Video that got teacher fired gives public a peek inside school walls, and it's not pretty

The video can be seen in its entirety via a link at the bottom of this column. (Youtube image)

A substitute teacher who worked at Sanford Regional Technical Center lost her job this week after a video surfaced online that showed her making "inappropriate" remarks to a student during a conversation about immigration, but the minute-long video also shows some of the ugly underbelly of one of our publicly funded educational institutions.

Even more troubling is that this substitute teacher in the video appears to be more of a warden than a teacher,

As the video starts, the student says something incoherent to which the teacher replies, "You still have a half hour here."

How troubling is that?

She doesn't say, "Shouldn't you be doing your classwork" or "Get back to your reading" or "Do you have a question on your assignment?" or "Why for gosh sakes are you talking in class?"

No, she says, "You still have a half hour here."

The teacher, who I would imagine most likely has her own version of this story, appears to be there at her desk at the front of the classroom to tell the children when they can go to their next classroom, where hopefully they'll do more than they're doing in this one.

The confrontation occurred in an 11^th-grade classroom, and provides a glimpse into what it's like be in a public school classroom where unbridled profanity-laced language goes unchecked.

Make no mistake about it. I was appalled that this teacher would unleash such profoundly troubling comments about the legitimacy of this young's man's presence in the United States.

She is a teacher, not an immigration official or some undercover ICE agent.

But what I find deeply disturbing is that she doesn't even raise her eyebrows when the youngster begins lacing invective with profanity.

MSAD 60 Superintendent Steven Connolly told The Rochester Voice on Thursday that in his private conversation with the student (who is from Noble High School), the young man said the teacher had made inappropriate remarks earlier in the class and he felt the world should know what she was saying.

In part, that was why he appears to be goading her in the video the public has been shown.

Even so, two things are very troubling.

One, that the student was so disrespectful to authority, even if they were in the wrong. If I had done something like that when I was young, I would've been in hot water when I got home. It doesn't matter that she was insulting or insensitive. There are good teachers and bad teachers, good subs and bad subs. Is there anyone reading this today that can say they've never been insulted by a teacher growing up, made to feel small, humiliated for some perceived slight? The student should've known better than to behave that way just as much as the teacher should have.

Secondly, such profanity should not be allowed in an educational setting, period. The young man could've easily made similar points without using the s - - t word.

It's been oft-said that when a manager can't seem to put out a quality ball club after a few seasons, they get another coach.

Now did this substitute teacher get the verve to talk this way on her own in some sort of roguish, maverick style, or is there a miasma about this school - or many schools - that simply breeds contempt from both students and teachers.

At one point, the teacher seems to indicate that if the Mexican border wall is built, "there's 1,100 (students) in this building (now), we'll only have seven."

If there's 1,100 in the building now, and the average cost last year for a public school education in Maine was $11,300, according to the Maine.gov website, that's $12.4 million for that many students.

I think that kind of money deserves some kind of excellence. I didn't see any excellence in this video.

And here's another issue this brings to the fore. Who hasn't seen a seasoned teacher, let alone substitutes, who have "lost it" in the classroom, whether it's for aberrant behavior, a low classwide test score or something else that sets them off.

Are they going to be "set up" by students who videotape surreptitiously looking to put another "scalp on their belt."

I think the overwhelming percentage of teachers do a great job, mixing empathy, encouragement and education as they seek to shape young minds. Will they now be exposed to disciplinary action whenever a student-created and produced video shows them in a less-than-professional light?

Lastly, even more disturbing, what if the teacher - instead of being an obvious proponent of President's Trump Mexican wall - had been lambasting the president ala SNL, perhaps drawing an illustration of Trump's severed head on the chalkboard?

Would we even be talking about this?

That's disturbing, too.

See the video here.