Teacher afraid of kids sues over middle-school job

[Rapture]

"A former high school teacher is accusing school district administrators of discriminating against her because of a rare phobia she says she has: a fear of young children. Maria Waltherr-Willard, 61, had been teaching Spanish and French at Mariemont High School in Cincinnati since 1976.
Waltherr-Willard, who does not have children of her own, said that when she was transferred to the district's middle school in 2009, the seventh- and eighth-graders triggered her phobia, causing her blood pressure to soar and forcing her to retire in the middle of the 2010-2011 school year.
In her lawsuit against the district, filed in federal court in Cincinnati, Waltherr-Willard said that her fear of young children falls under the federal American with Disabilities Act and that the district violated it by transferring her in the first place and then refusing to allow her to return to the high school.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages..."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57564082/teacher-afraid-of-kids-sues-over-middle-school-job/

WTF is this

Honestly, if you don't like kids...maybe... you shouldn't seek a teaching degree? She probably could've went to higher ups about asking for a transfer back to the high school if she hated middle school children so much. I really can't believe the idiodic things people will do to get their hands on some money today.

 

[Bambi]

you can be a teacher and not have to work with younger kids, which i think is fair enough. If she didnt want to work with them, then she should have been allowed to stay where she was or go soemwhere with oldr kids

While i think the phobia is a bit extreme, i can understand to an extent as i fucking hate young children yet I could still go into teaching but expect to go for high school ages. I wouldnt touch primary school teaching with a barge pole.

 

[Marquis of Granby]

this could be just about anyone. anxiety, high blood pressure...phobia of young children? bullshit. everyone seems to suffer from everything these days. insomnia, depression, you name it. and everyone seems to have a phobia too. i realise there's probably evidence to support the existence of all these petty phobias but if you pay too much attention to them you end up with idiots like this woman who feel they have become some sort of victim and think the world owes them something as a result of that.

there are people starving to death in the world, if the worst of your problems is that you're scared of young kids then it might be an idea to not become a teacher or better still wise the fuck up and be glad you have a job.

im not underestimating the irrationality of the human brain but like i said, when you pay too much attention to it you make people believe theyre victims and like this stupid cow, you make them believe they are actually disabled. everyone is unable to do some stuff, literally that makes us disabled, but we know that isnt what disabled means. lazy scrounging bitches like this are an insult to truly disabled people. it wouldnt surprise me in the slightest if she won her "undisclosed amount".

ps: teenagers are much much worse than younger kids.

 

[Soulcorruptor]

What the heck kind of non-sense is this now? I just read the article and it says she was treated for this back in 1991. If she was so concerned about her phobia being brought up she should have fought the transfer in the first place. And define little kids now. Cause at middle school age you aren't little anymore. It just seems like maybe she is trying to make an excuse because the middle schools kids were being a bit to roudy for her. So now she quit instead of seeking another kind of transfer to a different highschool. It seems she is just upset really that the highschool shut down her language she was teaching at the time, and asked her to teach the other one.

It really is ridiculous that she is trying to seek money when she quit in the first place. I mean she walked out of her own volition, no one forced her to do it. It would be different if she was fired for this, but she walked out. She choose this so she really shouldn't get anything from it. I hope the judge see this and tosses it out the window for how stupid this is.

 

[Lirael]

There aren't enough details in this report to judge whether or not the woman was unreasonable. She had been teaching in a high-school, thus avoiding younger children. I suppose she should have disagreed to take the job in the middle school - she knew she had a phobia - but she may not have realised children in the 7th and 8th grade would trigger anxiety. Perhaps she took a chance because she needed the money. It's a shame the course she was teaching went online. :/

It's not entirely the fault of the company if there's no work for her, just as it's not her fault she has a phobia of the children whom she had to teach after the job disappeared, so I wouldn't say they 'discriminated' against her. However, there are no details about how the company reacted to her phobia. Did they put pressure on her to transfer? How did they react when she informed them of her phobia? Did they threaten her in any way? It's a pretty compelx situation, really.

ps: teenagers are much much worse than younger kids.

I teach teenagers and I must disagree.

I have also tutored children aged 4 to 15...The younger kids are too needy for me. Teenagers pose a different kind of challenge; overcoming that challenge and engaging them is incredibly rewarding. (personal opinion, of course. )

 

[Will Graham]

It seems strange to me that a teacher can be moved from one type of school to another, that definitely couldn't happen here. One wouldn't be qualified to teach the other. If she knew she had that phobia I'm not sure teaching is the job for her, even if she loves it. Imagine a lifeguard who had that phobia being allowed to guard a beach

 

[Tyler Breeze]

Coming from a teen in high school, I'm gonna say....

Ehh. The biggest thing here is what most people said already, why not ask to go to another high school? Or refuse this job all together? I understand it might be a money situation, but if you know your phobia is this bad, why not seek out another high school job instead?

I'm not the biggest fan of small children, or even people my own age, but this is kinda crazy. I would feel honored knowing a taught a child something they'll remember, regardless of what age they are.

Then again, we were so crazy in middle school, I'm surprised we didn't give our teacher a phobia or some shit. After the year ended, she actually went to teach a first grade class!.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what to think of this yet.