It's a pity conservatives in the Kansas town of Conway Springs are such ridiculous helicopter parents. They're calling for teacher Tom Leahy's resignation because he showed kids a video that perfectly illustrated the costs bullying exacts on people.
A Conway Springs teacher has been asked to resign after showing students an anti-bullying film that depicts a fictional world in which heterosexual children are bullied by homosexual classmates.
Tom Leahy, a social studies teacher at Conway Springs Middle School, is on leave and likely won’t return to teaching because the controversial video “upset too many people,” he said Monday.
“I knew something was going to happen. I just didn’t know this would happen,” Leahy said.
Conway Springs Superintendent Clay Murphy confirmed Monday that Leahy was on leave but would not disclose the reason or say whether the teacher is being paid. Leahy, 56, has taught in Conway Springs since 1997. He had planned to retire after this school year, he said.
“He’s on leave, and that’s about all I can tell you,” Murphy said. “He’s not in the classroom right now.”
The Conway Springs school board is set to meet Nov. 9, at which point it is expected to accept the teacher’s resignation, Leahy said. Calls to several board members, including board president Eddie Allen and vice president Bill Dalbom, were not returned Monday.
The video, embedded above, imagines a world where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is viewed as aberrant and sinful. It follows Ashley, a middle schooler as she narrates the film, through a happy childhood, her realization that she's heterosexual, and the bullying that ensues from it.
The end is disturbing, but no more bloody than most PG-13 movies. What makes it disturbing is the predictable ending, where there's actually a consequence -- a life-altering, unchanging consequence -- to what the bullies do to Ashley.
This teacher deserves a medal for showing this film. Watch all 17 minutes of it, all the way to the end and the text trailer that follows the last scene. Every example in the film was taken from a real-life example of a child being bullied.
It's profoundly moving, or at least it was to me. If these parents can't handle their children seeing the truth, then they're the ones who should resign, not Mr. Leahy.
[h/t Raw Story]
