{"id":611,"date":"2018-12-19T02:26:10","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T02:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=611"},"modified":"2018-12-22T20:06:12","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T20:06:12","slug":"as-real-as-it-gets-by-scott-hogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/12\/19\/as-real-as-it-gets-by-scott-hogan\/","title":{"rendered":"As Real As It Gets by Scott Hogan"},"content":{"rendered":"
Scott Hogan is a Math and Physics teacher in a public high school.<\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

As Real as It Gets<\/h3>\n

It was the start of a new school year.\u00a0 I sat next to the new chemistry teacher, Dr. Sayid.\u00a0 He was in his early 60\u2019s, with gray hair, about 5 and a half ft. tall.\u00a0 I had been at the school for 4 years and this was the 4th<\/sup> chemistry teacher in that time\u2014a new one each year.<\/p>\n

The first one was enormously overweight and died in the middle of the year.\u00a0 His name was Mr. Vickers.\u00a0 He was in a wheelchair most of the time.\u00a0 The 2nd<\/sup> one was named Mr. Bond.\u00a0 He had long hair and a braided ponytail and lived by himself.\u00a0 He was from South Carolina and had a southern accent.\u00a0 He was an odd bird, showing off pictures of his pet monkey to students.\u00a0 The third one was Mr. Flowmax, an African American man in his late 30\u2019s.\u00a0 He had worked in boarding schools and considered himself a superior human being.\u00a0 His method of communication was sarcasm, as he acted above everyone else.\u00a0 He sat in his room at lunch and played chess by himself.\u00a0 He once asked me if I had any heroes, and I did not know what he meant.\u00a0 \u201cDidn\u2019t you watch Hogan\u2019s Heroes on TV?\u201d he asked me.\u00a0 Then he gave me a sarcastic laugh and said \u201cthat was before my time.\u201d\u00a0 I never spoke more than 2 sentences to him the entire year.\u00a0 Students hated him.<\/p>\n

Dr. Sayid was different.\u00a0 He was from Egypt, soft-spoken, with a distinct hard-to-understand accent.\u00a0 He had worked for the Department of Water Quality in Arizona and also worked in an inner city high school teaching chemistry for several years.\u00a0 He had a doctorate in environmental studies from University of Arizona.\u00a0 Kind and deeply knowledgeable about chemistry, he was a bit of a loner, eating lunch by himself in his room each day.<\/p>\n

The first 2 weeks of school I visited his classroom each day, in the morning and after school.\u00a0 He was teaching juniors and seniors in AP and Honors Chemistry classes.\u00a0 He had a list of math problems I borrowed for bell work.\u00a0 My favorite was this one\u2014\u201cIf 20 mits equal 1 erb, 1 satz equals 2 levs, and 10 erbs equal 1 satz, how many mits are equivalent to 5 levs?\u201d\u00a0 He complained each day that his lab lacked the proper equipment; it had only 8 glass beakers, some old triple beam balances and a handful of sensors.\u00a0 In his quiet way, he was discouraged about the paltry chemistry supplies.\u00a0 I noticed he was using handouts from modeling chemistry, a fancy pedagogy, and I told him it might be too hard for the students, but he didn\u2019t listen.<\/p>\n

The teacher who ran the STEM Club last year had left and I volunteered to run this year\u2019s STEM Club along with Dr. Sayid.\u00a0 We had a banner made and posted it in my classroom.\u00a0 Announcements were made over the intercom for our Tuesday lunch time meetings.\u00a0 We got 5 students to attend.\u00a0 We met for three Tuesdays.\u00a0 He told the students \u201cthere is a difference between struggling and not trying!\u201d as we tried to motivate them to design experiments.\u00a0 We discussed events students would like to do at our district STEM CON festival in February.<\/p>\n

The next day, Wednesday, the 3rd<\/sup> week of school, I was sitting next to Dr. Sayid in our PLC meeting.\u00a0 He looked worried and agitated but said nothing.\u00a0 He was called to the principal\u2019s office and walked out of the room.<\/p>\n

That was the last I saw of him.\u00a0 By the middle of the day, he had quit.\u00a0 I learned this when a few new students were transferred into my 4th<\/sup> period class.\u00a0 His classes had been disbanded and all his students were sent to other teacher\u2019s classrooms.\u00a0 No longer would there by AP Chemistry or Honors Chemistry.<\/p>\n

No one knew what happened.\u00a0 His name is still posted on the door, but the room itself is locked and he will not be replaced.\u00a0 I went in to see the principal on Friday of that same week to inquire about what happened to Dr. Sayid and she told me \u201cFor privacy reasons I can\u2019t talk about it, but Dr. Sayid is no longer here.\u201d\u00a0 Administration never said a word to any of us about what had happened.<\/p>\n

A few days later at lunch, I asked Mitch, an anatomy teacher, if he knew anything about Mohamed\u2019s leaving the school. He had heard rumors that Dr. Mohamed did not feel respected or supported at the school.\u00a0 He had heard that Dr. Sayid had gotten into an argument with one of his students who was making fun of his last name and calling him a \u201ccrazy Muslim\u201d and a \u201cterrorist.\u201d\u00a0 Students had apparently made fun of his accent with his soft-spoken, hard to understand manner of speech.\u00a0 They had complained to their parents and parents called for a meeting with the principal.\u00a0 The final straw was a parent that had yelled at Dr. Sayid in a meeting with the principal \u201cYou can\u2019t teach and my daughter can\u2019t understand you\u201d.\u00a0 That meeting was on Wednesday, his last day, the very day he left the PLC.<\/p>\n

Either way, Dr. Sayid is gone.\u00a0 The students had won.\u00a0 Once they started complaining and making fun of him, once the disrespect took its course, it only took the first 3 weeks of school to get to him and he was gone.\u00a0 How quickly we can be flushed down the toilet as teachers\u2014and no one standing up for us.\u00a0 Despite all his qualifications, the kids had gotten to him with their disrespect.\u00a0 There were a few ways he could fight back\u2014join the teacher\u2019s union or hire a lawyer–but Dr. Mohammed did not fight back at all\u2014he just quit and walked away.<\/p>\n

I found his home address on the web at \u201cpeople finder\u201d and sent him a card with a note, telling him we were concerned about him and what happened and gave him an email address to get in touch.<\/p>\n

It is a week later now and I have not heard anything from him.\u00a0 As of now, no one is talking about him and it\u2019s as if he was never here.<\/p>\n

As a follow up to this story, today the tech came into my room looking for Dr. Mohamed and wanted to get his laptop.\u00a0 I told him I had not seen him since last Wednesday.\u00a0 The tech had been told by the principal\u2019s secretary that Dr. Sayid had given his 2 week notice and was around campus.\u00a0 This was completely false information.\u00a0 My sense is that is what administration was telling parents or anyone who asked, to protect themselves.<\/p>\n

By chance I went into the chemistry room yesterday and found this note on the desk dated August 29, 2018:<\/p>\n

Fulton High Chemistry Parents:<\/p>\n

Due to unforeseen circumstances Dr. Mohammed will no longer be teaching at Fulton High School.\u00a0 Today, August 29, we met with all students and moved them to other chemistry classes or other upper level science classes of their choosing.<\/p>\n

We are sorry for any inconvenience, please call us if you have any questions.<\/p>\n

Administration<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Scott Hogan 9\/7\/18<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Hogan is a Math and Physics teacher in a public high school.   As Real as It Gets It was the start of a new school year.\u00a0 I sat next to the new chemistry teacher, Dr. Sayid.\u00a0 He was in his early 60\u2019s, with gray hair, about 5 and a half ft. tall.\u00a0 I … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-9R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":624,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions\/624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}