DUMB AND DUMBER
Dumb teachers update. It was a “ghost story gone horribly wrong.
A teacher and assistant principal who frightened sixth-grade students on a class trip by telling them a gunman was on the loose were staging a prank, a spokeswoman for the schools said.
The school district’s statement reversed earlier statements by the assistant principal that it was planned as a learning experience.
Teacher Quentin Mastin came up with the prank, said Murfreesboro City School District spokeswoman Cheryl Harris. It was his turn to tell a scary story to 69 sixth-graders from Scales Elementary School who were on a weeklong trip at Fall Creek Falls State Park.
He decided to pretend there was someone shooting a gun. The children were called into the common area and told there were two men driving around shooting randomly. Then a teacher told the students to “do a code red” — a school emergency drill — and they got under the tables and turned off the lights.
Another teacher drove a car up to the building and flashed the headlights while a third put a sweat shirt over her head and rattled the doors. That’s when some of the children started crying.
2 Responses to “DUMB AND DUMBER”
 Comment by COD May 16th, 2007 at 7:05 pm |
Why are 6th graders on a school sponsored overnight with teachers? It’s bad enough that parents outsource education to the govt, but now they outsource going to the park too? |
 Comment by Sarah May 18th, 2007 at 12:19 pm |
For what it’s worth, COD, my school had an annual 5th grade camping trip (about 150 kids went each year) — and my brother and sister attend a school district with an annual 5th grade camping trip. From what I understand both have been doing that for years; amongst other things, they’re trying to get these kids (many of whom have never been camping; some haven’t ever gone on a hike) a sense of nature and so forth. Admittedly, these are urban Southern California kids, but still. We were psyched on our trip; it was late May and we got snowed in. They had to replace our horse riding lessons with skiing lessons. There have been rumblings about this gunman hoax turning out to be a prank for a while now — apparently there’s some kind of annual prank tradition in the district in question. (I’m surprised at the low-key reaction on the part of the district — kids who call in bomb threats are arrested these days, but teachers who say there’s a gunman on the loose lose two weeks’ of pay?) |