The Passion of Paul

THE FOLLOWING STORY SHOWS THAT SINCE TEACHER ABUSE HAS BECOME AN ACCEPTED PRACTICE IN OUR SCHOOLS, EVEN RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS PARTAKE IN IT EVEN THOUGH IT CONTRADICTS RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE. THUS, SIMPLY ENDING THE MONOPOLY OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS WILL NOT END THE INHERENT EVILS THAT MAKE OUR SCHOOLS WHAT THEY ARE TODAY - DISMAL. THE TRUTH MUST BE KNOWN OR WE CAN EXPECT EVIL PRACTICES TO CONTINUE TO DESTROY THE OPPORTUNITY FOR QUALITY EDUCATION IN AMERICA. NOT ONLY IS THIS FOLLOWING TEACHER DEVASTATED, BUT THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN WHO RESPECTED HIM YET FOUND OUT THAT RESPECTED PEOPLE ARE DISPOSABLE IN A SOCIETY WHERE MONEY AND POWER COME FIRST. THE LESSONS LEARNED IN OUR SCHOOLS INCLUDE THE LACK OF RESPECT FOR HUMAN DIGNITY AND THE WORSHIP OF MONEY AND POWER AS LONG AS THOSE WHO WORSHIP MONEY AND POWER RUN OUR SCHOOLS. WE MUST VALUE TEACHERS IF WE WANT QUALITY EDUCATION. NAPTA

I am a University of Notre Dame alumnus. I also have a Master of Arts in Teaching from Monmouth University. I successfully student taught in the last 6 months of their two year program to become a teacher graduating from it in January of 2005. I began the 2005-2006 school year as an 8th Grade Math and Religion teacher at Holy Trinity Catholic Middle School in Charlotte, North Carolina, as a first year teacher. I was also made the Assistant Wrestling Coach.

I taught two Algebra classes, an Honors Algebra class, one Pre-Algebra class and a Religion class. I put in place a seating chart in my A Period Algebra class. The daughter of DB got moved out of the front seat in this class and into a seat towards the middle of the room. A few students raised their hand and asked to have their seat moved. I told them that I wasn't moving anyone yet and that I would look into it later. I had begun the lesson for the day. DB's daughter raised her hand and asked to have her seat moved. I told her the same thing I had told the other students. She then said that she would have her mom call into the office. So I wrote up a lunch detention form and on it I wrote in the comments section "threatened to have her mom call the office to get her seat moved in class."

The day after DB's daughter went home with this form we had an assembly where a former student of the English teacher on our team Ms. M came in to give a presentation on the War on Terror, which he had served in. I was in the gym with the class for this assembly. Principal Br came up to me with tears in her eyes and dragged me out of the assembly into an office.

Principal Br was crying and she was taking her glasses on and off. She pulled out the lunch detention form and said that she had just got off the phone with DB. She said that he was furious about this. She said that he had refused to sign it, that he had been scared that it would go on some kind of permanent record. She said that she was concerned about my use of the word threatened. She said that "we" only use the word threatened if one is being physically threatened with violence. She said that she wanted me to call up Mr. DB and apologize and rip up the lunch detention. I agreed to this. Principal Br ended the meeting saying she was worried about this, that she was worried that this wasn't the end of it, and she said, "I worry that this will come back on us."

The Team Leader and Social Studies Teacher Mrs. Bl asked me what this had all been about that day, but I didn't go into it with her. Mrs. Bl said that she had never seen Mrs. Br so upset.

In that office by the gym I ripped up the lunch detention form and threw it away. I didn't make the daughter serve the lunch detention. I told her that when I was in school if we showed the teacher any sign of disrespect we got detention, and that since then things had changed a little. I moved the daughter back to the front of the class. I called the father and apologized. I explained the situation and that I had moved some of the students who needed the most assistance to the front.

Things seemed ok. Some days or weeks later the girl's mother walked across the room during a mass held in the gym in order to shake my hand after the Apostles Creed, at the Peace Be With You part of the mass. The DB daughter was infatuated with me. I never touched her though or was alone with her. I wouldn't have thought of something like that.

Mr. DB is a CPA, tax attorney, and estate planner in Charlotte. He also was introduced at a meeting which faculty and parents attended as heading a foundation that raised money for the school. He owned an investment bank and a law firm in Charlotte. He could get people to leave money in their wills to the school and the church.

It was a Monday and Mrs. Br had called all of the 8th grade math teachers to a meeting in her office. Principal Br. was a former English teacher who now taught one class at the school, while acting Principal, a class on needlepoint. She told us all that she wanted us to slow down. I was a few lessons behind the other two teachers in where I was in the material. This was due to my spending time to review fractions with the students as I had discovered that the students were getting questions involving multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction of fractions wrong as they had over-relied on calculators previously. These were areas that they should have known already entering Algebra. However the average Algebra student was missing between 25 to 50% of these questions. Mrs. Br said that the other two teachers had a bigger problem in slowing down at this point, and that my position was a better one to be in at that point. One of the three math teachers in the room, Mrs. S said that she had worked the state standards into lesson plans and asked about them. Mrs. Br told her that we didn't have to worry about the standards (as the school is a religious school).

A day or two later on 11/9 Mrs. Br had me come into her office to get a review back. She had me sign it right there and give the signed copy back to her. The review had positive comments on the lesson which noted the success of the lesson. Management of classroom behavior was marked at below standard despite student behavior having been great for the reviewed lesson. The lesson had been observed in October by Mrs. Br. It was unusual to get a review back so soon as Mrs. Bl had gotten a review back from the prior year at the beginning of the year.

The next day was November 10 th, the day of the night of Parent Teacher Conferences which were to begin at 6PM. I had taught all my classes for the day beginning with the A/A which is like homeroom, at 7:30 AM. It was 2:30 PM. I walked over to the Team Leader Mrs. Bl's room for the daily team meeting.

Mrs. Bl said, "Mrs. Br wants to see us in her office."

I asked if the other team members were going too, and Mrs. Bl told me that it was just her and me. We walked down to Mrs. Br's office.

Mrs. Br began the meeting saying that she was worried about how the Parent Teacher Conferences would go. She said that she thought the parents might get "violent." She said that she thought it would be like a "crucifixion." She said that her office had received phone calls from parents. She said that the parents of HH had complained that their son got a B in my Honors Algebra class, a class that went at an accelerated pace. She said that they said he had a tutor.

Other students in this class got an A. HH often didn't pay attention in class though. One time when I called on him for an answer while reviewing the homework, he said that he didn't do the assigned homework and just used the website.

Mrs. Br said that the mother of the girl for the time conflict meeting had complained that I was short with her in a meeting. I explained that this meeting had been set by Mrs. Bl on the same day that I had a meeting with Mrs. Br, the meeting in which we moved some students out of Algebra and into Pre-algebra. The parent had canceled the meeting that had been set up and it had had to be rescheduled by Mrs. Bl to this date. I notified Mrs. Bl in advance of both the time conflict and the fact that if the meeting went over a certain time limit that I would have to walk out in order to attend my meeting with Mrs. Br. The meeting with Mrs. Br. was also more important, it was a meeting I had been trying to set up for a while with her unsuccessfully in order to move some students out of Algebra into Pre-Algebra. Most of these students told me that they should have been placed into Pre-Algebra and that their prior math teachers had thought they should be placed there, but their parents had overridden this by going to Principal Br. The mother of the girl in the meeting I had to leave just needed to be told and shown that her daughter wasn't doing the homework and I did this and showed it to her effectively. In fact Mrs. D. had caught the daughter trying to do the homework due on the day that the mother canceled coming in, in AA which was a violation of the rules. This student also had a history of problems in math. The guidance counselor had even told me at the beginning of the year that this student would probably fail math. In this meeting after class switches were discussed, Principal Br stated that I should have a good idea which students were the A, B and C students and that that was how the grades should be given out A, B, and C. This went against the policies handed down from the High School for us to use where the students would be given the grades that they got, A through E. I didn't profile students and assign grades accordingly. I gave the students the grades they got. Mrs. Bl expressed concern on 11/10 that Ms. L and I, both in our first year at the school had given out some Ds and Es on the first report card issued towards the end of the prior week.

Mrs. Br. said that she didn't think I should meet with the parents. Mrs. Br. asked Mrs. Bl what she thought.

Mrs. Bl said that she didn't think I should meet with the parents, that what we should do was put out a piece of paper as a list, get the names of the parents, and have them come back to meet with her and I. I told them that I wanted to go out there for Parent Teacher Conferences and that I would be fine.

They both ordered me not to go out there. They got me to agree not to go out there. They came up with the idea of telling people that I had gotten sick.

Mrs. Br then asked Mrs. Bl to leave the room saying that she wanted to speak with me alone.

Mrs. Br said, "I want you to do the right thing."

I asked her what the right thing was.

Mrs. Br said, "I want you to resign."

I said, "I am not going to resign."

Mrs. Br said, "Stick around, within the next few weeks I will find something to write up on you so that you will never be able to get a teaching job again."

I began to shake.

Mrs. Br said, "I will deny having said it. Mrs. Bl, she'll back me up. She thinks your perception of reality is sometimes off. Remember that incident where a girl bumped into you by the top of the stairs. She told me about that and how you told the girl that she could have knocked you over the rail. Mrs. Bl says that that wasn't the case and that it didn't need to be said."

I asked for a piece of paper. I wrote down that I was forced to resign. Mrs. Br stated that if I wrote down that I was forced to resign that she wouldn't give me a good recommendation; that in fact she would give me a bad recommendation as the resignation letter had to go to the front office. She said that if I wrote down that I had resigned she would give me a recommendation to teach higher than 7th and 8th and lower than those two grades but not for those two grades. She said that the parents of the students and the other teachers had told her that I really knew my math.

So I crossed out several versions and asked for several pieces of paper and under her threat of finding something to write up on me so that I would never get a teaching job again, wrote down that I resigned.

Before handing her this "letter" I demanded to know the real reason.

"What is the real reason?", I demanded holding the paper out to her and pulling it back. I repeated this question a few times, once stating that I demanded or wanted to know the real reason.

"The lunch detention incident. Remember how I said this might come back. It did. It was that." She told me that I was the second hardest working person they had there. I also demanded that she call my parents and tell them that, that she was doing this, and why.

I went to my third floor classroom to clear my personal belongings out of the room. I sat at the Teacher's Desk one last time. Sitting there I looked at the computer.

The thought ran through my mind, as it had in Mrs. Br's office, as she had said that they didn't know what they were going to do about a math teacher now, that they were going to try to blame me for their not having a math teacher. I looked at the computer and thought about the website. I posted to the myteacherweb.com section that I was allowed to post announcements on, "Let it be known that I was forced to resign, I did not desert the students." I printed this out and signed it in front of a notary the next day.

I packed my books and stapler in a bag and brought them to my car. I made another trip up the three flights of stairs to the classroom. I lifted my big black mini-refrigerator and brought it out into the hall. Mrs. D, the computer teacher who was in the room next to mine saw me. I told her that I had been blackmailed into resigning by Mrs. Br. She said that she was sorry. She offered to help me as she had an elevator key. So she enabled the elevator to work so that I could bring the mini-refrigerator to the ground floor. I lifted the mini-refrigerator and went outside. Ms. M had just exited her car and was approaching the entrance to the building. She saw me carrying the refrigerator. I told Ms. M that I had been blackmailed into resigning. She expressed surprise. She told me that the best thing I could do from here on was to put all of my efforts into finding a new job, because if I thought about this it would tear me up. She told me not to fight it. She said that she wanted Holy Trinity to still be there. I stated that she was planning to retire. She said that she had to maintain her relationship with the school to get tutoring referrals.

That weekend there was a message from Ms. Mc on my answering machine. Ms. Mc is the Mathematics Department Chair and a 7th grade math teacher. She stated that she had heard a rumor that people had been saying at the Parent Teacher Conferences that I had resigned. I told her what had happened and she apologized. She said that she had heard stories of Mrs. Br doing this kind of thing to other teachers when she was alone with them.

On 11/12 I emailed the Superintendent C letting her know that Mrs. Br had forced my resignation and I offered in this email to come speak to her about problems at her school, problems detrimental to the learning of every child at the school. Mrs. C didn't take me up on this offer.

I also sent a few emails to Mrs. Br disagreeing with her decision and move here. Ms. M told me that Mrs. Br ripped all of the student created posters made during a few religion classes off of the walls after having read the emails. Ms. M said that she had never seen her so upset.

I thought about what a person in my position would do if I the person was the main character in a book. The answer I came up with was that the person would call the school and let the other teachers know what had happened. I had attempted to call the school to let the other teachers on the Apostles Team that I was on know what had happened. The secretary of Mrs. Br and the wife of Mr. C a bigwig at Charlotte Catholic answered the phone saying, "Hi, Paul" and put my call through to something that immediately hung up on me. She never told me not to call.

So one day about a week or so after 11/10 I called the school early in the morning before she was there. I was able to get through to the answering machine for Mrs. Bl and some of the other teachers there. I left messages for them telling them what Mrs. Br had done. That day I got a call from a Charlotte Police Officer, Officer Beamer. He told me not to call the school and claimed that I had made threatening phone calls and emails. This was not so.

I told about 4 or 5 parents that I had been blackmailed into resigning and one student that I ran into.

On the day that Bishop J was supposed to come to a church in the area I went to the church with the idea of speaking with him. I went to the church and requested to speak with a priest. The idea was that maybe a religious figure could actually get the school to act ethically here. Monsignor Mc was brought out to speak with me. I told him what had happened. He told me that he would set up a meeting between myself, Superintendent Mrs. C and Monsignor W . He told me that if I went out and told people what had happened that they could say things about me. He said this without knowing if they had anything bad that they could legitimately say about me. He also told me that they had been running schools for a long time and knew what they were doing.

Mrs. C, Monsignor W and I met in the office of the Charlotte Archdiocese. Monsignor W opened the meeting saying that he couldn't imagine why I wanted to talk. I told him that I had been treated unfairly. I told Superintendent Mrs. C and Monsignor W that Mrs. Br had blackmailed me into resigning saying that the lunch detention I had given to the daughter of DB was the reason she was doing this. Mrs. C told me to write this up in a letter to her but my lawyer told me not to write the letter, that instead he would work with me to send them an affidavit. He was tied up in a federal case at the time though. I contacted him to work with me on producing an affidavit, but he was too busy.

On December 15th Mr. Richard A. Lucey, the lawyer for the school, sent me a letter threatening to seek the issuance of criminal process pursuant to North Carolina Statutes Section 14-196 if I emailed or called personnel of the school or the parents of students who were in my class. Not one parent or teacher had told me not to call them prior to this letter.

I filed an EEOC Complaint with the Charlotte Office stating that I believed I had been discriminated against due to my sex, male. In the response to this complaint issued by Mr. L for the school, Mr. L stated that Mrs. Br had accepted my resignation because students had had to be switched off of The Apostles Team while I was there. Not one student had been switched off of the Apostles Team while I was there though. There were about 100 students on the Apostles Team. The Apostles Team of Teachers consisted of myself, Mrs. Bl, Ms. M, and Ms. L. So each of these teachers would know that that isn't what happened. Also the teachers on the other teams would know that isn't what happened, as well as the students and their parents. Contrary to the statement issued by the school not one student had been switched off of the team while I was there. So at the direction of Principal Br the Catholic School has born false witness in an apparent attempt to obstruct a federal investigation or inquiry. In the response statement the school also lied in stating that I had told Mrs. Br that I had been fired from other teaching jobs. As I never held a prior full time teaching job and had never been fired from a prior teaching job this both wasn't something that was true and wasn't something that I said. Once again Principal Br has born false witness in the name of the Catholic Church.

Principal Br has in my view prostituted the Principal position. As a result of her actions about 100 students were left without a math teacher for over two weeks. One parent told me they had a different substitute in the classroom most days, different than the one from the prior day. They then after those two weeks I believe, hired a teacher who lasted I believe only 9 days in the position, Mr. Ko. Then they got a Mr. T to teach math there who began I believe in January of 06 after they got back from New Year's Day off. As a result of Mrs. Br's actions I have been defamed. I have been both libeled and slandered. Mrs. Br has put the Archdiocese of Charlotte in the position of lying and bearing false witness in the name of the church. Two Monsignors and the Superintendent Mrs. C failed to stop this. Instead they continue to let the church officially bear false witness against me. I believe the parents and students of Holy Trinity Catholic Middle School have been lied to as the Principal and Administration has born false witness, breaking a Commandment as well as the legal and ethical rules of both their profession and society in general in the United States of America.

At a bar I met a daughter of a teacher in the Catholic School system in Charlotte. She told me that she had attended Charlotte Catholic, the school that Holy Trinity feeds into. She said that her math teacher there when she was there had been fired and that the school changed all the student grades to A's from lower grades, after having fired the math teacher.

I now seek a lawyer in Charlotte and/or federally to file suit on a contingency basis against the Archdiocese of Charlotte, Principal Br, Holy Trinity Catholic Middle School, and DB for wrongful termination, tortuous interference, defamation of character, libel, slander, blackmail, and freedom of speech violations among possibly other legal issues. I believe that the Catholic Education system is in need of major reform. I believe that some of the influence peddling that I believe goes on should be avoided and that there needs to be a better separation of contributions and payments as well as parental concerns from control. Catholic Schools need Principals who act ethically. I don't believe that they need unethical bearers of false witness like Mrs. Br. I believe that Mrs. Br has sacrificed academic excellence as she has (and I am making an analogy here), I believe played prostitute to parents and donors. The parents of the select few should not along with their kids run the school, at the expense of the majority of the students.

I would also like to mention that I found a group and a website http://www.endteacherabuse.info/ that seeks to prevent teacher abuse from taking place. I found that there are other teachers out there who have apparently been abused in their positions by corrupt administrators. I believe that teachers should be treated with more respect and that this is crucial to the success of our education system.

Mr. Paul Amann can be reached at paul_amann@hotmail.com.

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