Teacher To Kid: Turn Yankee Shirt Inside Out!

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Teacher To Kid: Turn Yankee Shirt Inside Out!

Thursday, October 1, 2009

filed under: tween & teen logic

Riled-up sports fans can be notoriously obnoxious to fans of their rival team. But I could hardly believe this display of madness myself, and I'm a Red Sox fan who's seen serious shizz go down.

Vivian Manning-Schaffel: An article featured on Syracuse.com says a kid was forced to wear his Yankees shirt inside out all day by a grown-up Red Sox fan -- his fourth grade teacher!

Nine-year-old Nathan Johns didn't think his teacher, Peter Addabbo, was serious when he told him to go to the boys' room and pull the shirt switch around. The article quotes Nate as saying, "I thought to myself 'Is he serious or is he kidding?' But he had this look like he wasn't kidding at all."

Addabbo then told the kid to wear his shirt inside out for the rest of the day. Nate's suffering continued at the hands of fifth graders, who made fun of him at lunch.

Still, Nate's pissed off -- and if you ask me, he's got every right to be. "Just because my teacher doesn't like the Yankees, I should still have the right to wear a Yankees shirt," he said. Apparently, the teacher has Sox stuff up all over his classroom.

Now, if you know anything about the Yankee/Red Sox rivalry or any sports rivalry in general, it often morphs full-grown mature functional humans into primal beings barely capable of adhering to acceptable social mores. As a native Bostonian with a real live Yankee employee for a brother-in-law, my kid could easily fall victim to this kind of nonsense. But we're great pals ... and sane.

The school superintendent said they are looking into the incident. Meanwhile, poor Nate has to deal with the aftermath of being bullied by his own teacher.

"It was such a horrible day," Nate said. "I don't ever want anything like that to happen again."

SO WHAT if the kid wore the shirt during last week's Yanks/Sox playoffs? This abuse of authority violates the kid's First Amendment rights, no? It's not like his shirt said "F*** the Sox" or anything provocative that couldn't be shown around school. It was a team shirt, for crying out loud. Supporting his home team! The kid had every right to wear it.

Think the kid was bullied? I think the teacher should be ordered to strip the paraphernalia off the classroom walls and wear it home with nothing underneath. But that's just me.

In your opinion, what's a fitting slap-on-the-wrist for the teach?

Vivian Manning-Schaffel has written for Babble, Parenting, The Advocate, The New York Post, Business Week and a variety of other publications and lives and works in the heart of breeder Brooklyn with her husband and two kids. She authors two pop culture blogs: The Mad Mom and A Hag Supreme, and is on the web at vivianmanningschaffel.com.

filed under: tween & teen logic

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Well, technically speaking, no rights were violated. As a minor, rights like his freedom of speech are given to his guardian, and during school hours schools take the position of every students’ guardian. Essentially, the teacher has every right to determine what the students can and can’t say. Also, the right to ‘Free Speech’, despite its usual misinterpretation, does not give people the right to say whatever they want, it gives them the right to make any political statements they want. So yeah, unless that t-shirt was a political statement, the first amendment doesn’t even come into play.

- anon

Posted 10/01/09 05:07 PM

Regardless of the 1st amendment, the teacher has no authority over the student’s wardrobe unless it violates school dress code. Would you think it would be fair if the teacher told all the kids who were wearing the color blue that they had to go and change?

- Noah

Posted 10/01/09 05:33 PM

The teacher should have to wear a Yankees shirt to school. He should have to wear one every Friday for the rest of the year AND take down all of his Red Sox stuff. He should also stand in front of the school, students, parents and faculty and apologize to the student and offer the student a brand new shirt of his favorite player.

- Yankeesfan18

Posted 10/01/09 05:33 PM

I think this teacher was WAY out of line. If I was that kid parent, I would go out and buy him tons of Yankee shirts and have him wear one everyday to school! Teachers are so unprofessional these days.

- chris

Posted 10/02/09 04:49 AM

how can you say the kids rights weren’t violated no teacher has the right to tell a kid to turn his shirt inside out or embaress him like that i,m a teacher and parent this teacher was competely out of line and should be pu ished maybe they should be forced to go to a yankee game and be introduced to the crowd

- katherine

Posted 10/02/09 10:42 AM

say what? NO way that teacher had the right to make hm do that then the other kids were laughing at him…thats bullying by a adult and that wrong IMO, he ought to be suspended and have to make a full apology to that kid in front of all the other kids he needs to show what he did was totally wrong to the kids,so they can learn from this dumb move he made !

- poppiesinoz

Posted 10/06/09 08:22 AM

haha this teacher knows what hes doin thata way!!!

- dedade

Posted 10/12/09 04:47 PM

Hello from Russia! Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?

- Polprav

Posted 10/22/09 02:43 PM