All parents worry about name calling at school. Nothing is more devastating for kids as they struggle to find their own identity than being mocked by their peers. Except, perhaps, being mocked by authority figures. The mother of a sixth grade girl in Buncombe County, N.C. is upset because her child’s teacher has repeatedly written notes on her daughter’s homework that refer to her child as a “loser.”
The first time Patty Clement noticed that Rex Roland had written “loser” in the margins of her daughter’s paper she went to the principal of her daughter’s school, Enka Middle School. They assured her that it wouldn’t happen again, but recently Clement saw the words “minus 20% for being a loser” written on another assignment. ”This is wrong,” Clement told Asheville’s WLOS-TV. “The techniques need to change.”
Other parents don’t see the problem with Roland’s behavior. “A lot of the students he has are academically gifted students, and so one of the ways that he would joke with them would be if they scored a 110, he always gave extra credit, so if they scored a 110, 120 on a paper, he would have a joke on it — ‘loser’,” one parent, Kathy Andrews, told WLOS. “That’s what he engages in… he gets on their level and their words and tries to relate to them.” Whether or not Patty Clement’s daughter was being called a “loser” on high scoring papers or not is unclear, but Clement does mention in one interview that the word was written next to a small mistake.
Ian Andrews, Kathy Andrews’ son, may have thought that Roland was a “cool teacher that people wanted to be in class with.” but Clement says that he has been bullying and harassing her daughter. It’s not just on papers either, according to Clement, “he threw my daughter’s pencil box in the hallway and she got in trouble by another teacher for disrupting his class — for something that she did not do.”
It’s gotten worse. Clement’s daughter has received almost 100 threatening text messages in the last week, forcing her mother to keep her home from school. The school district views the matter as “a personnel matter” that is subject to ongoing investigation. Roland apologized for using the “l-word” but still insists that it is his way of relating to his students.
