Bang!

A California school teacher was placed on paid administrative leave after he rattled a table to get the attention of his math students, startling an eighth grade girl who used her cell phone to call police. Happily, no children or furniture were hurt in this incident, but it does point out once again the awesome power wielded by our nation's educators. These youngsters were placed in the care of a serial fixture abuser, one who seems to think that paying attention to the teacher was the most important thing in the world. Or at least in the classroom. Those poor, tormented middle schoolers. There will, no doubt be countless trips to therapy as the post-traumatic stress begins to sink in, and you can almost hear the lawsuits for pain and suffering being filed as we contemplate how things could have gone so wrong. And to top it all off, why is this person on paid administrative leave? With all that cash, a teacher might just skip town and go settle down in a town where there are more children to intimidate and furniture to shake.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, I remember Mister Gauthier, God rest his soul. He was my ninth grade math teacher. He had a habit, not just once, but several times throughout the year, of waiting until we were all heads down engrossed in our weekly quiz, and he would stand up on a chair with an empty trash can. When all was silent and focus was extreme, he would let the can drop to the floor, shattering the silence and our nerves. I'm sure that he received a number of test papers each week with a large pencil mark streaking up the page in response to the clatter he had engineered. It was always a good laugh. For him. We didn't have cell phones. Nobody complained to the principal. Everyone chuckled nervously, and went back to work. It was just Mister Gauthier being Mister Gauthier.
In the future, we can expect that moving furniture will be forbidden in California classrooms and training will be required over the summer for teachers to be more sensitive to the needs of their students and their tables. Or suffer the consequences.