A Luther Burbank High School freshman was surprised to read his full name included on a biology final. Not only that, but he was being ridiculed. “In high school, there are individuals who are cross-eyed like (the name of a fellow student) and (the name of the student previously mentioned), which is a dominant trait. We call those individuals ‘weirdoes’. So, if you crossed two weirdoes (the two students named again), that are heterozygous for being cross-eyed, what is the offspring that would result?” Many students in the class were targeted by first and last name on the exam. Teacher Alex Nguyen chose to describe these students by their ethnicities and physical features, and then paired them up, posing questions about what traits a theoretical child of these two students would have. On one question, the teacher wrote a disclaimer, saying “in no way do I promote students being sexually active,” but the student’s parents and other teachers at the school said that the implication of any sexual relationship between students is inappropriate.
I suspect there’s nuance or personal nicknames being lost from context here. I strongly doubt a teacher (unless they want to be fired) calls students out like this without prior development of the material.
But I’m sure my take is far too rational for the knee jerk wing of my peers.
I don’t think there’s anything close to room for nuance here. No matter how “friendly” you think you are with your students and how much you think they like you, this is not acceptable behavior from a high school teacher.
Teachers can just be cruel sometimes. Some of my worst bullys in school were teachers. One of my teachers meowed like a cat at my friend in front of the whole class to mock my friend for him meowing.