Huge expectations are placed on teachers today. As well as a good learning experience we hope that our kids are taught kindness, discipline and ultimately to be prepared for the world.
Florida teacher Diane Tirado took this very seriously when she implemented a policy of giving zeros to her 8th grade history students who didn’t hand their homework in.
Unfortunately her superiors didn’t agree with her policy and fired her.
Diane Tirado has many years experience as a teacher. Her most recent job was as an eighth-grade history teacher at Westgate K-8 School in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Diane recently gave her students two weeks to complete an assignment and for those students who didn’t hand their homework in, she gave a zero.
But according to Diane, the school did not agree with this and wanted her to give those students a 50, the lowest possible grade the school has.
Diane said she didn’t agree with this and refused to back down. For this, she says, she was fired.
She told WPTV-TV that the principal sent her a letter but did not explain why she was being terminated.
After, she wrote this goodbye message to her students on the whiteboard.
It read, “Bye kids, Mrs. Tirado loves you and wishes you the best in life! I have been fired for refusing to give you a 50% for not handing anything in. Mrs. Tirado.”
She said an administrator erased the message, but that she just rewrote it, snapped a photo and posted it on Facebook
Diane later shared her story on Facebook.
“A grade in Mrs. Tirado’s class is earned,” she said.
“I’m so upset because we have a nation of kids that are expecting to get paid and live their life just for showing up and it’s not real.”
Diane’s post has gone viral, and most commenters agree with her position – it’s not fair to hand out grades for work that doesn’t exist.
“The reason I took on this fight was because it was ridiculous. Teaching should not be this hard,” Diane said.
But the school district has disputed that Diane was fired because of her grading system and instead said it was “because her performance was deemed sub standard, ” according to an article in KSAT 12.
Another teacher, Lynden Dorval, successfully won a court case against a school who fired her for giving out zeros in 2012.
Good morning! I am reading all the posts you have written and reflecting upon them. The reason I took on this fight was…
Posted by Diane Tirado on Tuesday, September 25, 2018
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