Winkleman tried to defend himself on first amendment grounds while also pointing out the post was satire and not to be taken literally. The teacher also enlisted the help of his union when it started to become evident that he was in for trouble. The union refused to help Winkleman saying that' "he'd gone too far." Winkleman was offered the opportunity to apologize for the blog post and delete it from his blog. He refused. Upon hearing of his refusal the superintendent set the wheels in motion for dismissal of the errant instructor. The problem the district had, and it was a small one, was that Winkleman had never previously been disciplined for any infractions during his over two decade career and had received mostly glowing performance evaluations. But school district administrators are a resourceful lot and when they want to remove a teacher they have, as the saying goes, their ways. The Great Neck Long Island School District was no exception. The superintendent for Human Resources cherry picked through Winkelman's past evaluations and took any negative comment and added them to a report was compiling. They also included any areas marked "needs improvement" and whether the concern had later been addressed or not, also added those to their report depicting said area as a glaring deficiency. The Superintendent for Human Resources had the principal do several spot evaluations of Winkleman with the strict instructions that he only record things that reflected negatively on Winkleman. In digging deeper into Winkleman's records he was utterly delighted to find that Winkleman had made a clerical error in administering a standardized tests two years ago that resulted in two tests having to be discounted; he cited this as an example of the teacher's gross incompetence. As a final flourish they made a meal out of Winkleman's refusal to take down the offending post, citing him for gross insubordination. Without the help of the union, Winkleman would have to hire an attorney if he wanted to fight to keep his job. On a teacher's salary with two kids to support, that was out of the question, so he resigned and looked for a teaching job elsewhere. No one would touch Winkleman after his by now highly-publicized case. Winkleman's wife threatened divorce. Despondent, on the verge of being fired, he issued an apology and took down the post. The district agreed to take him back but only as substitute teacher. The humiliated Bob Winkleman started the following school year as a sub, but after 21 years of having his own classroom he couldn't bear it. On Thanksgiving morning Winkleman walked into the Atlantic Ocean and was never seen again. His body was never found.
Below is the offending blog post.
An Allegorical Tale of Teaching Middle School
I am a middle school teacher. One day I shot a student in the face with a pistol. He was interrupting my lesson for about the fourth time that day and I’d had enough. So I reached into my holster, pulled out my .45 and fired a bullet right into his yakking fat face. The class was perfectly quiet for a few seconds then I went on with the lesson. As I recall I was talking about the Dred Scott case. It was part of a general unit on the various causes of the Civil War. Students were generally attendant when it came to topics related to slavery and the Civil War, but this one kid couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
Okay I know what you’re thinking, something like how inappropriate this topic is given — among other things — the recent spate of school shootings in this country. But I’m just being honest here and after all the shooter was not some crazed kid but me, an adult, and a teacher at that. And it was no accidental discharge, I meant to shoot the little punk.
Needless to say I caught hell from the administration, a few parents complained and some of my teaching colleagues questioned my methods — though not to my face. However most of the faculty understood and applauded my willingness to take direct action. Students were fine with it. It was kind of cool to have a murder right there in the classroom (spoiler alert: the youngster expired, almost instantly, as a matter of fact).
Like I said a few parents expressed alarm, none more so than the parents of the deceased. They complained all the way to the school board. They even threatened to go to the police. Good luck with that, I remember thinking at the time. Anyway it all blew over soon enough and there was only occasionally any mention of it again. It did check off a negative box on my yearly evaluation, but I was otherwise such an exemplary teacher that my position with the school was just fine.
I haven’t shot a kid since. To tell you the truth I had a little bit of guilt about plugging a student and always figured that another notch on my belt would compound that guilt. Hell, if I’d continued offing students I might have eventually sunk into depression. As it is I’m fine. A few other teachers subsequently tried to duplicate my feat but none had the panache. A couple of them froze with the gun in their hand and students made fun of them after that. One only wounded a kid, another shot the wrong kid (that teacher was disciplined, three day suspension) and one turned the gun on himself. Suicide in front of a whole class is a bad look. It reflects poorly on the profession. But some managed it. Teacher by the name of Costigan went overboard and started shooting kids every few weeks. He quit teaching at the end of the school year although some say he was nudged out of the profession.
If you’ve read this far you’re probably thinking I’m just kidding and this is just some sick joke, one that you likely don’t find particularly funny. Hey, to each his or her own. I don’t think it’s funny at all and no I’m not kidding. Don’t you read the papers, or the internet? This is the world we live in. Let me here hasten to add that I get along swimmingly with the vast majority of my students as evidenced by just the one fatality. Sure there've been corporal punishments and I use the cat o’ nine tails on numerous occasions, bludgeoned (not to death, mind) some others, and cane quite a few more, but that's all part of the job. Middle school kids are a rough breed and need discipline. Some methods may seem extreme but only to those who’ve never faced a classroom full of young teens.
I’ll tell ya what I've never done: cuss in class. Nor would you ever hear me insult a student. No ethnic jokes of any sort parted my lips. I am quick to praise students and often offer rewards. I throw pizza parties for good classes. Of course those parties are comprised of students watching me eat pizza, but at least they don't have to do any work at the time.
I work with this one teacher named Zimmerman. She is a certified witch. We all look good compared to her. Zimmerman performs incarnations over a bubbling cauldron during class and always carries eye of newt with her. She in fact, bears a resemblance to the newt. Students hate her for a variety of reasons, one of which is she never bathes. Zimm (as she likes to be called) has an unseemly amount of facial hair for a woman and never shaves her legs which is an issue as she wears short skirts. Zimm slaps students for no reason at all and breathes on them which is probably a violation of the Geneva Convention because her breath smells like the inside of septic tank. I hear she's working on an administrative credential. She'll make a helluva principal.
The point being…well, to tell you the truth I forget the point, I’m just sharing a little bit of my experience as a middle school teacher which might be especially useful if you’re considering a career in education, particularly at that level. If you’re not sure whether you’d make a good teacher don’t worry, just teach for a few years and then go into administration. Those who can teach and those who can't, become school administrators. I think Stalin missed a bet by not becoming a principal. Charles Manson, he’d have been a heckuva vice principal.
So I’ve gotten off on tangents. But I really did shoot a kid in the fact while teaching about the Dred Scott decision. And I know the ether and the floating and the dynamic intersection of the beloved and the bedeviled in this my maiden voyage down the ultra path of human denouement. Blessings to all.
Winkleman never explained how his story was an allegory, nor why he decided to eviscerate his colleague, Zimmerman (other than their mutual animus) and the last paragraph of the story has never made sense to anyone. But he insisted on his right to post the story on the blog, until, of course he faced the reality of being fired. Winkleman left no suicide note and while he was clearly despondent about his reduced status, there was never any indication that he was severely depressed, let alone suicidal. After his walk into the sea there were a spate of articles in local papers speculating about the demoted teacher which included musings by psychiatrists, both in relation to his strange blog post and his apparent suicide. But the fact was that no one could make heads nor tails of the man, especially given his sterling reputation prior to the notorious blog post.
A final note. A made for TV movie is in the works called, The Winkleman Story, and is preliminarily scheduled to debut in the Fall of 2019.
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