Why is the teacher so angry in the first place?
Ummm... because a special needs student that she is
responsible for is hiding in a potentially unsafe (and unknown) location-- where she doesn't have continuous means of supervising and monitoring him for his safety and that of his classmates?
Sorry, but I'm still seeing this as a failure of emotional maturity on the part of the teacher. If this was really about student safety, that problem was solved the moment he came out of the closet. The teacher demonstrated severe EQ failure at a number of junctures:
- Child acknowledged the issue and apologized. It should have ended there. Teacher continued anyway.
- Child corrected a bad argument. Teacher escalated, dressing the child down publicly.
- After time had passed, the teacher, still wrapped up in anger, contacted the parent.
- The teacher escalated her behavior yet again when the parent didn't immediately go into contrition mode.
As I said, I agree with teaching your child to keep silent when an immature adult is ranting, as a way to cope with difficult people. The problem I have is this idea that it's somehow the child's fault the adult can't manage their emotions. It's not. He's the victim here.
When called on the bad fire alarm argument, the response of a mature, secure adult who isn't wrapped up in anger mode, who doesn't see a child as a threat, would be, "Fair point, but what about..."
