STEVENSON, Wash. -- A chemistry teacher at Stevenson High School in Skamania County has been placed on administrative leave after videos surfaced of students being pelted with plastic balls in her classroom.
The teacher, Kem Patteson, has been teaching at Stevenson High for almost 14 years. Students said the ball throwing was her way of punishing them for doing things like chewing gum in class.
Now Patteson has been placed on paid leave. KGW spoke with several students and some said they thought school administrators overreacted, while others were glad the teacher was pulled from class.
Video shared with KGW from May showed a boy holding up to protect his face from being hit. The most recent incident allegedly occurred last week. Sophomore Zoey Zapfe, 15, said she was pummeled with the plastic balls after she first had to spin the "Wheel of Misfortune" that the teacher keeps in her classroom.
The wheel landed on "Koosh firing squad." Then, about 30 students and the teacher lined up to throw the balls at her.
"I was chewing gum in class and she caught me and I had to spit it out and spin the wheel," Zapfe said. "When the guys throw it, it hurts. I had like, welts."
"I've gotten 'Kooshed' a couple times but never in the face or anything," said Hannah Young, a senior at Stevenson High. "I kinda think they're overreacting a little bit. She probably shouldn't have done it, but I don't know if it's cause to fire her."
Marina Levy, the Senior Class President, told KGW the teacher did give students the chance to "opt out" of the so-called firing squad. "Everything on 'the wheel' can be exchanged for a lunch detention so students are never forced to do anything," she said. "I don't think this is anything near what it's being made into."
KGW reached out to the school district, which said safety was its top priority. The superintendent also released a statement that said the district takes any matter of concern voiced by parents and students seriously.
When the high school initially became aware of the incident at hand, it was dealt with in a prompt manner by the school principal, the statement explained.
A third-party investigator is now looking into the complaint for the district.
The school recently sent a letter parents explaining the situation:
Dear Stevenson High School Parents:
As you may know, weve been working with a third-party investigator to review the details of a video that surfaced on social media last week. The situation called to light an inappropriate classroom management technique used by a Stevenson High School teacher. It involved giving students the choice of spinning a Wheel of Misfortune for low-level misconduct rather than getting lunch detention. The consequences on the wheel included allowing other students in the classroom to throw a soft rubber Koosh ball at the student. The videos circulating showed students throwing the ball at a student.
This is not a practice authorized or condoned by the District and it has been stopped. When the high school became aware of the details of how the controversial classroom management tool was being used, the prop was removed from the classroom. The teacher was placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
First and foremost, our District aims to make sure that only high quality instruction occurs in the classroom and that our students are treated with respect. Our primary goal is to provide students with optimal conditions for learning by maintaining a school environment where everyone is engaged and positive. We all have learned from this unfortunate circumstance and I want to assure you, it is our top priority to carefully review classroom management techniques and provide sensitivity training.
As required by the new Teacher Principal Evaluation Project, we evaluate all of our teachers classroom instructional practices using rigorous criteria. We expect the best of our teachers and that they model only the best practices and behaviors.
On Wednesday, October 15th, the results of the investigation were provided to us. After interviews with students, school staff and the teacher, the investigator recommended that the teacher be re-instated to the classroom with appropriate safeguards in place to ensure an appropriate classroom environment. The investigator concluded that the use of the wheel was inappropriate, but well-intentioned, and the teacher did not desire to embarrass, intimidate or harm any student. However, poor judgment by any teacher is concerning and we plan to work with the teacher on more positive and productive classroom management skills going forward.
We understand some parents may still have concerns, and we ask that you please contact us directly so we can address your questions and discuss options. I want to thank parents, staff and community members for their support, patience and understanding as we work through this challenge and work together in a positive, productive way.
The Wheel Of Misfortune was removed from the classroom, Patteson was allowed to keep her job after the Koosh ball punishment with Zapfe, and reports of Zapfe being bullied by other students surfaced after the story broke.
Without seeing it or knowing the details behind it, the Wheel Of Misfortune sounds like some diabolical torture device from a movie, and when you hear the term "firing squad" you can easily see why Patteson's wheel sparked some controversy. Choices on the wheel include the "Koosh ball firing squad", loosing your seat, winning a piece of candy, or you can simply spin the wheel again for another chance.
Considering all the choices on the wheel, and Patteson giving her students a chance to opt out of the Koosh ball punishment, the wheel doesn't strike me as a malicious form of punishment. This is going back to my elementary school days, but I remember a teacher, who used a Hangman style game to punish the class with extra homework. As a class, if we couldn't stop talking at her request, if someone was caught chewing gum, or if you had that the one person, who had to be the center of attention (the class clown), she would spell out "extra homework" on the board. Of course, if things got out of hand, she would just spell out extra homework after three or four letters to send a message.
As far as Zapfe goes, there's a good chance she chose to spin the wheel out of peer pressure, because she wanted to fit in. After the punishment, humiliation got the best of her, and she decided to speak out against the wheel. Patteson has her fair share of supporters, including students, but Zapfe is receiving the pariah treatment at school. A lot of people just see someone, who exaggerated her story to the news, and someone, who made a big fuss over nothing to get her fifteen minutes of fame. After all, according to reports, Patteson used the Wheel Of Misfortune for two years with no real complaints from students.
It's a mixed bag for me. Yes, you can say Patteson's wheel was a fun and creative idea for her classes, but on the other hand, you have to believe in others (past and present) choosing silence, because they don't want the label of a "snitch" or a "whiner." Whether you throw Koosh balls, balls of paper, or balls of cotton, you can't ignore the feeling of humiliation, while you stand in front of a laughing crowd. Maybe Zapfe had a hidden agenda in all of this, but something had to bother her emotionally, if she felt the need to speak up.
Although, I don't have a problem with Patteson keeping her job. It's a different story, IF Patteson was some sick and twisted person, who relished the idea of embarrassing and injuring high school kids. But I get the feeling she's someone, who made a poor judgment call with the wheel, and she never meant to intentionally hurt or embarrass her students.
All thoughts and discussion regarding this article are welcome.
I think it's a fairly creative way to enforce some discipline in the classroom for minor rule breaking. Let's be honest, teachers and schools don't really have any true means of authority when it comes to punishment beyond sending a kid to detention, suspension or expulsion. A lot of troublemakers laugh at those sorts of punishments, especially detention, and it's even worse when/if there's little to no discipline at home. Hell, sometimes the school will rescind the punishment altogether if someone even whispers the term "law suit." Many school boards are completely spineless and are so afraid of the potential for a dissatisfied parent seeking legal restitution that they sometimes turn a blind eye to infractions of the rules both minor and major.
As was said in the info presented, this Wheel of Misfortune is something used to punish some minor infractions of the rules. Stuff like chewing gum in class, texting in class, talking, etc. And besides, the student is being hit with koosh balls. These balls aren't made of hard plastic or anything, they're comprised of soft rubber strings attached to a soft rubber core; they look like little hedgehogs painted in bright, psychedelic colors. You'd need to have one thrown at you by Superman to be painful or cause any damage.
I think it's a big overreaction and another example of how little backbone school boards have. Sometimes, the best way for a teacher to get through to a student that's knowingly breaking rules is to bruise their ego just a little bit. It's not like she made the student strip down to their underwear in front of the class so they could all point and laugh.
While chewing gum (or anything) in class is inappropriate, making them spin a 'wheel of misfortune' or throwing balls at them- that's just stupid. And throwing balls as a gang- that's worse than slapping the student (which I believe must be banned in your country as well). You are the teacher for fuck's sake. You should be maintaining discipline, not contributing to or finding new ways to potentially enhance indiscipline or trouble for the student. Throwing balls will result in nothing productive, it is simply a waste of time. The teacher could have given the student a warning that she will send her out of the class if she repeats her mistake. Just like with added power comes added responsibility, with added stupidity comes added misfortune. I think she got off lightly. The school should suspend her indefinitely until the investigating body arrives at a conclusion.
But I get the feeling she's someone, who made a poor judgment call with the wheel, and she never meant to intentionally hurt or embarrass her students.
That's undoubtedly true......but still, given today's environment, her "great idea" was stupid and she never should have implemented it.
I don't care how little harm it actually did....or how many students thought it was just in good fun. All it takes is one student or parent to find themselves absolutely devastated by the "brutality" perpetrated by the teacher.....and Ms. Patteson's job is toast. Yes, in this case, the results of the investigation allowed her to stay on, which is good, but a couple of people yelling loud enough might have gotten that overturned.
The fact that any student had the option of not facing this "torture" with the balls should be the factor that turns the tide in the teacher's favor.....and in most cases, it hopefully would. But as I say, all it takes is one do-gooder to threaten legal action, presumably clawing their faces and screaming with righteousness at the "horrors" being dealt to the helpless children.....and logic might go out the door.
The solution? Don't devise a penalty for bad behavior that uses physical punishment .....even harmless physical punishment....to discipline your students.
I used to help teach special needs children and worked for 13 years for the Board of Education. We had a Grade 8 teacher at our school who had a Wheel of Misfortune, but his worked with essays not any kind of corporal punishment.
He used to give the student a warning and say, next time I have to speak to you about that today you spin. True to his word if he did, they spun. I can't remember what the amounts were, but it went from 50 words to 200 words. Then they had to pick upside down tiles from the scrabble box, those two letters couldn't be used in the essay. He counted the words and checked for spelling as well.
There were also 4 free pass slots on the wheel and most wanted to land on that. By the third semester, he had ratcheted it up to an essay starting at 250 to 2000 words. The only scrabble tiles left in the box were vowels and there was only 1 free pass slot left. It worked wonder's and kept the class in check. I think my last year at that school, only one student had to spin in the last semester.
If the teacher can't think of anytiing better than throwing crap at students and for things as meaningless as chewing gum, she is too stupid to be a teacher.
You know, I had a science teacher in middle school who would throw erasers at us if we were talking or not paying attention. It worked. We had to pay attention so that we wouldn't get pelted with chalk board eraser. She also made is sit in a wooden box if we were being distracting. She sucked as a teacher and was one of the worst I had in school.
Every few years some teachers tries something new, I am looking at The Wave here, to try to get classes to act better or understand themes more fully. They rarely work. As a teacher myself, I would never consider throwing something at a student, hell, I rarely pat them on the back because everything is punishable now a days. The simple fact is she should have known better, especially from a discipline perspective. Administrative leave is getting off easy, most teachers would just be fired and a sub would be brought in. She should count herself lucky until the lawsuit is finalized.
I've been knows to catch students with a well thrown ball of paper or stuffed toy mouse if I catch them sleeping in class - but then I have the kind of job security you don't get in a Western comprehensive. Students find it funny, and as soon as they see me balling up some paper they give their neighbors a quick poke and everyone gets their heads down. No harm, no foul.
However; in the West especially, teachers have very little recourse when it comes to disciplining students - and not everyone can be a master of class management all of the time.
My normal recourse is to just remove students from the classroom if they do something I don't like. You're late: go away. You can't shut your mouth: go away. You're not doing any work: go away. The result being that I have literally the only class in the school who arrive to their lessons on time. Consistently enforced discipline works - but when you're not impervious to complaints on account of being white, what options do you have?
In an English or American state school you can't exclude students from the lesson unless they're setting the classroom on fire. You often can't confiscate possessions, and these days you have to be pretty fucking careful if you even want to raise your voice at a student. The options for in class discipline are pretty limited, and I feel sympathy for any teacher trying to find a solution other than laborious, time wasting detentions.
Now as it happens, I don't like this teacher's idea - but for totally different reasons. To my mind, the "wheel of misfortune" sounds considerably more disruptive to lessons than any of the activities it is intended to disincentivise. If everyone is stopping work to throw soft items at the miscreant then something has gone very wrong in the classroom. It also sounds, for lack of a better word, 'fun', and I would be unimaginably surprised if bored students didn't intentionally try to get caught committing punishable offences in order to break up the lesson. If it's balancing equations or the firing squad; give me a cigarette and point be towards the wall.
As for the question of if the teacher should be punished... of course she fucking shouldn't. No tangible harm was done to anyone at any time - if you don't like koosh ball firing squad then the solution is the tell her not to employ the koosh firing squad, not the fucking suspend or fire her. For one it's a gross overreaction which borders on the comic, and for two, this took place in a country with a shortage of qualified teachers so terrifying that many schools are actually willing to offer jobs to people like me, despite my complete lack of comprehensive experience and the fact that I don't teach any subjects they do.
It's a dumb idea and should probably be stopped - but going a single inch further than that is utterly, utterly, stupid.
I had very LOUD teachers growing up. One math teacher was a bodybuilder, and he scared the learning into your brain every day. He set the precedent for the other teachers, and they had no problem setting the same example. We sat up straight, we paid full attention and dammit we had a pretty high success rate at that.
If you were caught chewing gum in math class, in a very low tone our teacher would tell you to spit out the gum and that he'd only tell you as much once. When you have a gigantic mo-fo who's usually loud suddenly lower his voice to a tone so serious that it would echo in your nightmares, you don't EVER get caught chewing gum in his class ever again. If he wanted to set up a koosh ball firing squad, it would have seemed like he was getting soft on us.
I don't think that this next generation is any emotionally weaker than mine, I think that my generation really really wants to enable them to be emotionally weak. Your feelings do matter, but getting hit with koosh balls as part of an optional punishment for being a dick in class isn't coming anywhere near the line of cruel and unusual punishment.
I was spooked into paying attention during class and taking proper precautions to be prepared while in class, I think I would have been less frightened of the consequences of slacking off if one of them would have been having koosh balls thrown at me.
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