A lot of you likely caught that story out of Pinellas County where the Osceola Middle School principal ate live crickets for lunch as his end of a bargain with students if they showed sufficient academic improvement. Anyone else wonder what schools now do in the formerly good name of “motivation?” All of a sudden, dunk tanks, water-balloon targets and cream pies-in-the-face gambits seem almost pedagogical.
Is this where high-profile, high-pressure “accountability” in schools has inevitably brought us? Is this what “pro-active” and “kid-oriented” has come to mean? Is there any wonder that the teaching profession doesn’t get the respect it deserves? Or maybe, in some cases, doesn’t deserve?