A UL Lafayette education major who was serving as a student teacher at Carencro High School was abruptly escorted off campus Thursday by the school’s resource officer. The student, Derrick Comeaux, tells The Advertiser he believes the move was in retaliation for comments he made to the school board the night before in which he detailed discipline problems he encounters on a daily basis.
Comeaux’s comments lasted more than five minutes and included among other things examples of students directing expletives at the teachers — examples in which he repeated the “f word” multiple times for the board and the members of the public attending the meeting.
Citing his own poor background, Comeaux told the board that poverty isn’t a barrier to getting a good education — discipline in the classroom is.
“Unless Jesus Christ himself comes down before us and this board and tells me differently, poverty it’s not and ineffective teachers it’s not — it’s the discipline, it’s the disruption, it’s having to stop your class and go write somebody up 40 and 50 times over a grading period,” he said.
That’s well and good and probably true. What likely got Comeaux booted from his student teaching position — dropping F bombs didn’t help, to be sure — was a veiled threat in which he suggested without explicitly saying that if a student became violent toward him he would return the violence in kind: “Had this student put their hands on me, then we would’ve addressed it in another manner,” he said in passing.
The statement is at about 2:32 in the audio below. Warning: Comeaux’s full comments are captured below and there are several instances in which he uses the “f word.”
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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While I feel that those who want to take a more moderate stance with recalcitrant students are well meaning, I think they are wrong. We are wrong because we have too little chance to make the bad ones good. The reason for this is the parents who don't give a damn about what goes on at school as long as their children are "respected". Respect is something earned and not given out in response to animal like behavior.
We need discipline!
Thank you Mr. Comeaux for having the courage to come forward.