How do you keep your job as a teacher without actually showing up?

So there's this teacher who claims that she has all kinds of esoteric, bizarre health issues. She has been out of the classroom eight times as much as she has been in the classroom. Her students have been in the hands of short-term subs and permanent subs for the LAST FOUR YEARS.

She basically shows up for a couple of weeks each year and then disappears with symptoms of scurvy or trench foot or whatnot.

She has written no lesson plans, done no grading, done no teaching for nearly her entire tenure in our district. She has also discriminated against students who do not share her ethnicity.

By the way, while claiming to be so incapacitated that she cannot possibly come to work, she has been seen in the mall and has been in texting contact with some of her students. During the school day, even. It's really good to know that her thumbs are apparently the only working body parts she possesses, along with a very active VISA account filled with a salary she has not earned.

Needless to say, this is her tenure year, and she realizes that this pattern may impede her chance at receiving what is called a "permanent teaching contract."

So what strategy has she devised now?

Apparently, now she is claiming racial bias and a hostile work environment from her fellow teachers and colleagues who have been left to put a bright face on a bad situation for four... long... years. Right now, all that has been promised is that she won't return to this building next year.

Really? I guess I shouldn't be surprised if she ends up being an administrator three or four years from now. I mean, the last time we had a totally incompetent teacher on this team, she was promoted to principal and then moved to a neighboring school district as an assistant superintendent faster than you can say, "Nincompoop."

This kind of situation develops due to poor hiring decisions, refusal to admit that a mistake has been made, and laziness on the part of... everyone. I will be ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS if the administration doesn't do the grunt work and get the documentation to make sure students get the teacher they deserve.

An apology for supporting segregation in Virginia

Well, I guess this is "better late than never."

A Virginia newspaper expressed regret Thursday for supporting a systematic campaign by the state's white political leaders to maintain separate public schools for blacks and whites in the 1950s.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch acknowledged in an editorial that it and its now-defunct sister newspaper, The News Leader, played a central role in the "dreadful doctrine" of Massive Resistance. "The record fills us with regret," the newspaper said.

The newspaper took the unusual step of promoting the editorial on its front page. The editorial was published on the eve of a conference in Richmond marking the 50th anniversary of the end of Massive Resistance, which was dismantled by a 1959 court ruling.

Massive Resistance was Virginia's answer to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed school segregation. Endorsed at the highest levels of state government and promoted by U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd, the policy cut funds to any school that dared to integrate.

"The hour was ignoble," the editorial says. "Editorials in The News Leader relentlessly championed Massive Resistance and the dubious constitutional arguments justifying its unworthy cause. Although not so intimately engaged, The Times-Dispatch was complicit."

Words are indeed powerful. Although, these words of apology would certainly have been more powerful if they hadn't waited fifty years to utter them.

You know, I've heard apologists for segregation repeatedly act as if the problems of the civil rights movement were purely a "Deep South" phenomenon, all a part of the "it's just a part of the Southern culture" mumbo-jumbo-- that it was in places like Mississippi and Alabama and South Carolina, especially areas where blacks outnumbered whites, that the worst kinds of race relations took place. That kind of thinking flies in the face of facts, such as that Linda Brown lived in Topeka, KANSAS. They also ignore the fact that the Brown case was actually five cases combined together: besides the Topeka action, lawsuits from Prince Edward County, Virginia; Summerton, South Carolina; Claymont, Delaware; and Washington, D.C were part of the Brown decision. Although Delaware was technically a Northern state, as was Kansas, our nation's capital was (and is) a Southern city. The evils of segregation and discrimination remain a legacy ALL Americans must acknowledge.

I'm shocked-- SHOCKED! to find ignorant comments being made on the radio!

So everyone seems stunned by Don Imus' stupid and insulting remarks about the Rutgers University Ladies' basketball team.

Hmm. What else do you expect in the medium of talk radio, where the only way to get attention is through continuously pushing the envelope of outrageous behavior? How can anyone be seriously surprised by the inane ramblings spewed by these moronic talking heads? If you choose to listen to these fools at all, then you can't be surprised by what they say, since this is hardly the first time this guy and his little doofus sidekick have said something deeply offensive. What is far more interesting to me is why these two cretins are so terrified of women who are obviously capable as athletes as well as students. And of course, the only response is to imply that they are sluts-- and ugly sluts, to boot. Flavor this verbal vomit with more than a soupcon on racism, and you've got a ratings winner on your hands. How typical. But not shocking, certainly.

And don't even start me about the lyrics of music that is shrieked into the tender eardrums of our kids.

Blame these two imbeciles, certainly-- and every advertiser who supports their juvenile braying and every mouthbreather who gives an ear to their schtick and keeps them swimming in endorsements.

But our society encourages this kind of outrageous behavior. We don't demonstrate the attention span or the manners to discuss things civilly or deeply. We are the People of the Sound Bite. And God help us, the last thing we want to do is to be expected to think or engage in civil discourse about topics of interest or controversy. We see the same thing in some corners of the blogosphere, in people who do nothing but tear down and belittle others. The argot of talk radio revolves around diminishing others, not engaging them; in belittling accomplishment, not celebrating achievement; in assuming a stance of moral superiority while utilizing the vocabulary of a guttersnipe.

So condemn the inarticulate ramblings of Don Imus, absolutely. But until we are willing to stop giving our attention to those of his ilk, we can't act surprised.

And so now it's been announced that Imus has been fired -- right in the middle of his radiothon, too. Here's an interesting snippet from a story about his firing:

Bryan Monroe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists and vice president and editor director of Ebony and Jet magazines, met with Moonves on Wednesday. It seemed clear Moonves and his aides were struggling with a difficult decision, he said. He urged them to take advantage of an opportunity to take a stand against the coarsening of culture.

"Something happened in the last week around America," Monroe said. "It's not just what the radio host did. America said enough is enough. America said we don't want this kind of conversation, we don't want this kind of vitriol, especially with teenagers."

I'd love to think that this is what Imus' firing means, but I am not so sure. I imagine he will land on his feet somewhere. And I am certain that we will still hear ignorant, racist, sexist, hateful verbiage on the radio.