to deal with the dipshits running our schools.

A Teacher Bill of Bites:

1) If an administrator looks at a teacher cross-eyed, or worse, the teacher can lean into the administrator's face and say, "Bite me, asshole!"

2) Any teacher unhappy with an evaluation can rewrite the evaluation to her liking, then call Murder, Inc. to hire a Luca Brasi-type for her evaluation meeting. With the Luca-type holding a gun to her supervisor's head, the teacher can say, "Either your signature or your brains will be on my new evaluation."

3) For protection, a teacher has the right to invite a suicide bomber to any administrative hearing.

4) When principals disrespect a teacher, the teacher can say, "Mess with me again and I'll kill ya -- by making you watch American Idol reruns of Sanjaya Malakar over Christmas holidays."

5) (And for my friend, the incontinent Ms. Competence): If confronted by an inept administrator, a teacher has the right to reach into her own underwear to pull out fresh feces and wing it at the administrator's forehead while saying, "Fuck you, shit for brains!"

Too much emotional and financial violence against teachers has crippled education here. Teachers don't need no stinking Bill of Rights. They need something with more bite. Can you spell baseball bats, kiddies?

Chip Mosher is a simple classroom teacher.