In shock, I called my principal. She wondered aloud how thay had gotten into the school building and who had given them permission. She and I had an idea who had a key to the library and who had let them in. Then I called my English Department chair. He knew that I had taken my senior class to the Hindu temple and to Cheekwood on Thursday of that week and asked me about that field trip. We discussed how he and I had been teaching about the major religions through literature for 10 years with no objections and how I had been taking my students on fieldtrips to the Hindu temple and Cheekwood's Japanese garden for many years.
(We discussed how I had been disappointed in several of my students for waiting until the day of the field trip to decide that they were not going. Besides having to edit the number of students attending the field trip and having to change the lunch reservations, I had not hired a sub for the class of students going on the field trip. Asking another teacher to take these "left-over" students during her planning period, I had to come up with extra "lesson plans" for them. Along with these lesson plans, I wrote a note to these students, chastising them for their late notice about this field trip, but the very next day Friday, I wrote another note apologizing to these students for my being so angry.)
Things were especially tense for me that Monday morning at school. Sure enough during my planning period I was asked to come to the principal's office. My department chair went with me. The meeting actually took place in the conference room next to the principal's office. At the long table there, the principal, department chair, and I sat on one side, and four men and one woman sat on the other side. The parents would not look me in the eye. Later I was told that they had asked that I not be there, but my principal had insisted.
The group of parents had compiled a rather long list of detailed complaints against me. They quoted passages from the Board of Education's policies, saying that I had not adhered to those policies. It was obvious that their children, my students, had helped them with this list. These parents were the parents of four female students in my class who had not attended the field trip.
According to the parents, they wanted me permanently removed from the classroom and from Harpeth High School that very week or else they would take their complaints to the director of schools (which they did the very next day) and if she did not remove me, they would "pursue all possible channels to remove me from the classroom."
Among other things, the group of parents claimed that I had not used a school-approved bus for the field trip and that I had not obtained individual parental permission slips, and they were right, because we were such a small group of students, we had gone in cars, and I had had the parents sign a form at the semester's beginning about the planned field trips.
They further claimed that I had made a sexual comment to a student and that I used sexually explicite language in my classroom.
(Although it was unknown to me, they were particularly upset about a remark I had made two weeks earlier when one of my female students had received a rather large bouquet of roses from the boy she was dating. We had just finsihing reading, discussing, and writing about the poem "To His Coy Mistress," by Andrew Marvel. It is a perfect example of a carpe diem poem, and seduction is the theme of the poem. When the rather huge vase of flowers was delivered to my classroom, I made some off-the-cuff comment about what the boyfriend's expectations/intentions were. It was one of those, "you-had-to-be-there" comments, and it fit the classroom discussion, but taken out of context, I then realized that it sounded really bad. No one had told me that this incident had apparently been widely discussed around the school. No one told me that the girl or that her parents were upset.)
Though it seemed as if they had talked to many others about this incident, neither the student nor the parents had come to talk to me about the remark. Having no idea that my remark had offended the girl, I was clueless.
They also claimed that I regularly made indirect sexual innuendoes in my class----such as I would say, "Don't bang your books on the floor!" and that I used the f-word in class--which really astounded me--for I had not used profanity in my classroom. It was discovered that they were referring to the word "fart" (which is, of course, not a sexual word).
They claimed that I was not following the Nashville State Community College curriculum, and I explained that this was a dual enrollment class and that it combined the NSCC curriculum with our AP English IV curriculum. Apparently, they had contacted NSCC about me! Since I was an adjunct teacher for NSCC and taught there in the summer, I was embarrassed.
These were their major complaints about me, but oh my, there were many, many others (5 single-spaced pages worth!) You could tell that they had scoured the hundreds of pages of board of education policies, and with the help of their children, my students, they had come up with any possible number of ways that I had "blantantly and regularly ignored the policies of the school board and the civil liberties of our children"--from having the students not attending the field trip do work in class the day of the field trip to the questioning of my qualifications to teach about the faith traditions, from the "majority of Ms. Mallernee's class focused on religious subjects" to my "avoiding, ignoring, and circumventing school board policies and state and federal laws." Further they labeled me as "vinditive person."
Yes, much of the complaint had to do with the teaching about religions. Yet, at one point, they complained that with over half the semester over, the class had only studied about the Hindu and Buddhist religions and still had Judaism and Christianity and Islam to cover!
(What they didn't mention is that we had also covered poetry, myths, the nonfiction books The Power of Myth and Dance of the Dissident Daughter, the novels Life of Pi, The Power of One, Things Fall Apart, and Siddhartha. In this course, one of my faults was in trying to cover too much material! Usually, in addtion to many other subjects/topics, as time permitted, we studied about Eastern religions in the first half of the semester and about Western religions in the second half of the semester. At the semester's end, because of time limitations and our extensive study of literature and composition, it was the study of Islam that often got short-changed .)
One thing was clear--the students (and their parents) did not like my chastising them about not telling me that they were not going on the field trip until the day of the field trip.
I did receive one rather telling note from the parents of one of the students who did not attend the field trip. They said that she did not do the assigned work that I had given them to do in class that day because they felt that the class work was punishment for her not going on the field trip. They further said that they "would not allow her to go to a pagan house of worship or to a Zen meditation garden to participate in a religion that we do not recognize." The student herself had said that she did not go on the field trip because she feared missing basketball practice that afternoon.
It was definitely the roughest weeks of my teaching career. I felt betrayed by a few of my students and ostracized by most of the faculty. (Thank goodness I was a member of the Tennessee Education Association, who supplied me with a lawyer to talk to who said that the parents didn't have a case.) Thank goodness I had a supportive principal, some good friends, a few colleagues, and former students who called and wrote letters on my behalf to the director of schools. Thank you again to all who did write those wonderful letters!
But I have to say that most of the Harpeth High School teachers acted as if I had done something terribly wrong and did not offer support to me, but instead they ignored me and made me feel like a leper--like someone to be avoided. It felt amost as if they agreed with these parents.
Here was the outcome: I was removed from the classroom for one day as someone from the central office talked to the whole class about me. Then one by one each of my students was taken out of my class and "interviewed" by this central office person. One student later told me that it was definitely a "witch hunt"!
The remainder of the semester, I was not allowed to teach about the tenets of Western religions nor to go on our second planned field trip to the Parthenon and to a Jewish synagogue, and I had to teach "only literature" and composition--so I chose to teach about the Greeks--Plato and Socrates--and to teach the dramas Oedipus Rex and Anigone, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, The Chosen, Murder in the Cathedral and Hamlet (all of which I was going to teach anyway).
And finally, to "protect" the students from me, everyday the then vice-principal (a former coach) came in and sat in my class for the rest of the semester. On most days he fell asleep!
(But much later, I recalled my department chair's telling me that the present girls' basketball coach [a former Cheatham County Central High School student of mine] had said that when he was a student, I "had given him a 'D' in English and that he was one day going to be my principal and have my job!" [Ironically, he lost his own job the next year.] So I had to wonder about this connection since two of the students involved were major senior ball players.)
Now I also realize that all of this calamity could have been avoided if only the student who received the flowers (and her parents) had come to me and let me know that I had hurt her feelings with my off-hand remark. I had no idea, and now I believe that that incident had been the beginning of all this unnecessary drama.
Life lesson--if someone makes a remark that bothers you, talk directly to that person, instead of to everyone else!
Also if the students who were not going on the field trip had been upfront with me, this situation could have been avoided.
Later that semester one of the students involved wrote a letter to me, apologizing for her part in the situation and for what her parents had tried to do.
Things never were the same for me after those weeks of hurt and anxiety. It was obvious that much of this story had circled the school and leaked out into the community. I retired from teaching five years later. After nearly 40 years of teaching in Cheatham County, it was time to move on.
