The Ryan Bryce Comment

One of the more interesting twists in the Pillai-Diaz Affair thus far has been a comment left at Just on the Other Side, in which the writer claims to be a student of Shiba Pillai-Diaz’s. According to Allan (the site’s proprietor) the initial litmus test — IP Address — passed. Whoever it was was posting from New Jersey Comcast. There are, in my mind, three options as to the origin of this letter. The individual is, indeed, a student in Pillai-Diaz’s class and wrote the post himself. He’s a student in Pillai-Diaz’s class and some adult (probably parents) had some role in the letter. It’s someone else entirely and it’s a fraud. I guess the best thing to do would be to look at the letter and see what we can find out.

First, though, a little background. Pillai-Diaz is a 7th and 8th grade teacher. This is her first year at Crossroads Middle School. It’s the beginning of the year. This means that the student can be NO OLDER than early 8th grade. If the student is actually in 7th grade, he’s only been there a short time. So let’s have a look at the actual post and see what we can find out. (Before we go there, however, I’m going to point out that I’m a Computer Science major. I’m not in education. I’m not in linguistics. So, really, I’m relatively worthless as far as determining whether this is actually reasonable for a child of that age.)

As a student in the middle school class of Shiba Pillai-Diaz, I was shocked when I read the original press release on what went on in Crossroads Middle School for the following reasons.

Though we don’t know it yet, it’s interesting to note that the only “press release” that has been issued is the one by South Brunswick Schools Superintendent Gary P. McCartney.

Regarding the reasons behind why middle school teacher Shiba Pillai-Diaz was dismissed from the Crossroads Middle School. Every day the administration of my school faces the staggering logistics of preparing a total of 2100 students for a high school which recently moved up to the rank of 49th statewide.

There’s some awkwardness of the sentence structure here (at the end of the last quote, beginning of this one) but the thing that catches my eye is this: what does a 13 year old know about the “staggering logistics” of a school system?

It causes trouble enough when a teacher is absent for a single day, so then, why would the school board fire a teacher- especially on grounds as trivial as that of posting a portrait of President Bush in a classroom. The fact of the matter is that they didn’t. Diaz was dismissed, just for very different reasons.

Everything we’ve seen so far, except for the latter-half of Pillai-Diaz’s talks with the media, say that she’s NOT been fired or dismissed. That may be on its way down the pipe, but she’s not there yet, as far as we know.

The administration of Crossroads Middle School had been prompted to remove her from the teaching staff and had been contemplating the idea for several days before the alleged parent-teacher night confrontation which Diaz claimed was the catalyst for the actions taken by the school.

Was the school’s “Back-to-School night program” a “Parent Teacher Conference” or was it an “Open House”? Would this be a reasonable thing for a student in the school to call it?

But why? The answer as to why Pillai-Diaz was dismissed surfaced nearly every time she taught a class period. It started on the first day of school, when several students, myself included, inquired as to why there was a picture of the president, as well as multiple other political material (including a plush red, white and blue elephant, and posters) in a writing classroom.

So far the only “political material” is the elephant — and let’s note that this allegation is that the first confrontation was made on the first day of school with a new teacher. How ballsy are kids these days? To confront a teacher on everyone’s first day?

I pointed out that the material very overtly represented the Republican party, whereas there was no media relating to the Democratic party evident in the room.

This may be a 13 year old trying to write like an adult, but there’s something about this sentence that doesn’t scream “Junior High.”

I brought to her attention that myself and several of my compatriots were democrats and that we were insulted by only one party being displayed in the classroom. Upon hearing this, Diaz launched into a defensive in which she told me “I’m so glad you can’t vote yet.” and that she was disgusted that I didn’t trust President Bush. After going on to tell me that I was “wrong” and “ignorant” she then stooped to the level of childish name calling when she addressed a classmate of mine as “a loser”. While this was just one incident, it was anything but isolated.

This seems to suggest that ALL of this name-calling occurred on the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. Even if the alleged insults were said, I find that HIGHLY doubtful that this would’ve come out on the first day. Furthermore, we’re missing a big piece of the equation here: how did Pillai-Diaz know that the student “didn’t trust President Bush”? If all the student said was that he was a democrat, I hardly think Pillai-Diaz would’ve jumped down his through and started making allegations.

The final thing that I notice here is the allegation that Pillai-Diaz called a student a “loser” on the first day of class. If that had really happened, I think we’d have seen some sort of disciplinary action at this point. If all of this happened on the first day (Does anyone know when Crossroads’ first day of class was?) I can’t think of any fathomable reason why this would still be an issue. No matter what else, if a teacher calls a student a “loser” the parents will hear about it, in today’s day an age, probably within hours, and hell will be raised.

This episode was one of the many times throughout the first few weeks of this school year when Pillai-Diaz showed that she didn’t have the skills, maturity, and overall competence to handle a class of middle school students.

As I commented before, I find it odd that a 13 year old would be commenting on a Teacher’s “maturity” or “overall competence.”

There were several such instances, including a time when she told a student that she would not permit her opinion in the classroom. Not that the opinion was insulting or inappropriate for school, the opinion simply deviated from that of Diaz. As outlandish as that sounds it actually occurred, and on at least three separate occasions at that.

There’s lots of room for he-said-she-said here, and without knowing the circumstances I think a reasonable person would have to ignore this particular point. How many times do children this age shriek “It’s not fair!” when something doesn’t go the way they want? There are too many variables to use this information.

Many people- students, teachers, and parents alike- noted her as being “incompetent” and “close minded” to quote a few.

I’d love to know which teachers are telling 7th and 8th graders that their other teacher is incompetent and closed-minded. I can definitely see parents saying that — but teachers? Eh. (As for students, they’ll say anything their parents do, so…)

There were many reasons for the school to dismiss her. She didn’t keep an open mind, her teaching methods were archaic and proven to be less effective than the more modern lesson plans encouraged by the school,

I pointed this out before as well: if the teacher had only been at the school for a few short weeks, how could anything like this be “proven?” Also, how does a 7th/8th grade student know the difference between an “archaic” and “proven” teaching method.

and most of all, she simply did not have the respect of her students. That respect is critical for the success of the education system in South Brunswick or anywhere else, for that matter.

Emotional appeal. Disregard.

She tried to force it from us by oppressing us and treading on our civil liberties, such as in the above incident, but that only made matters worse for everyone, but mostly herself.

“Treading on &#091their&#093 civil liberties?” Give me a break. “Ryan” has gone from giving us facts to trying to win us over with emotions.

It ended up creating an atmosphere in which students felt that their creativity had been stifled. Somehow, stifling creativity of the students doesn’t seem to work to well in a writing class and relations between Pillai-Diaz and nearly everyone in the school who knew her deteriorated rapidly. It came as no surprise to many that she was not to be long for the school.

Even if a 7th/8th grader did write this, I find it hard to believe that said 7th/8th grade came up with the idea on his own. This smells of “parental supervision.”

So, in essence, there are a number of reasons as to why Ms. Diaz was let go of by the school board; posting a picture of the president is probably not one of them. As a matter of fact, from what I witnessed as a student of her’s, the hotly debated portrait played but a small role, if any, in the downfall or Diaz.

So my non-professional opinion, here, is that regardless of whether the author is actually a student (which I still have my doubts on), I personally think that the letter was HEAVILY influenced by a parent. The same reason that we can’t dismiss the charges against Pillai-Diaz out of hand as being absurd are the same reasons we can’t automatically trust this letter: we live in a world were things like teachers insulting students and parents using their children as pawns happens all the time.

I also wonder why this young man (if, indeed, he is a young man) hasn’t hooked up with the news media yet. I’m sure they’d LOVE to get him on the air saying some of these things.