'Stand up!!! Stand up!!!'

From Politicalgateway.com, I bring you the new rage sweeping the internets...and when I say rage, I mean rage. Check out the video, here, and share your thoughts. A quick summary: student refuses to stand for the anthem, teacher demands he stand, begins cursing, pulls teh chair out from under the student, is egged on by other students who are laughing.

As an educator, I am torn. On the one hand, I sympathize completely with the teacher. When you have little punks acting like big asses, and really trying to provoke you, well, it can be incredibly hard to deal with and quite frustrating. They won't listen, they know that they can get away with a whole lot of crap, and it doesn't take long for students to figure out what buttons to push. Lord knows that I have lost it with my students many a time, and I have wanted to pull the chair out from under them many a time more...if not just do worse.
But you know what, you just have to accept that some of the little bastards exist only to make your life difficult, nothing more. Don't lose it, journal it, or simply throw them out of the classroom before it gets too bad. If I had been the teacher we see in the video, that has so obviously lost it, I would have said fine, you don't want to stand, you can sit outside of the classroom. Get out. And that would be that. Gotta realize that you can't make 'em do what they don't wanna do!
In note in the article I link to, these same kids had saran wrapped a student to a desk while a sub was in the room. Jesus. That teacher has it rough.