This Week’s Wacky Wednesday: Teacher Cuts Students Hair While Singing the National Anthem
The job of a teacher can be stressful no matter the age group that they work with. When they are teaching teens, it can sometimes ramp the stress levels up even further. Most of the time, teachers will find ways that they can relieve the stress outside of the classroom, and they will do their best to keep their calm while they are in school. However, sometimes, teachers snap and do things that are downright weird and that cause them to wind up in a lot of legal trouble.
What Happened to Warrant an Arrest?
Take the case out of University Preparatory High School in Visalia, CA that happened in December of 2018. A science teacher at the school, Margaret Geiszinger was recorded calling one of her male students to the front of the classroom. She then starts to cut off large chunks of his hair with a pair of scissors and throws them backward. All the while, she is singing “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
Since most teens are armed with phones today, they recorded what was happening, likely in shock at the strange events taking place.
Once she was finished cutting his hair, she sent the male student back to his seat and then asked for someone else to come up and sit in the chair. No one got up, of course. This then upset the teacher, and she said that if no one volunteered, she would then choose someone. At that point, she walks over to a desk, grabs a female student by the hair and starts singing and trying to cut the hair. The girl yells and then gets up to leave, followed by the other students.
According to the principal at the school, Eric Thiessen, the teacher was removed and would not be returning. She was ultimately charged with battery, as well as assault and cruelty to a child, along with false imprisonment. She could face a substantial amount of time behind bars.
A Potential Pattern of Poor Behavior
Her husband said that he couldn’t believe what he was seeing in the video and that it was not behavior that he associated with his wife. He said something must have happened to have precipitated her behavior. However, this was not the first time that she had gotten into trouble. She had been suspended for two weeks in 2016 for what was called immoral or unprofessional conduct and was suspended for a week in 2007 for undisclosed reasons.
Students had reportedly told the administrators at their school about the teacher behaving strangely in the days before she cut off the student’s hair in the classroom. However, according to reports, the officials at the school did not listen to them.
Teachers and Haircutting
This is not the first time that something like this has happened. In Milwaukee in 2009, a young girl was called to the front of the classroom and the teacher cut off one of her braids because the girl was playing with it. The teacher was fined a small amount, but there were no criminal charges filed.