Dress Code

I asked my students to follow two reasonable rules for Zoom class meetings:  1)  don't be in bed (on is ok, under the covers can be awkward) and 2) wear a shirt. What was this teacher thinking?

An East Side Union High School District teacher is on administrative leave after he appeared on camera bare-chested during a distance-learning class Friday.

Elizabeth Avila said her daughter, a freshman at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, signed on for her second math class of the academic year only to find her teacher shirtless, in violation of the dress code he himself had outlined just days earlier.

“She started feeling uncomfortable,” Avila said in a phone interview. “She couldn’t concentrate on the topic because all she was seeing was this old man on camera in her bedroom.”

The girl snapped a picture of the teacher and called her mother, who immediately contacted the school. Avila said she was told later that the teacher had been placed on administrative leave.

It was close to 107 degrees while I was at school today in the Sacramento area.  I was hit by a blast of heat when I opened my garage door at 7:00 this morning!  San Jose had a high of 103 degrees Friday, but that high would have occurred after school got out.  Let's stipulate that it was pretty warm in San Jose today.  It doesn't matter how hot the teacher was, he should know enough to wear a shirt.

“I was just glad that my daughter realized, ‘Hey, this isn’t right’ and said something,” Avila said.

“This should be one of those zero tolerance-type of things,” she continued. “He needs to be out. If he thinks this is OK, what more is going to happen later if we let it slide?”

Avila acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the education system – scores of children like hers are now learning remotely – but some things are “common sense.”

“Be professional,” she said. “Put a shirt on.”

Common sense...isn't, always.