Gave his students a dose of reality and one student can’t take it.
Via Philly Com:
Hundreds of students walked out at Cherry Hill High School East Tuesday morning, in the second day of protests sparked by the suspension of a beloved but controversial teacher who spoke out against security issues there following the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
The walkout at the 2,200-student school was orderly, with students chanting “Free Locke!” and talking among themselves. It ended around 9:30 a.m. when students filed back into the school’s auditorium.
Principal Dennis Perry then listened to the students’ comments in a public-forum setting, while students explained their effort to bring teacher Timothy Locke back to the classroom, according to parents of children in attendance.
Locke, 59, said he was placed on administrative leave on Thursday after a student became upset when he discussed the Parkland shooting in his history class and expressed his fear that a similar crime could happen at the Cherry Hill school.
“The bottom line is that I was very concerned about the security at my school,” Locke said Monday. “I was adamantly concerned with the welfare of my students.”
A video posted to a township Facebook forum today from within the auditorium shows students questioning why the principal threatened to suspend students and bar them from attending prom and senior trips if they joined in the protest.
“I’ll say it again, this right now is a protest where your voice is being heard. A protest where your voice will not be heard is when you are blocking some of the 2,200 students from going to point a to point b — that isn’t a protest,” the principal replied to jeering students.
The early-morning walkout was just one of the many efforts on behalf of the students to support Locke. A petition on Change.org garnered more than 1,100 signatures in just one day.[…]
A student of Locke’s, Selig said the teacher spoke of school shootings on occasion, though students never felt unsafe. He read online that Locke was made to undergo a psych evaluation after his most recent comments.
“I haven’t heard one person on the internet or anywhere today say one bad thing about him,” he said. “The administration has no bearing on why they put him on leave.”
“I remember when I was in school he basically said he would take a bullet for any of his students,” Selig said. “He cares about his students from the bottom of his heart.”
HT: Deplorable&AdorableNavyGal