To wake a snoozing student, the math teacher slapped her palm on his desk. The 15-year-old boy’s lawyer claims he suffered pain and “very severe injuries to his left eardrum” as a result and has threatened to sue the high school.
“Many of us have fallen asleep in class and had the teacher wake us up. But what happened here was more in the nature of an assault and battery,” (lawyer Alan Barry) said. “My client is an extraordinarily bright young man. He’s a computer wizard who works late into the night, and that’s probably why he fell asleep.”
The mind boggles.
I really don’t see how a hand hitting a desk could generate enough force to rupture or otherwise damage an individual’s ear.
Oh my. In cases like this, I used to apply my textbook rather firmly to the UNDERSIDE of the desk.
I’d still be serving time.
My chemistry/drivers’ ed teacher’s wakeup tool of choice was a well-worn yardstick. He had been using it for so many years that the numbers were worn off and the edge was chipped and mashed. In his 30th year teaching, it finally snapped over the desk of a snoozing sophomore. We used to joke that this was why he retired at the end of that school year!
(Aside: Is that the Michael Tinkler from Hanszen College? How many art history people named Michael Tinkler can there possibly be?)
My Latin teacher in high school used to whack the flat face of the detached leg of an easel against a desktop to awaken sleepy students, get our attention, emphasize a point, take out his anger on something besides us, and — oh yeah — teach us meter and scansion.
Nothing drills First Asclepiadean into your head quite like having someone recite “OH! MY! STRAW-ber-ry PIE! SINK-ing my TEETH in-TO!” while smacking the desk next to yours in time with the accented syllables.
That was 30 years ago, and it’s still stuck in my head.
My high school Physics teacher used a squirt gun in one hand and a Polaroid camera in the other. He’d snap a picture of the damp, just-awakened student and stick it on the bulletin board.
My test for the reasonableness of these kinds of tactics is to imagine what the reaction would be if everyone involved were adults. Imagine you fall asleep during a really boring meeting; would it be reasonable for your boss to squirt you with a water gun? Would it be reasonable for him to slam a book down on the table next to your head?
It wouldn’t; in fact, these things would probably get your boss arrested.
I have a lot of sympathy for people who have to work with annoying kids all day, but at the same time the respect has to go both ways or the kids are quite understandably going to see the teacher as the enemy and to start behaving as you might expect in such a situation.
This was the genius of my Physics teacher’s approach: the squirt gun worked to punish the sleeping student; but the photographs made the issue one of the teacher and all the other students vs. the sleeping one, rather than of the student (and, sooner or later, all the students) vs. the teacher.
“My client is an extraordinarily bright young man. He’s a computer wizard who works late into the night, and that’s probably why he fell asleep.”
Or he may be bored unconscious. Some freshman/sophomore math classes creep along slowly and spend a lot of time in review. I can just picture the teacher droning on in front of the entire class for 50 minutes. Just another reason to use self-paced materials.
If the student is keeping up, why not let him sleep? Was he snoring?
I’m constantly amazed at the diversity of opinions about what schools should be like. For example:
I used to apply my textbook rather firmly to the UNDERSIDE of the desk.
In his 30th year teaching, it finally snapped over the desk of a snoozing sophomore.
My test for the reasonableness of these kinds of tactics is to imagine what the reaction would be if everyone involved were adults.
If the student is keeping up, why not let him sleep?
The real problem I see with public schools working well is that we are not one people anymore. This ain’t the 1950’s. The old melting pot is long gone, and we live in an era of multiculuralism. Hence, the very concept of public schools is history. Think about it: how can a poor teacher these days make everyone happy? He can’t.
This is why we need a free market for education (and it’s coming sooner or later). Americans are no longer one culture. We simply need different schools if we wish to keep our diversity.
Personally, I’m with Bart. Let students sleep in class (like Finland does). Treat them as adults, and if they don’t act like it, kick them out. But many parents wouldn’t want this, and that’s fine too. We need a free market for education.
Oh please. I thought this was satire at first.
It is grossly disrespectful of a student to fall asleep in class. The “computer wizard’s” probably falling asleep in other classes. It’s up to the student to arrange his schedule so that he’s able to perform well at his primary responsibility, which at his age is school.
I can’t see a jury getting past the giggle factor on this to accept the claim of damages to an eardrum from a hand hitting a desk. I presume the young man has listened to and iPod, or an MP3 player at some time in his life, being a “computer wizard” and all. Even if the teacher had used a jackhammer, there’s no way to prove that any hearing loss, at 15, hadn’t come from other pursuits, or from childhood ear infections.
JK, jury? Any judge that would ever even let such a ridiculously frivolous claim get to a jury should be shot.
We simply need different schools if we wish to keep our diversity.
Oh, please let us not lose our diversity, especially considering how we really don’t have a country anymore but, rather, a destination for people who “want a better life” and deserve one because America is a “country of immigrants” whose raison d’être is to offer comfort, opportunity and welfare for every tribe and nation under the sun, and whose citizens of yore fought bloody wars so future generations could carve out huge parcels of real estate to competing and often angagonistic ethnicities who ask for nothing but to live in the shelter of their own tribal enclaves where they can live and move and have their own markets, car dealers, TV and radio stations, repairmen, signage and everything else a body needs without having to sacrifice one iota of the culture they proudly cling to here in the Land of Good and Plenty.
At one time I kept a teddy bear in my closet and put it on the desk, in the lap or under the arm of sleeping students. I’m amazed I never left my school in handcuffs.
I had a student come into class midway through last period. He said that he fell asleep in class, and they just let him sleep.
He also admitted it happened during 1st period. He woke up 6 hours later. And ended up with detention for missing 4 classes.
Now that was justice, and he didn’t sleep in class anymore.
I’ve learned to take the gentle approach. I’ve had kids in class with their heads on their desks because they’re sick, tired, depressed or even crying. It’s better to give them the benefit of the doubt than make matters worse and do something to embarrass yourself. I put my hand on the person’s shoulder and ask if he/she would like to go to the nurse. They usually come out of it if nothing’s wrong, but if they don’t, you can always talk to them after class or some other time. I’ve found that a lot of my students don’t get enough sleep, don’t eat breakfast and so come to school physically unprepared for the day. I don’t see any benefit in being a hardass about it.
I politely rouse the student and ask if it would help if he or she stood at the back of the room. It keeps a pleasant, work-focused tone while making it clear that it’s necessary to stay awake.
Earlier this year I tried three time to rouse a student by saying her name, louder each time. She didn’t wake up, though the class was amused. I shrugged and let her sleep and went on with things. When she woke up classmates let her know what had happened. She said she’d got back from a school activity at 2 in the morning.
She dislikes school intensely and is frequently absent or bored, but she does quite well on tests and major assignments.
When I was in high school I fell asleep in a movie the last period of the day. The teacher didn’t wake me but made everyone leave quietly then turned out the lights and left too. My friends went around to a window and beat on it till I woke up. I felt somewhat heroic in a comic mode rather than chastened, but I was sort of that way.
Treat them as adults, and if they don’t act like it, kick them out.
Why treat teenagers as adults when they are not?
Teenagers’ brains are still maturing. There are mature teenagers, but to expect all teenagers to act as adults and then to just kick them out if they fail to live up to it is rather ridiculous. If you want teenagers to act more maturely, teaching them how to is more sensible.
When I see a kid snoozing, I usually get the class’s attention (silently indicating to them to be quiet), then pick up a pencil from the kid’s desk and tickle his/her ear. Everybody gets a kick out of it and the sleeping kid usually remains awake!
It is grossly disrespectful of a student to fall asleep in class.
I guess no one likes being disrespected, but does that really justify the sadistic and degrading “remedies” that have been suggested so far? I hate to think what some of you professionals would do if the student was really disruptive. I can understand that teachers have egos the same as everyone else, but sheesh.
Maybe it’s just that a sleeping student is vulnerable, and therefore an irresistible target. I’m surprised no one suggested placing his hand in a bowl of warm water.
Why treat teenagers as adults when they are not?
This is what I mean about everyone disagreeing on how schools should be run. We are no longer one people in America.
My view: personally, I was ready to act and be treated as an adult at age 13-15, and my kids will be as well. To my mind, a 15 yo who isn’t acting as an adult has poor parents. Remember, in college at age 18 just a few years later, kids don’t even have to show up for class. We had better start giving them rope before this, or expect disaster when the get free.
I have a student who sleeps every day! Every day!
I will sit here and wait to hear all the excuses
as to why I should let him sleep every day.
From the perspective of someone who suffers from a sleep disorder, I am worried that some of these students may have a sleep disorder, sinus problems or allergies that are keeping them from being able to get quality sleep at night. In most cases I assume, the students are not allowing themselves enough time to sleep at night. I have also had a few arguments with parents who for some reason only needed five or six hours of sleep themselves and don’t think their kids need more sleep than that.
I never did actually fall asleep in school, but I also slept 9 hours on an average night to compensate for it. When I became an adult, my sleep problems were finally taken seriously by doctors, I have sleep asthma that results in sleep apnea, allergies that cause my airways to narrow, and also a slightly abnormal sinus cavity. I find Advair to be a godsend to sleeping at night. I do have a CPAP machine, but because the machine has to be set up at one level by a professional and I am not allowed to turn it down or up, I find it to be almost worthless to me because my problems are so variable. I rarely use the machine. I am fighting now with doctors to allow me to have control over the settings of my own CPAP machine, but so far I am losing.
I am now old enough that I have asthma all the time, but in high school, I only had it at night, and I looked perfectly healthy. A lot of my sleep problem is due to allergies. Some students may not realize that allergies are affecting their sleep on some nights when they sleep just fine on most nights. Unfortunately, even now, a lot doctors and professional don’t take sleep disorders seriously and it is just too easy to miss in older children, especially if it is a variable problem.
Also, when my allergies are acting up, I sleep shallow at night, so even though I put the time in, I never get any deep sleep. Due to current weather patterns, I can tell that I barely got any deep sleep the last two nights, so right now I feel sleepy. I feel sorry for the students. Sorry to talk so much about myself, but I am using myself as an example. Yes, I do manage to stay awake at all times during work and while driving, but it is something that I have to fight hard at times.
I know as teachers that teaching should be the responsibilty that you have to worry about, but I would seriously look into the possibilty of sleep disorders for the chronic tired or chronic sleepers. Something is wrong and I agree that it should not be allowed, but the students may need extra help.
Why should we wake them? Well, I don’t know how many of you are held accountable for your failure rates, but I am. If I have too many of my kids fail my class, I am in trouble. If you sleep–you don’t learn. Bottom line. If you sleep–I get in trouble. If you sleep–I could get fired. I’m not sadistic; I’m not cruel. However, I make my students aware of the fact that sleeping in my class is not acceptable either by accidentally tripping and kicking the desk or teaching very loudly right next to said person’s desk. Oh wait–let me guess–that would disturb their sleeping. How sad.
Also, why was the student working all night, and what was he working on? Is it part of his schooling? If it is a part-time job, why does he have to do that? And why was he allowed to use his computer all night, especially given the fact that it is what is called a “school night”?
I searched online and found this page:
http://www.snarfcompany.com/AboutUs.html