Some teachers were not really equipped to handle the job of educating our children. I mean, you have to be a Southerner to appreciate how outrageous this story is. And to think it happened in North Carolina!
This is exactly what happen to a teacher in Tarboro, N.C., who got offended over the use of the word “ma’am,” and punished the fifth grader.
On Tuesday, Teretha Wilson said she noticed something was wrong when her 10-year old son Tamarion got off the school bus from North East Carolina Preparatory School.
According to ABC7 reports:
10-year-old Tamarion Wilson, a fifth-grade student at North East Carolina Preparatory School, was punished by his teacher for saying “yes, ma’am.” The teacher made him write the word “ma’am” on a sheet of loose-leaf paper, four times per line on both sides of the page.
Apparently, the teacher had previously told her students that she did not like the use of the word ma’am, although the reason for the prohibition is not entirely clear.
Coming up at 4:30 and 6 on @ABC11_WTVD: Parents of a Tarboro 5th grader are upset after their son got in trouble for calling a teacher “ma’am” against her wishes. In response, they say the teacher made him write the word repeatedly on a sheet of paper pic.twitter.com/KJghF8rPQb
— Michael Perchick (@MichaelPerchick) August 23, 2018
Meanwhile, the term of respect is sometimes reserved for married women, or those presumed old enough to have children, in many parts of the South it is used for women of all ages.
Tamarion was hospitalized last month for a seizure illness that included hallucinations and memory loss, although the teacher was not aware of his condition, Wilson said.
When the boy called the teacher ‘ma’am’ after she had prohibited it, the teacher said that if she had something to throw, she would have thrown it at the boy, according to Wilson.
The teacher, who has several years of experience, admitted in a parent conference to say she would like to throw something, but said it was a joke, Wilson said.
Wilson and Tamarion’s father, McArthur Bryant, said that they had raised their children to address their elders as ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’.
‘As a father, to feel kind of responsible for that…knowing that I have been raising him and doing the best that I can, it’s not acceptable,’ Bryant told the ABC affiliate.
Teretha Wilson met with the teacher and the principal on Wednesday. She said she asked the teacher if she felt her statement about throwing something at Tamarion was OK.
“It wasn’t right. It wasn’t professional. As a teacher, it wasn’t appropriate. And I asked her why she thought it was OK to do that,” Wilson said.
The teacher reportedly acknowledged saying it but said she wasn’t serious and thought Tamarion knew she wasn’t serious.
After the meeting, Wilson requested that Tamarion be moved to a different classroom, and the principal obliged.