i know, good thing i retired before they got me, eh? 
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I’m sorry you had to deal with that, but I also like to think your actions caused this man-baby to go home each school day and angrily seethe for months before reaching the breaking point. Better, of course, if he’d been a decent bloke, but since that wasn’t the case, at least maybe you hurried along his ulcer.
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It was an interesting dynamic - he was one of my favorite teachers in high school. I just figured he’d had a crappy day and let it go at that. And I don’t usually do that sort of thing. Or, I didn’t when I was a teen anyway.
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I’m wondering if they were also contractually obligated by the union to keep the teacher on staff.
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Texas is a at will state, so no. Either way, the administration helped bully her.
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@anon61221983 is spot on, indeed, in texas teachers are forbidden to unionize by state law. even if a teacher has a so-called “continuing contract” they can still be refused rehire for cause. the series of incidents described above in the article could only have happened with the approval of campus administration. whether someone in central administration was complicit . . . 
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By Vectron’s Claw Hammer, I feel you have hit the nail on the head!
Edited for possessive of singular noun.
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Yup.
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Forcing kids to pledge allegiance in the name of “freedoms” always felt off to me.
I quite enjoyed this take on the pledge:
The audio version is longer and funnier IMHO.
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I’m replying to my own comment to say that after some self-reflection, I realize that in the Canadian public school system we used to recite In Flanders Fields. Not every day, but still, maybe a good reminder not to throw stones.
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This attitude is always makes me laugh, because the implication is that the majority of America thinks like that person does. But it’s the opposite. If you add up all the blue-leaning people in America compared to red, it’s not even close. So “real America” is the opposite of what they think it is. Sounds like they should move to Europe if they don’t like it here.
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Huh! I went to school in Vancouver starting in the mid-1970s, and I don’t recall ever reciting or singing either one during my entire public school career. But your experience suggests that’s either not universally true, or wasn’t always true.
However, I do recall learning and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance when I went to a Bay Area school for a day or two with my billet during a high school orchestra tour in the mid-1980s.
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Christ, what an asshole.
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Kudos to all of you! Thought I might share a similar story:
At my overwhelmingly white high school (suburb of Pittsburgh, late 1970s) There were two black families. The daughter of one of them (let’s call her Mary Alice) was in my brother’s home room.
My brother came home one day and excitedly said, "Oh, you should have seen it! During pledge of allegiance Mary Alice just sat there with her arms folded. When the teacher asked why she didn’t say the pledge, she goes, ‘I ain’t prayin’ to no damn flag!’ Then everyone went, ‘Oooooooo! Mary Alice!’ It was great!’ "
What happened next, I guess, was absolutely nothing. Teacher must have though it just wasn’t worth it.
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I went to that high school. It was over 20 years ago, but I am not surprised. In the way-back the schools were de facto segregated by the boundary maps. I doubt that has changed. One of the suburbs for ppl who thought Houston was too liberal
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When I was a high school teacher ('14-'18), I resolutely sat through the unconstitutional Pledge, and let students know that they had the legal right to do so, not just in my room, but in any homeroom they found themselves in future years.
Post-Kapernick, some Black students took to pointedly kneeling during the pledge, and I knew my responsibility as the adult in the room (in this majority white, majority rural school in spitting distance of the former capital of the Confederacy) was to vocally affirm their choice and commend their patriotic commitment to holding this country accountable to it’s highest (unrealized) ideals.
The job of teachers is to energize, empower, and when necessary defend the students in their care, so they’re ready to build a better world and not be broken by the shit one we have. Teachers who bully children, who gleefully participate in breaking them down, make me fucking sick. I worked with pieces of shit like this. I had kids I loved reduced to tears by pieces of shit like this. Hell is too good for pieces of shit like this.
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I think they gave up on those in Ontario in the 60s. Manitoba seems to have hung on until 1998 and they’re still at it with blindness towards Indigenous perspectives. (Canada’s 1st amendment, the Manitoba Act was mainly about screwing over native land claims, especially Métis.)
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Those two words always bothered me. The indoctrination bothered me. Having me make a loyalty pledge as a minor to something I did not yet understand bothered me. “…Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” was plainly a lie. I regret that I didn’t refuse to participate in the pledge over forty years ago. If I’d explained my reasoning to my parents, they would have supported me.
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Weird no one has posted this yet:
I plead alignment
to the flakes
of the untitled snakes
of a merry cow,
and to the Republicans,
for which they scam,
one nacho,
underpants
with licorice,
and jugs of wine
for owls.
Ramen.
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