Teachers Fired After Giving Snarky Award About Not Paying Attention to Girl With ADHD

Two Georgia teachers displayed a stunning lack of professional judgment when they decided to give a “most likely to not pay attention” award to a 14-year-old girl with ADHD during a school assembly, in front of everybody. Did they miss the meeting about how humor at someone’s expense isn’t funny? Teachers aren’t supposed to pick on their students, and making up a mean little award like that and giving it to a kid during a school assembly is humiliating and bullying.

”I feel like it was very derogatory, I feel like it was humiliating and this was held as an assembly with the school,” said Nicole Edwards, the teenager’s mother, to her local Fox affiliate. “Someone needs to investigate and make sure it never happens to another student again.”

According to Teen Vogue, the 8th grader had been voted “most likely to ask a question that has already been answered,” and that seems like a pretty mean-spirited category to even have people vote on. These class awards are supposed to be fun and flattering, but having this as a category just seems intentionally nasty.

These “most likely to” awards seem like a minefield. (I recall an episode of King of the Hill where Bobby Hill is eager to get one of them, but is told his class won’t be doing that this year after the kid voted “worst dressed” the previous year turned out to just be really poor.)

After having everyone vote on the categories, the teachers then went out and actually bought a little trophy that said, “Most likely to not pay attention.”

What did they think this girl was going to do, keep that mean trophy on her dressing table as a fond childhood memory?

It’s obviously just a cruel joke that’s going right in the trash, and if the teachers had thought about it for ten seconds they would have realized this is just a mean joke and completely inappropriate behavior for a teacher.

The school says it did not approve the awards that were given out this year, and that the administrators were not aware of the award and would not have allowed it.

”I can assure you that Rockdale County Public Schools will not condone anything that may cause student embarrassment or humiliation,” the school said in a statement.

The school also said that the two teachers responsible ”will not be returning to RCPS for the next school year.”

Maybe they should have inscribed that on a little trophy for them. “Congratulations, you won Most Likely to Get Fired.”

(Image: iStockPhoto / bieshutterb)

Similar Posts