Final Update: I found one press report saying Waggoner did indeed send a letter of apology. I’m not sure why news.google.com didn’t return this story. Regular google.com did. That’s good enough for me. Waggoner is off the hook as far as I’m concerned. However, in this press report the superintendent says the reason she was placed on paid leave beginning 1/31/06 had nothing to do with the parental complaints. It appears Mark Young had no reason to complain about the parents after all and neither did I have reason to complain about Waggoner.
The brouhaha is over this music teacher showing elementary students the play Faust and saying it is a great part of our civilization and Western culture while prohibiting Christmas songs at their “winter concert”. Christmas songs aren’t a great part of our civilization and Western culture?
Then over at Panda’s Thumb Matt Young and the usual suspects are whining about this teacher being disciplined over it. Incredible. These are the people we are up against. I have absolutely had it with people like Matt Young and their concerted effort to censor traditional American culture and values and replace it with their own new age crap. Get out of my country, Young. Right now. Pack your trash and g-e-t o-u-t.
Update: Okay Young, you’ve shown a modicum of sanity. You may unpack. While you’re at it consider that the ability to terminate grade school teachers exists for a reason. The firing of one for making inappropriate decisions regarding what six year old children can and cannot be exposed to isn’t the end of the world.
Update 2: Several have asked what’s wrong with 12 minutes of a sock puppet Faust video. What’s wrong is that it was shown to 1st graders who can be as young as 5 years old and since kindergarten isn’t a requirement in Colorado these may include children that have been quite sheltered. Some parents claimed their children were frightened by the video.
Some parents demanded the teacher’s firing, complaining their children were traumatized by the appearance of a leering devil as well as such objectionable elements as an allusion to suicide and a man appearing to be killed by a sword in silhouette.
Many parents agreed the video’s violent moments and depictions of the devil were inappropriate for young elementary school students, she said. After receiving assurances that a similar situation wouldn’t happen again, most were satisfied.
But a small group refuses to let the situation die, she said, in part because of lingering anger over Waggoner’s decision to make a December concert an end-of-the semester recital without the expected Christmas carols.
So you basically have a very young music teacher that angered parents twice and refuses to apologize for it. In a high income Colorado neighborhood where they pay for and expect better than that from their public schools, twice is one time too many. So she was suspended with pay. I haven’t seen any reason given for why she resigned. She may have been asked to resign or she may have realized that refusing to apologize burned too many bridges to ever have a good working relationship with student parents in that town again and resigned for that reason.
Correction: Waggoner isn’t all that young. She’s 33. Mibad. I’m looking to see if she actually did apologize to the parents. If I find that she did then I’ll be on her side. An admission of error and an apology should have been sufficient unless there’s more to the story than what’s been printed.