Truemors
is reporting from
Member
NP Rank:
NP Rank:
Teacher in Trouble Over Essay Topic: Creative or Inappropriate?
Share: 
by Scott Wu | September 21, 2009 at 02:58 pm
779 views | 0 Recommendations | 2 comments
An English teacher at Kingswood Regional High School in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, got into trouble for asking students to respond to the question: "If you knocked your brother down, would you urinate in his mouth?"
The question was given to 12 or 13 seniors as a creative writing assignment. Jack Robertson, superintendent of the school district, said the question was designed to motivate students to improve their writing.
The school found out when a student approached another teacher asking for help, who subsequently informed the principal about it.
The question was not related to the book the students were reading, but the district said she had a good track record of motivating her students.
"While on the one hand, I appreciate her interest in trying to get kids to write, there are other topics and there are more appropriate prompts that could create that same kind of interest," Robertson said.
A supervisor now monitors the teacher's assignments. Officials hope she would motivate students in more appropriate ways.
Advertisement
NowPublic on Facebook
What is NowPublic?
NowPublic lets people work together to cover news events around the world.
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 09:05 on September 22nd, 2009
I find this topic to be a strange one; not appropriate for the situation - not appropriate for any situation that I can think of actually. This teacher may have some underlying problems that the principal should look into.
at 12:22 on September 22nd, 2009
Even though it sounds like the teacher was trained under R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket, it still makes you question how much creativity is allowed in schools period. Everything gets red-flagged and is cause for discipline.Check out detentionslip.org for ALL the crazy headlines from our schools.