At least they didn’t try to burn him at the stake

May 11, 2008

Long-time readers know that I take a certain amount of pleasure in mocking Florida, where I was born and raised. There’s just something … unique about it.

Take, for example, a Tampa-area school firing a substitute teacher for doing a magic trick for his students.

The telephone call that spelled the end of Jim Piculas’ career as a substitute teacher in Pasco County came on a January day about a week after he performed the disappearing-toothpick trick for a group of rapt middle school students.

Pat Sinclair, who oversees substitute teachers in the Pasco County School District, was on the phone. She told Piculas there had been a complaint about his performance at Rushe Middle School in Land O’ Lakes.

He asked what she meant. “She said, ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,'” Piculas said.

He said the statement seemed bizarre to him, like something out of Harry Potter.

Piculas said he replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He said he also told Sinclair, “It’s not black magic. It’s a toothpick.”

Oh sure, it’s a toothpick today. But what about tomorrow? What will we tell parents when a substitute teacher starts trying to do spells? Or shows kids pictures of Willow from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”? Or accidentally turns someone into a newt? Hmm?

As Piculas — who, as far as I know, is not a warlock — explained it, he got a call after doing his trick from the head of supervisor of substitute teachers. “He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue, you can’t take any more assignments you need to come in right away,'” Piculas said.

The disappearing tooth pick was, apparently, the “huge issue,” and led to the disappearing job.

It’s worth noting, of course, that the school district’s version of events is slightly different.

Tampa Bay’s 10 talked to the assistant superintendent with the Pasco County School District who said it wasn’t just the wizardry and that Picular had other performance issues, including “not following lesson plans” and allowing students to play on unapproved computers.”

Piculas said he knew nothing about the accusations.

“That … I think was embellished after the fact to try to cover what initially what they were saying to me,” he said.

Reading that report, I’m struck by the news item that said “it wasn’t just the wizardry.” Are district officials willing to concede that doing a magic trick for kids played at least some role in firing this substitute teacher?

And could someone explain to me how accusations of “wizardry” can exist in the 21st century?

It really is a problem. I was turned into a newt! Well, I got better.

  • “Wizardry”???? In 2008????????????

    Never ever ever ever ever ever doubt the complete moron stupidity of the fundies.

    I had one tenth-wit for a neighbor who objected to the fact I had five black cats living with me then. I can understand that – a moron can’t figure out what it’s looking at when it sees a black cat close his or her eyes. This idiot actually said I was “promoting witchcraft”. In Los Angeles!! In the last decade of the 20th Century!!!!!

  • Too bad he couldn’t turn toothpicks into money, then he wouldn’t even need to work as a substitute.

  • Oh oh – I use little stuffed toy BEARS with my students, creating the illusion that they talk about all the fun picture books that they read. Many teachers use puppets and these types of props to share a love of learning with children

    Am we going to be accused of “wizardry” because we all know that in God’s natural world, bears and other furry creatures don’t talk.

  • Gee, when I went to school, they were pretty clear on the idea that ‘wizardry’ was ancient superstition. Of course, that was a time full of crazy-by-today’s-standards educational theories, like the New Math, and equality between the races.

    But then again, I am a Yankee. Who knows what they taught down south. 😉

  • When you reject science, wizardry is all you have left. I imagine they’re pretty big on alchemy too.

  • Unless the kids have had their creativity destroyed, they can have all kinds of fun at that supervisors expense. I wonder if any of them have seen The Crucible?

  • Come on people . . . Cut them some slack . . . This is the Republican base you are talking about. . . Without them – Al Gore would have won Florida in 2000 and think about the mess we would be in today!

  • Can’t one mount an appeal for being fired on the basis, even in part, of being accused of witchcraft? Can one also be fired for being a vampire or werewolf?

  • Fortunately, the evil wizard Global Warming is melting all the glaciers, and Florida will soon be a playground for sealife. But on a more scientific note, if we were to fire every substitute teacher who “didn’t follow the lesson plans,” the species Pedagogicus substitutis would be completely extinct.

    And “what computers” were unapproved?

    The “big issue” is one fundie parent going berserker on the district, and the district lacks the courage to tell the parent where to get off. If the other problems had been such as to warrant termination, he’d have been gone by now.

  • “Fortunately, the evil wizard Global Warming is melting all the glaciers, and Florida will soon be a playground for sealife.”

    Maybe we should build a fence along the Florida border.

  • Perhaps they would have been more forgiving if he had limited his wizardry to dispensing some water, he had changed into wine, to the middle school class in his charge.

  • The disappearing tooth pick was, apparently, the “huge issue,” and led to the disappearing job.

    In the world of wizardry, the neophyte usually loses to the adept.

  • What if he had turned water into wine? Or fed the entire school with one can of tuna and a loaf of WonerBread? Or healed a student with his touch? (Okay, that last one would definately get him into trouble — touching students is not kosher).

  • At least they didn’t try to burn him at the stake

    Hey is this what Bush means when he talks about a stake-holder society?

  • little bear said:Am we going to be accused of “wizardry” because we all know that in God’s natural world, bears and other furry creatures don’t talk.

    Oh there’s one little bear that talks a helluva lot. 🙂

  • Maybe if he pulled a coin out of a fish’s mouth, or brought someone back to life, or claimed to be talking to a man in the clouds, the school board would have looked the other way… Or started calling him Messiah.

  • There used to be a name for that concerned citizen who accused Piculas of wizardry, it was Village Idiot. It takes a Florida village to praise an idiot.

  • Keep those bears away from the kids! Especially if the teacher is a little balding:

    And [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

    And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

    And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria.

    2 Kings 2:23-25.

  • After reading this, I will make sure in the future not to use the ‘Pull my finger’ routine while in Florida (or anywhere in the south) as I do not wish to be accused like this…

  • The generation of school administrators that has come into power since NCLB was enacted represents the most weasily crop of yes-people ever assembled. These are not educators; they are people willing to accept any amount of ridiculous bullshit to further their own careers. Go into any public school today, and you will likely find a principal who taught for maybe seven years and then went and got some administrative certificate and now spends her time spouting off talking points generated by the testing company-industrial complex. Oh my god! A parent is mad about wizards! Fire the teacher!

  • It’s been well documented that disappearing toothpicks are gateway magic tricks. Sure, kids think it’s cool now, but a year from now they’re summoning flame-maned horses from the twisting nether, and then it’s all over.

  • I say throw him into a pond inside a sack weighted with rocks, and let’s see once and for all what the truth is.

  • About 20 years ago in South Carolina, a local school ran afoul of southern baptists over a puppet named Pumsy which teachers would use in class to do guided imagery and talk about self-esteem. Apparently, they were scared that Satan would enter the kids’ minds when their defenses were down, having been hypnotized by Pumsy.

  • Today a toothpick, tomorrow a penis.

    “Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.”

    http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN2319603620080423?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=22&sp=true

    It’s good to know that the American educational system has produced people with the same ability to think as people indoctrinated into a tribal shamanistic culture.

  • I KNOW that guy! He turne me into a newt. Well, …I used to be a newt.

    (Ya had to see the movie kids.)

  • My family lives in Pasco county. I lived there a few years, too. In addition to the stupidity you’ve highlighted, it’s almost impossible to earn enough money to escape.

    But you’re wrong to pin it on Florida. There’s plenty of places in the South and Midwest and West where you can find similar ignorance. Consider the Appalachian regions of Kentucky and West Virginia still boast snake-handling churches and take offense at outsiders who think they’re pretty silly.

    I have no quarrel with religious belief but the ministers demonizing magic tricks and Democrats to keep their parishioners in their thrall? Them, I detest as money-grubbing weasels promoting the evolution of dumb into dumber. And I’ve seen them in Idaho and Utah and even parts of Oregon.

    Never underestimate teh awesome power of teh stupid. It helps explain how Bush got elected president once.

  • I once had a woman explain to me “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, then it is good enough for me.” ….No, I am not kidding. She was absolutely serious.

  • Well, I for one say they are going too far in banning wizardry from the classroom. “Teach the controversy”, I say!

    WAKE UP AMERICA!!!

  • And I’ve seen them in Idaho and Utah and even parts of Oregon.

    Eastern Oregon, a province of Moron, er, I mean Mormon World.

  • I wonder if I can get him to come into the kids school and turn lead into gold. And I always wanted to fly on a Nimbus 2000.

  • I wish I knew a magic trick or two; I bet I could make those Floridians soil themselves by showing up looking a bit like Gandalf (because everyone knows that’s what wizards REALLY look like) and waving a magic wand around and maybe chanting a spell or two. Maybe I would pull out all the stops and use the witches’ chant from (gasp) Macbeth!

    “…Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
    Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
    Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,…”

    Oooooooooooooooo!

  • What? You think that just because it’s the 21st century that wizardry is OK…?

    Don’t you object to anything?

  • I just pull this string here, we here a “click”, and the glass bulb mysteriously emits light until I pull the string again. It’s Magic!

  • Build a bridge out of him!

    Assuming the gas-tax holiday hasn’t stripped you of the needed funding.

  • Being a Utah native, and having lived for considerable stretches in the only two places just as strangely endearing and weird in the world – Florida and The Netherlands – I feel particularly well qualified to comment. In Utah, growing up my LDS (Mormon) mother regularly referred to herself as a witch, and was proud of turning various cub scouts in her charge into frogs, newts, and other beasties. She happily recounted these stories in church, and a major host on NPR was the recipient of one her spells and has recounted it on air. The Utah concern would be that the toothpick disappearing could mean bad oral hygiene and we all know how important Utah Mormon Osmond smiles are. In Florida, the problem with the disappearance of the toothpick has to do with the rapture. If the toothpick disappeared and middle-schoolers were not also taken up, it could shake their faith. Or, there could just be that literalist strain that says a disappearing toothpick could disrupt the natural order of things, causing the world to end – see rapture above. In The Netherlands, the question of why a person would use a toothpick when it is not wide enough to deliver any meaningful amount of drugs would be the center of conversation, and there would be demonstrations requiring the wizard to produce spoons for every citizen. All weird, all endearing, all quaint. The funny thing is most of us responding to this were raised in all of this, people got fired and reprimanded, or just talked with. We all still went on to become bigger than our backgrounds, and now that we think we are running the show, we know we can do it better. Truth is, our expanisve progressivism, will look like chicken feed and backward small-mindedness in a generation or two. The great thing is they didn’t burn him. My greatx9 grandfather John Alden would have – thanks to him and the rest we don’t need to.

  • I have lived in Florida for most of my life and it just gets weirder by the minute. Ignorance is considered a virtue, greed a sacrament and violence a way of life. Politicians are owned and operated by various ‘bidness’ orgs: developers, growers, sugar barons, etc. School boards are populated and held hostage by religio-crazies. Hopefully, the wizard lobby will get this sorted out soon. We could use a break.

  • Public education has been assaulted from so many directions for so long that administrators take no chances on anything. They would rather let the whole system be destroyed, as is happening, than defend the science, literature or history curriculae. In my little corner of the universe the Superintendent and school board are afraid to even ask for the funds necessary to repair roofs or buy text books. NO NEW TAXES has become the religion as the the system crumbles.

  • Well, I had to sign a document saying I wouldn’t engage in sorcery in the classroom, but it didn’t say anything about wizardry. Everyone knows that it’s not sorcery if I memorize my spells the night before.

  • Laugh it up.

    Disappearing toothpicks is how Voldemort got started, y’know.

    Someone tell this guy there are lots of teaching jobs for black arts practitioners up here in the ‘elitist’, we-loves-us-some-book-larnin’ North.

  • Wizardry (read “a magic trick”) is illegal in a state where the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan visits on a regular basis.

    Irony is dead.

  • I can fully relate to this incident. Less than a year earlier I too was fired from the Pasco County FL school district as a substutite teacher. Not for wizardry, but for raising my voice to a student. In brief, I surely did shout at this student. The student was a constant interruption to the classroom making it nearly impossible to teach. The day before the incident the student bragged to me that after I’d most recently being sent to the office for discipline the administrator tore up the referral and said “they were not going to do anything.”

    The student claimed that I was guilty of physical abuse. The administration supposedly did an investigation, but never once interviewed me on the matter, and further, never interviewed any students who were present in the classroom and had witnessed what had actually happened.

    My suspicion is that the district is fearful of lawsuits from parents and so, rather than standing behind their teachers, simply go the cheap and easy route by firing personnel whenever any question is raised.

    Fortunately, I had already been planning on ending my career as a substutite for the Pasco County School District in a few days anyway, but the sting of injustice never quite goes away.

  • Oh my God, i think i sort of summed it up there. *Slides Wand Back Up Sleeve*

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