Briar MacLean was sitting in class during a study period Tuesday, the teacher was on the other side of the room and, as Grade 7 bullies are wont to do, one kid started harassing another.
“I was in between two desks and he was poking and prodding the guy,” Briar, 13, said at the kitchen table of his Calgary home Friday.
“He put him in a headlock, and I saw that.”
He added he didn’t see the knife, but “I heard the flick, and I heard them say there was a knife.”
I heard the flick, and I heard them say there was a knife
The rest was just instinct. Briar stepped up to defend his classmate, pushing the knife-wielding bully away.
The teacher took notice, the principal was summoned and Briar went about his day. It wasn’t until fourth period everything went haywire.
“I got called to the office and I wasn’t able to leave until the end of the day,” he said.
That’s when Leah O’Donnell, Briar’s mother, received a call from the vice-principal.
“They phoned me and said, ‘Briar was involved in an incident today,’” she said. “That he decided to ‘play hero’ and jump in.”
Ms. O’Donnell was politely informed the school did not “condone heroics,” she said. Instead, Briar should have found a teacher to handle the situation.
“I asked: ‘In the time it would have taken him to go get a teacher, could that kid’s throat have been slit?’ She said yes, but that’s beside the point. That we ‘don’t condone heroics in this school.’ ”
Instead of getting a pat on the back for his bravery, Briar was made to feel as if he had done something terribly wrong. The police were called, the teen filed a statement and his locker was searched.
Calgary Police Service confirmed there was an incident at Sir John A. Macdonald junior high school Tuesday: a third student intervened in a fight between two others and a knife was involved.
The incident is being investigated and no one has been charged.
Ms. O’Donnell said the bully had since been suspended.
Sitting in their northwest Calgary home as Briar’s younger brother played with Buzz Lightyear action figures, Ms. O’Donnell said this isn’t the first time her child had been in trouble for confronting bullies, either.
She teaches her son to stand up for others, and for himself. His heroics were featured on the front page of Friday’s Calgary Sun. His mother had obtained several copies she stacked on her coffee table.
I think this teacher needs classroom management and how to pay attention to everything going on in the classroom lessons. Why is it today that students are expected to get a teacher to intervene when 3/4ths of the time, by the time that happens something terrible could have happened to bullied kid. Teachers, pay attention to what is going on in the classroom and listen. None of this would have happened in any classroom of mine as I would not allow any bullying. I could go back to university anytime to finish up for my credentials as a teacher but with everything going on and teachers not being respected as competent professionals that they are, is it any wonder that a lot of people are not choosing this as their life's work?
ReplyDeleteThis teacher needs to be sacked and forbidden to enter any classroom.
Delete"That we ‘don’t condone heroics in this school.”---This is "skoolspeak" for "we won't tollerate individual initiative or exibitions of quality character. Only "groupthink" and the collective are observed.
DeleteHere is a case where Mom should sue on behalf of her son. The morons running the asylum should be publicly, and properly shamed for their asinine assessment of "Heroics".
ReplyDeleteneutered males are what the nwo wants; metrosexuals interested in hedonism and obey...
ReplyDeletenot true males who defend truth and fight oppression
Are school administrators ALL this clueless? I can appreciate that most teachers would rather have some kid murder another kid rather than risk their jobs, but, come on, this kid did a good deed and gets punished for it????
ReplyDeleteIndependent thinking and actions by the citizens are repellant to the abusive control freaks found in many governments.
ReplyDeleteThis is why in England when you're being attacked on the street, the government recommends that you not yell "help", but to yell "call the police" instead.
To those of you in the US, never, ever allow anyone in the government to render you disarmed.
Good for Briar! And keep doin' the roight thing, laddie!
ReplyDeleteHmmm
ReplyDeleteAh yes it must be drilled into every child's psyche that they must in all cases no matter who dire or severe to the state. This is what your educational taxes are paying for; total obedience and the inability to think let alone solve problems independently. This does not bode well for the human species.
I'd have told them that I don't condone sleeping brainwashed idiots to educate my child...and would have told them 'forcefully' to leave or be arrested by police, or citizen's arrest.
ReplyDeleteLet the courts sort through THAT!
Well done kid. Your my hero.
ReplyDeleteHe should have let the stabbing occur, our government could have said Tsarnav did it, and could have banned knives in the U.S. and blamed 9/11 on the attacker. Then we could have given EEEsrael 20 billion more.
ReplyDeleteWhy were the pigs searching his locker. Useless scum!
ReplyDeleteThey don't "condone heroics" because they are cowards.
ReplyDeleteCondone heroics? Do heroics need to be condoned?
DeleteThat pillock can only be an illiterate bumpkin.