Teacher who recounted Trump aide eating glue as a child is suspended

[DonViejo]

By HOWARD BLUME

OCT 11, 2018 | 10:55 PM

A teacher who recounted how a senior aide to President Trump ate glue as a third-grader is in trouble with her employers.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has placed veteran teacher Nikki Fiske on “home assignment” while it decides what to do, if anything, about disclosures she made about a young Stephen Miller.

Miller, 33, has grown up to be a senior advisor to Trump. But his prospects did not appear so promising to Fiske when Miller was a student in her classroom at Franklin Elementary School.

“Do you remember that character in Peanuts, the one called Pig Pen, with the dust cloud and crumbs flying all around him? That was Stephen Miller at 8,” Fiske recounted in an article posted Wednesday by the Hollywood Reporter. “I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk — he always had stuff mashed up in there.”

And there was a problem with glue.

more
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-teacher-suspended-stephen-miller-20181011-story.html

[mountain grammy]

1. Soon enough anyone who spills the beans

will be dragged of and imprisoned for some re training.. just like mother Russia.

[magicarpet]

29. Why can't we chop them up into little pieces like the Saudi's...

... then feed the dissidents to the tigers or the sharks ?

[KayF]

34. Alan Dershowitz says we can

just now on Fox News. He gave a very compelling argument.

[MyOwnPeace]

2. OK, you shouldn't tell.................

but I'm waiting to hear the story about the social studies teacher explaining the Kanye West visit to the Oval Office. If you play the tape you're gonna' get fired!

[peekaloo]

3. Elmer's? It's white therefore superior to most foodstuffs.

Bet he ate his boogers, too.

[dsc]

4. She deserved to be suspended

yes Stephen Miller is an awful human being but teachers have no business publicly bad mouthing their charges years later. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. Not Agreeing DSC

It's not like this wouldn't have been public knowledge among the classmates, and it's not libelous or slanderous. After all, what harm could be claimed?

Geez, Kav-assualt tried to rape someone and it didn't harm his prospects. This doesn't harm Miller in any fashion.

[MichMary]

17. Except,

she wasn't one of his classmates; she was his teacher, and therefore had a professional responsibility to keep her mouth shut.

[Ms. Toad]

23. Agreed - with both you and DSC

Classmates are free to talk; teachers aren't - as to anything they learned as part of that relationship.

[ProfessorGAC]

45. We Can Agree To Disagree

That's ok. We don't do lockstep around these parts.

[malaise]

51. Why?

Why is it OK for me to say that student X was brilliant, but not that he/she displayed seriously anti-social tendencies.
I think that my duty to society supersedes hiding the truth about dangerous people.

[Ms. Toad]

62. It's actually not OK to say that student X was brilliant.

As to glue-eating - it would not rise to the level of danger that would overcome the obligation to protect the privacy of students.

We recently had to deal with an implied threat of imminent harm, serious enough to prompt an immediate ban from campus. It was not clear we could legally identify the student for the purpose of ensuring everyone knew to report his presence immediately to campus police if he entered campus. Ultimately, we opted to identify him but will likely have ot defend that choice in a court of law.

Eating glue decades ago is nowhere near the danger level required to justify violating a student's privacy.

[treestar]

59. Is there any such privilege?

I could see where as a kid it might not be nice to talk about the kid by name. But there's no student/teacher privilege.

[Ms. Toad]

61. Try FERPA.

It's not a privilege - it's the law.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

10. I think so too. Plus how someone behaves as a 3rd grader

isn't representative of how they'll behave as an adult. Plenty of good people did this kind of stuff as kids. So what? Also, now anyone that's ever been her student is going to worry about her blabbing about them in a public manner.

[KayF]

26. the people reading the story can conclude the same thing

they can think, like I did, that the Hollywood Reporter is a rag for writing this story.

I don't see a point in suspending the teacher.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

42. The point in suspending the teacher is that she shouldn't make public comments

about her students. She represents the school district and that wasn't the kind of public image they wanted to project. They want people to know that they don't think it is ok for teachers to publicly run their mouths about your child (even if they are adults now). She should have gotten permission from her school district leadership first. I doubt they would have given her permission to do such a story anyhow, but that is what the teachers are supposed to do. I could only see it if the information was valuable for a court case or something like that and even then you are supposed to consult with the school district leadership first.

[lagomorph777]

50. Agreed - not much connection between being dirty and ethnic cleansing.

As far as I know.

[treestar]

57. Only if she remembers them and they become a public figure

He is an adult and became a public figure - this is not harming him.

[borgesian]

14. yup.

Ironically, she reveals more about her own character than she does his. Besides, the adult version of Miller is a strange and unsettling creature, providing more than enough material for ridicule.

[phylny]

20. Agreed. She has no right to talk about her students' performance, quirks, and otherwise

to the public.

[lame54]

25. Are you citing Teacher/Student privilege?...

Don't think there is such a thing

[EffieBlack]

32. I must reluctantly agree

But if he were a young black man who had just been murdered by a police officer, I wonder if his teachers would be suspended for revealing that "he was no angel, you know ...""

[dsc]

36. that is exactly why I think this shouldn't be going on

If a teacher, or anyone else for that matter has relevant information, they should go to authorities in the type of case you site. for example the student bragged about doing x or y in their presence. Otherwise they should shut their mouths.

[ProudLib72]

35. What about that professor at Wharton who said the Rump was an idiot?

I don't recall anyone having a problem with that.

Miller is not in 3rd grade anymore, and Nazis do not have rights afforded to regular folk. Plus, the school's administration has been protecting poor wittle Miller since he was her student. The principal whited out the bad part of the teacher's report so Miller's parents wouldn't be upset.

[dsc]

37. I actually have some but less of a problem with that

He wasn't 8 years old at Wharton.

[ProudLib72]

39. Normally, I would agree that the teacher shouldn't tell all

But something is going on with the school's administration as well. Whiting out sections so the parents are not upset sounds like privilege to me. I also want to know if they said anything to the teacher all those years ago.

[dsc]

40. He campaigned on his Wharton experience so it is fair game

The professor offered an opinion (unflattering to be sure but an opinion nonetheless). For that reason I have some less of a problem but it still is somewhat of a problem in that he was a professor and presumedly not authorized to speak on behalf of Wharton.

[treestar]

58. That was college so he was adult, but even so

I don't see the problem once you've grown up.

[ProudLib72]

63. It's the cover up from that time that concerns me the most

Like I wrote above, it speaks to one thing: Privilege.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

6. Is there a "HIPPA" for school records?

[Blecht]

11. FERPA

And yes, what the teacher did violates it.

[cwydro]

15. HIPAA is the correct title.

No idea why people can’t get this right.

[phylny]

19. Probably because people don't use it every day. When someone makes a mistake on it,

I know what they're referring to.

[Ms. Toad]

24. Not in connection with education, it isn't the correct title. :)

[KayF]

28. because it's pronounced like HIPPA

[EffieBlack]

33. Maybe because it's FERPA, not HIPPA

HIPPA deals with health privacy. FERPA is The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act that prohibits unauthorized disclosure of information about students by educational institutions receiving federal funds.

[cwydro]

44. It's HIPAA that the poster I responded to was referencing.

You apparently don’t know the right title either.

Two As and one P. Really not that hard. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

[EffieBlack]

46. I misunderstood your point

I thought you were saying HIPPA/HIPAA applied, not that you were correcting their spelling. I understand your inclination to spell check, but your snark about it toward anyone who chooses to spell the shorthand as it sounds to them isn't necessary.

[cwydro]

47. Oh, you're so right.

I’ll remember that when I see one of your replies

[malaise]

7. She needs a GoFundMe surprise n/t

[Wyatt513]

8. They should talk to her teacher

This is getting silly and not what we want to project.

[WeekiWater]

9. Bad form for a teacher.

Suspension is too harsh.

[nycbos]

12. Makes me think of this.

[njhoneybadger]

13. Lock her up, Lock Her up

OMG, Men are being attacked from all directions
It must be, THE WAR AGAINST MEN

[WhiskeyGrinder]

16. Honestly I don't have much of a problem with this. I would be appalled if my former teachers talked

about what some of them know about me.

[meadowlark5]

27. Me either.

He ate dried glue off his hand. How is that such a privacy violation?

Now had she told us he killed birds on the playground or tried to stab a kid with a pencil, that might be different because that would show a disturbed behavior and would have been investigated by school counselors and the principal. That is a privacy matter.

I don't see how this any privacy violation. What if the teacher recounted him helping a little girl get up after tripping and falling. Would that be a privacy violation? Both are observations witnessed by the teacher. One is embarrassing one is complimentary. So why is one a violation and not the other?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

38. I'm saying I don't have a problem with the teacher getting disciplined.

[meadowlark5]

41. Ok then ignore my response to your comment

[cwydro]

48. I agree with you.

This teacher is out of line.

[treestar]

56. Most of them probably don't remember us

A lot of teachers say people will expect to be remembered and they can't as they had so many students over the years.

If you become a public figure, and the teacher remembers you (because you were really weird) at that point, when you are an adult, then I don't see a real problem.

[Kaleva]

22. Hopefully you are in no position to actually make such decisions.

[cwydro]

49. Really? A kid eats glue in third grade and you judge him for that?

I remember kids who did that. I felt sorry for them.

But I know at least one now who is a perfectly upstanding citizen. And a Democrat lol.

Funny thing, I remember only boys ate glue, no girls. Go figure.

[Kaleva]

21. And rightfully so.

[ck4829]

30. "Class, where did all the glue go?" *Looks around, sees the dark-skinned immigrant* "Uh, he took it"

And thus, a racist was born.

[KayF]

31. Miller is a precious snowflake

he is only a senior adviser to the President of the United States. He must be protected from "bullying" from a public school teacher.

[jamesho]

43. SOMEONE PLS SETUP A GOFUNDME FOR THIS HERO TEACHER

Stephen Miller is the grandson of Jews who escaped WWII and immigrated to the US. Yet he''s all about closed border. He is a little sociopath and deserves all scorn and ridicule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller_(political_advisor)

[virgogal]

53. Set it up yourself----why wait for someone else to do it?

[treestar]

60. That's a phrase often used in current English - not meant literally.

[DesertRat]

54. I wouldn't call her a hero

Welcome to DU, jamesho.

[gopiscrap]

64. welcome to DU

[Gothmog]

52. This is unfortunate

[Mc Mike]

55. Not the paste-style elmer's product, either.

Airplane glue was the product he preferred, when he was feeling peckish.