Teacher: I Was Fired Over A Bumper Sticker

Children are over medicated and experimented with in an effort to control and some cases ignore.

How much ya wanna bet that if she had 60+ "Jesus Saves" and "Jesus Died for YOU" and Jesus fish stickers.... no one would blink an eye?

if anyone can tell me where to get this bumper sticker I will mail them a hug.

It is a wonder that the human race still exists with this much stupidity in the world. This level of ignorance disgusts me. Anyone who thinks it was OK to fire the teacher or to make her give up her first amendment rights is so stupid as to be a danger to society. You people who support the firing of this teacher are far too ignorant to understand the true meaning of freedom. Your idiocy depresses me.

OT and im sorry but... what kind of person puts 61 bumper stickers on their car? I don't think she should have been fired for what was on the bumper stickers but FFS.. 61?

I don't think this is something to be FIRED over. However, she did refuse to take it off, which she should have known would undoubtedly cause conflict.
Once again though, there are far worse things being paraded around in today's world.
If you follow the First Amendment, she should not have been fired over this, whether she's a teacher or not.

No common sense, deserved to be have been fired. Of course parents who put their kids on drugs are going to be overly sensitive to this sticker.

In many ways I’m pretty counter culture so I can relate to the desire to express myself amongst overwhelming opposition. That being said there is a time and place, a mode of operation, and a healthy respect for common sense that has to be observed when trying to be an advocate of unpopular things. Unfortunately bumper stickers are the bumper stickers of the exchange of information. In others words they’re a crappy, one way, self satisfying dry hump that really doesn’t help out your position.

They’re used by people that want to be identified by likeminded individuals or they’re simply used to troll haters. In the case of this article I’m pretty sure this teacher was going for the later effect. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. As a teacher you would expect her to understand that parents can be extremely sensitive about their children, especially when the subject matter revolves around mental illness and whatever personal feelings of shame and or guilt that are naturally felt by the parent.

Now here is where that common sense thing comes into the equation. If you’re the state appointed teacher of some parents child and you want to keep your job you can either

Not park your car on school grounds.
Find a better way to spread your beliefs.
Not be so butt hurt about what other people do.

Its really that simple.

This teacher would probably be the first to complain if one of her students wore a shirt to school with a picture or slogan she didn't agree with.

Like the American flag or the 2nd amendment.

This figures. AZ. The name of the town says it all. The teacher lost her job. "Surprise, you're fired." As long as this teacher didn't express her views in class, she did nothing wrong. I'm a housekeeper who cleans for rich Reps and I've had several different anti- Bush bumper stickers on my car during his 8 years and I always said "I leave my politics at the car." I never discuss politics with the people I clean for. All my clients are Reps except for 2. I keep telling my friend to get the hell out of AZ. She needs to come back home. I'm new here. I just started posting yesterday. I'll stop in later when I get home from work. Have a nice day everyone. This site has alot of good stories and everyone here seems nice. :)

Parents were only offended because it probably hit a little too close to home.
What's interesting is the posts under the story. They're all from students and teachers at the school. Most of them seem to support her, and are confused by her dismissal.

So Arizona fired a someone that has been teaching for 7 years because of a bumper sticker? That is BS! If she can tolerate educating other peoples children, then she should be able to have that sticker on her car as long as she keeps that out of the classroom. Parents need to get over themselves.

What is in the water in Arizona?

I can agree with the teacher that American children are over medicated, however there is a time/place for every thing! She is rather opinionated. I think that she used poor judgment in addressing her concerns.......

Suing is an american passtime so schools are scared shitless of incurring those costs win lose or draw , often underfunded they simply cannot afford to be dealing with them from parents.

That being said , I believe her firing had less to do with her civil rights and more to do with her telling her boss to fuck him or herself (not that she necessarily used those words) when she refused to remove the bumper sticker.

Teachers are on contract , that means for she should have retained a solicitor to see where she stood , for her own good.

This just goes to show how far America has come. We used to be seen as the tough, gritty, grind it out society. Now were a bunch of overgrown crybabies that need to cry and complain about EVERYTHING! What the hell happend to sucking it up, or freedom of speech for that matter.

As I've written elsewhere, http://peaceconsortium.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/David-Gabbard-Pg-119-126.p... if you want to teach, you'd better find a community where everybody has the same standards and those standards match your own. You don't want to offend anyone.

Imagine a teacher being fired over some Tea Party bumper sticker. Or an anti-Obama bumper sticker.

Funny how it's always the Right who persecutes teachers over these issues. Maybe the left needs to become more vocal in expressing outrage over right wing teachers and their bumper stickers. There won't be any teachers left.

Who do our communities belong to? Who decides the standards for an entire community? I wish the courts would consider those issues before they sided with "the community" over and over and over.

hahahahahahah

i love this person!

Arizona again, huh?

are kids are so drugged up. I guarantee half the kids in her class take 3 different prescriptions daily. mostly because parents are too god damn lazy and self absorbed to do actual parenting to they find some disorder to explain why their kid is a piece of shit

On January 7, 2011, an English teacher at Imagine Prep (Surprise, AZ) was fired for refusing to remove at least one bumper sticker from her car. It seems that, in the two months that she had been teaching at this school, a group of approximately five parents united to vocalize their opposition to bumper stickers on this teacher’s car, which they found offensive. The car, which hosts a total of 61 stickers, range in
content from environmental, to feminist, to LGBT matters, to political, to religious, to non-categorical. Three particular bumper stickers were addressed in meetings between the teacher, principal, vice principal, and Regional Director, and the teacher was placed on paid administrative leave for a day after refusing to move her car off campus. In the final meeting, the Regional Director, Linda Kiefner, issued
a directive: Remove at least one bumper sticker from the car (“Have you drugged your kid today?”) or park off campus for the remainder of the year. (The other two bumper stickers in question – one being political and the other being religious in nature – were omitted from the final order.) When the teacher refused to do either on the grounds that this directive was a violation of her First Amendment rights, she was immediately fired.

so in other words she was first told to park off campus. she refused. she was again told if you want to keep your bumper stickers then you must park of campus. she refused. she was then fired.

It doesn't surprise me this happened in Arizona. That state has lost it's mind... I don't mean to demean any of you who are citizens... Arizona is a beautiful state but the legislation coming out of the state recently is mind boggling and I feel sorry for those who will suffer under Gov. Jan Brewer and her cronies.

The political environment inside the education system is the worst I've ever seen.

How can I get one of those bumper stickes?

God damn babies those parents are!! i'd have to say after reading so much news from current, 70% of America comes off as big babies that should never be given a chance to make any kind of decision other than when to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom.

Surprise, Ariz.? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the same town where some residents complained about a black kid on a school mural being more prominent than the white kids? And for a brief period of time, the superintendent was going to have the mural repainted until people howled about it?

What an amazing coincidence!

How the helll did we end up with Arizona? We loose a war or something? What? We won a war. Well then build a fence around the east, north, and west boundries and give it back to Mexico.

Wow, it's been a tough week for teachers. Where are all the Conservatives who decry that they have the right to say whatever they like with zero consequences? Oh I know, they are firing teachers for having an independent thought and voicing it.

Really disgusting! Uptight and ignorant parents complain, and most likely the ones who are not really involved with their kids; then someone who is most likely a good teacher gets fired.

I really get so tired of conservative, right-wingers trying to enforce their thinking and beliefs onto everybody else! And no, I don't know for "certain" those are who complained, but I find it highly unlikely that it would have been done by liberal parents.

She has every right to have whatever she wants on her car. I sincerely doubt that there is a clause in her contract that says she cannot place certain types of bumper stickers on her car!

Well of course. Why do laxe and lazy parents want to be reminded about their lack of parenting skills? Drugging kids is so much easier than raising them. This is shameful!

First, one teacher get's fired because of a facebook photo of her drinking a beer, and now this.

Don't they know there is a shortage of teachers?

If you want to fire some, fire the ones who don't know how to teach.

Typical Red state.

They are invasive to their own people then they point and say democrats are for big government.

Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Just because you work in a classroom does not mean it has to rule one's entire life. Not to mention I sincerely doubt any case against her would fly in court so why is the school doing this, becuase the parents threw a fit or because the principal is an ass? Probably both I hope she sues.