Laser Pointers in the classroom...

An Atonement Story: Why My Own Children Are Not Teachers




In atonement, I express my sins to “ALL USERS.”  Last Thursday (Dec 13) contrary to the spirit of the season I did (and do solemnly swear) call a grade nine male student an “Asshole.”  Now I fully realize, as a veteran teacher, this being my 31st year either at the helm or in the breach; I should not call a student an “asshole.”

I make no excuse for this temporary breach in professional conduct, even if I respectfully submit that the student was not an actual “asshole” but merely at that time acted like one.  On the day in question I was beginning the class with a Trivial Pursuit type game on Canadian Geography that I had recently purchased at the Scholastic store while Christmas shopping the previous week end.  I bought the game at the same time I picked up some of those strips of positive award stickers to put on the papers of the mediocre to the exemplary.  Words like “Making Progress,” “WOW,” “Nice work,” “Good Job,” and “Excellent.”  I do not recall that asshole was on the list of stickers.

On the day in question or on a questionable day, I had my back to the class jabbering on in front of my favourite physical map of Canada, pointing out some obscure and likely meaningless detail related to the trivia game we were playing; when wonder of wonders a little red laser light began to wildly dart across Saskatchewan leaping into the tundra, and then plummeted down through the Canadian Shields, first to the east coast, over Hibernia and then crossed the back of my skull, I presume, and was last sighted in the Purcell Range of the interior of BC.

Calmly, at that point, I asked whoever had the annoying little light  kindly put it away and that’s precisely when the light, went out over the BC coast.  I slowly turned around to give the culprit lots of lead time to get the hint and put away the offensive weapon of retinal destruction. Behold there was no such weapon as I turned to face the class.  I felt like I was in Iraq.

I do recall I felt a combination of thoughts and emotions ranging from humiliation to disappointment, to” I wonder who that little asshole was?”  I was about to find out.

Later, I had students reading portions of a handout aloud to the class.  I too was gazing down at my page as a ripple of giggles spread across the class, as if the emperor was parading the streets without his cloths, causing me to look up and see what appeared like the flickering sight from a sniper’s rifle dancing across the face of one of my students.  Immediately I thought there was an assassination attempt a foot and was about to go into lock down mode when to the left (my left, your right) I viewed student “x” (because of the young offensive act I can not reveal Jason’s name) waving a laser pointer in his hand.  I asked him to hand me the pointer, and for some reason he was reluctant to give it to me.  It may have been the crazed look in my eyes as he sensed death, his, was likely and very close at hand.

I had come across this type of situation in a previous high school and naturally just happened to have the FDA report on my desk. “The light energy that laser pointers can aim into the eye can be more damaging than staring directly into the sun.  Federal law requires a warning on the product label about the potential hazard to the eyes.”  I read on with rapt interest…”Momentary exposure from a laser pointer, such as might occur from an inadvertent (or purposeful) sweep of the light across a person’s eyes, causes only temporary flash blindness.  However, even this can be dangerous if the exposed person is engaged in a vision-critical activity such as driving a car or teaching.”  I added the teaching part, but to you get the significance of this and why I was prompted to call this young boy, in the formative stages of his learning curve, an asshole.

Which I did, call him an asshole that is, when Ryan (not his real name) finally approached the front of the room I pointed out the dangers of his actions.  I added words like retinal damage, laser light and asshole to his vocabulary.  When I proceeded to tell him more about the marvels of blindness and high intensity light, that like strobe lights can induce migraines,  Jason began walking away, as I had actually directed him to the office, and as he walked away he started to swear at me.

The migraine started just shortly after the laser/asshole/swearing incident with Jesse (still not his real name).  I can’t really say if the headache came from the stress of the day, after having a wonderful lesson ruined by some little asshole.  Did I mention I actually called him that, an asshole, I mean.  Or, did the headache which caused me to stay home the next day simply come from the dancing laser light in front of my eyes.

On Monday, after a three day week end and, I thought, fully recovered from the laser fiasco, I returned to school singing loudly to a Bruce Springstein song, “Glory Days,” only to find that students had again invaded the staff parking lot and some asshole had taken my parking spot.




marty