REINSTATE MR. COLLINS - the unjust firing of teachers MUST STOP. We Want Our Teachers Back!

It's been a long time since my school has done something this stupid.

A whole year, in fact.

I go to Reeds Spring High School in southern Missouri and apparently our administration has a personal vendetta against good teachers. Last year they forced one of the few good math teachers I've ever had (I'm hopeless at math, but because of him I was understanding Algebra II) out of the school on what, so everyone says, are trumped up charges, simply because they wanted him out. He was a good teacher, and a good man, and no one that I know ever mentioned a legitimate reason for why he would have been forced out in the middle of the year. We suffered the rest of the year with a sub who didn't know what she was doing, despite supposedly being a math teacher, and only the mathematically inclined who could learn on their own actually learned anything the rest of the year.

This year, they're taking our biology teacher, Mr. Collins, who, as popular as Mr. Mills was, is at least five times as popular--and I'm not talking just with students. Mr. Michael Collins has been a biology teacher and dedicated to RSHS for YEARS. He's received several state and local teaching awards and other honorable recognitions, been recognized for his innovative recycling program and greenhouse projects, and gone above and beyond the call of duty in aiding students and pouring himself heart and soul into the betterment of this institution and the kids and teachers here. He's always a cheerful face, has a kind word, and ready to do whatever he can to help you, to make your day, whether you're a student or a teacher or anyone else. He is also one of the most intelligent and supportive individuals I have ever met.

According to what I've been hearing, the school has decided the recycling program costs too much, and that it has to go, despite the good it does for the environment, despite its widespread success and its reduction of the school's paper trash. The school has decided the greenhouse has to go, because they want to build a wrestling gym or something where it sits; just like they took away the hill the biology and botany class used to gather samples and grow stuff on to put in a football playing field.

People only began talking about this, and how Mr. Collins was doing all he could to oppose these detriments to his work and classes, after he was put on "administrative leave" for yelling at two students.

The way the story has gone, and the news tonight seems to confirm, Mr. Collins came across two students (and I honestly don't know who they are) making fun of some of the mentally handicapped students. He (justly) told them off, but unfortunately used a few choice words that would have best been left out, specifically the "f" word, I believe. The students turned him into the office, and now, the best teacher in the school is facing a board meeting hearing and a public hearing. The unidentified parent on the news had the audacity to pull some bull about how students have to be on their best behavior, teachers should too--well, his kid certainly WASN'T on his best behavior since he was bullying the mentally handicapped!

Should Mr. Collins have used such extreme words? No.

Should the students who were in the wrong to begin with have gotten off completely and been able to turn what should be a relatively minor incident into something big and blown up and mixed in with other issues just because they didn't want to get in trouble? NO!!

The bullies causing the problem have managed to take what in normal circumstances would have been a reprimand for an excellent teacher with, to my knowledge, no other legitimate claims against him, who, tired of seeing injustices perpetuated against the innocent, let loose his anger, and turn it into a widely reported case of a teacher doing something horrible when it was the students who were the cause of everything.

This injustice can NOT just be let go.

I was proud to see a friend of mine in the news report sticking up for Mr. Collins, and I just wish I could have done the same. Mr. Collins is an extremely intelligent, caring, amazing teacher who's crime is tiny compared to that the of the bullying students, who to my knowledge are going completely unpunished, who is being suffocated by a system determined to drag him down simply because he is one of those rare and beautiful individuals who could actually better it.

I am outraged, I am horrified, and I am going to sign the petition at onlinepetition.com (if I can ever get the page to load) demanding the reinstatement of Mr. Collins, and although you reading this are probably from far away and don't know him or our school, I urge you to consider checking out the case and taking a stand. Don't let this become just one more successful precedent for students who want out of trouble and get revenge on a teacher who caught them in an act of wrongdoing.

Put a STOP to the unjust persecution of good and hardworking teachers
Put an END to the reign of terror students have over teachers ("Don't tell me what to do I'll get your fired hur hur hur")
AND REINSTATE MR. COLLINS!!

-
disclaimer: I don't know anything for sure and certain except what I saw on the news; the rest of this is what other students have been saying, and believe me, people here have been talking about little else. The rumors appear to be confirmed by the news, however, and unlike most rumor cases, everyone's story agrees.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

 •    •    •    •    •