The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Union superintendent suspends 6th-grade social studies teacher pending investigation; parents say student traumatized.
by David Grimes, Quill Correspondent
BIGGSVILLE: A 12-year-old Union Elementary School sixth-grader may never attend school with his classmates again after being humiliated in the classroom by his teacher, the boy's mother says.
The incident occurred Wednesday when the boy's social studies teacher, Lisa Lox, is alleged to have ordered the boy to strip in front of other students.
There are 17 students in the class.
"I don't want my son to have to have her for a teacher ever again," said Nancy Thomas, the boy's mother.
"I don't want him back in her classroom."
Thomas asked that her son's name not be printed.
"He's already gone through a lot of embarrassment," she said.
Union Elementary Principal Tony Ryan was unavailable for comment Monday due to illness, but Union Superintendent Dean Irlbeck said he hoped to have a statement on behalf of the district ready by late today.
School officials were still sorting out exactly what happened in Lox's classroom.
Lox is a tenured teacher who has been on staff at Union for 10 years.
That status will afford Lox "reasonable protection," Irlbeck said.
But not total immunity.
Lox was given a three-day suspension by the district.
"We need to determine if this was a remediable offense, if there were mitigating circumstances and if so, how this occurred in the classroom," Irlbeck said.
Reached by telephone Monday afternoon, Lox said she was "very upset" by the situation, but declined to give her version of what happened until she speaks with her attorney.
Thomas said when she arrived at the grade school to pick up her son following the incident, she found him crying and upset at his desk.
"Kids are shy in sixth grade anyway," she said. "And she (Lox) likes to intimidate."
Class discussion had dealt with when the Pharaohs ruled Egypt, according to Thomas.
Lox then asked the students if there would be any need for laws if there was just one person left on earth.
"They all said 'no,' " Thomas said.
Lox next asked if there would be any need for laws if there were two people left on earth.
"All but two - my son and one other student - said there would need to be laws," Thomas continued. "The two said they would divide the earth evenly so that each could have half."
At that point, Thomas said she was unclear as to whether Lox might have been attempting to illustrate the point that without laws anarchy would be a real threat.
"She told him to give her his textbook, and he did," Thomas said.
"Then she told him to take off his clothes," she said.
The boy obliged, to the point of wearing nothing but his underwear.
Why the incident ended at that point is unclear, but Thomas said the incident so severely traumatized her son that "he suffered an anxiety pass out."
The day after the incident, Thursday, was an early dismissal day for students and there was no school on Friday. But Thomas kept her son at home Monday, but did not know if she would continue doing so.
"We're doing everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again," she said.
The Thomases are scheduled to meet with a counselor and attorney this week.
Two other Thomas children, a second son and a daughter, also attend Union Schools.
"This is our second year of having issues with her," Thomas said. "When she was his homeroom teacher last year, she told us he needed to study more and daydream less in class."
Thomas said she and her husband didn't think much about the remarks at first, thinking that Lox was concerned that their son do his best in school.
"But now (this year) she's been telling us we ought to take him out of Union and put him in a different school," Thomas said.
Irlbeck said there are very few reasons a tenured teacher may be dismissed, such as a felony conviction or if the district is aware of ongoing gross misconduct.
"If the offense is determined to be remediable, then we can say, 'Don't do it again,' and if it does, then we would take further action," he said.
Irlbeck said that he has been in contact with Canna and Canna, a Chicago-area law firm that serves as the district's attorneys, seeking advice on how to handle the issue.
He added that Lox "is a good teacher, a creative teacher," who is respected and liked by her students.
At that the same time, Irlbeck is leaving no stone unturned.
"This is very much an odd duck," he said.