Kid shapes poptart into gun, gets suspended.

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Pop Tart gun, Josh Welch: School suspends 7-year-old for biting Pop Tart into shape of gun

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Posted: 03/05/2013
Last Updated: 1 hour and 35 minutes ago

By: Wayne Harrison, thedenverchannel.com

BALTIMORE - A 7-year-old Maryland boy has been suspended from school after biting his breakfast pastry into a shape that his teacher thought looked like a gun.

Josh Welch, a second-grader at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, said he was trying to nibble his strawberry Pop Tart into a mountain.

"It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it wasn't," Josh said. "All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but it didn't look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun kinda."

But when his teacher saw what he had done, the boy says she got "pretty mad" and he knew he was "in big trouble."

Josh's dad was called by the school and informed that his son had been suspended for two days.

"I asked if was any one was hurt, they said 'No'," B.J. Welch said. "I would almost call it insanity. I mean with all the potential issues that could be dealt with at school -- real threats, bullies, whatever the issue is. It's a pastry."

The school sent home a letter with every student informing parents that: "A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture."

Josh, who suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and enjoys art classes, said that his actions were innocent, according to a report in the Daily Mail .

Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/nation ... z2MiPOIx8N

Thoughts?

[Grumman]

Thoughts?

The teacher is batshit fucking insane. What, is she going to teach the students the zero tolerance-sanctioned way of eating a sandwich so it doesn't look like anything?

[General Mung Beans]

I suppose next time a boy offering a girl classmate a popsicle will be punished for sexual harassment, due to the popsicle being a phallic symbol.

[AMX]

"according to a report in the Daily Mail"
I really hope this is just the Daily Mail being, well, the Daily Mail.

[Flagg]

Yeah, if it's real, it's as idiotic as every other "zero tolerance" school policy and not even the most outrageous case I've heard regarding such policies. Plus, tabloid.

[Sea Skimmer]

You guys noticed it has an interview video with the kid right?

[Flagg]

Yeah I have no problem beliving it happened other than the source. I mean not long after Columbine a kid in Florida got suspended for pointing a chicken nugget at another kid and saying "kapow".

[Aaron MkII]

*shrug* Shooting is a big part of my family life but my son has been told by teachers that it's not appropriate for school, so my kids have been told to forget we have guns when at school. It's actually kind of sad, because he basically can't talk about a big portion of our lives and what he does to spend time with me.

Shooting is an olympic sport and gun ownership is high in rural Ontario but don't you try and have a rational or productive discussion about it, just implement a policy that doesn't require staff to use their brain.

[Flagg]

Yeah it's pretty fucking pathetic.

True story, knew a kid in HS who accidentally washed a pair of jeans with a small fishing knife in a pocket, wore them the next day at school, found the pocket knife halfway through the day in his front pocket, immediately and without hesitation turned it in to the deans office, immediately expelled and forced to attend an alternative school for juvenile deliquents for 6 months. This was before Columbine.

[Thanas]

I blame lawsuits. If something happens and it turns out the principal ignored warnings, it is his butt on the line. I don't think schools really like doing this, but the crazy liability culture the US has is pretty messed up.

[Flagg]

Dude, it may have been because of lawsuits, but it's not up to school administarators anymore. It's all law now.

[Aaron MkII]

It exists in Canada without a lawsuit culture, our lawsuit awards are capped by law.

[Sea Skimmer]

School policy was all over the place before Columbine. The year before that happened I attended a special 'enrichment' program after school on military history done by one of the teachers. We watched Cross of Iron among other things, though one part was skipped over, I bet people who have seen the movie know which part, and he brought in two rifles that day, a 98k Mauser and a Mosin Nagant. Now, certainly nobody was allowed to handle them and the school was 95% empty at the time, but these were real functional weapons. I grew up with weapons filling my house so I thought nothing of it at the time, but in hindsight, wow.

In another in school event, I believe it was the year before this, dates get hazy, I got to handle a real katana in class, brought in by the school superintendent from his personal collection. i was in sixth or seventh grade for this. Everyone got to hold one of several, and boy could you tell they were well sharpened on sight. Someone getting cut open by the things by mistake was a very realistic possibility, though the superintendent hovered exactly right behind you the whole time. Amusingly it later turned out he stole money from the school to buy the things, and the 'demonstrate to classes' bit was his attempted cover. But still.

This was not at some rural small school either, it was at a dense suburban and rather liberal district.

[Losonti Tokash]

*shrug* Shooting is a big part of my family life but my son has been told by teachers that it's not appropriate for school, so my kids have been told to forget we have guns when at school. It's actually kind of sad, because he basically can't talk about a big portion of our lives and what he does to spend time with me.

Shooting is an olympic sport and gun ownership is high in rural Ontario but don't you try and have a rational or productive discussion about it, just implement a policy that doesn't require staff to use their brain.

It's bizarre. I took marksmanship in high school for three years and we had multiple shooting teams but you basically couldn't talk about it outside those classes because everyone was fucking nuts about the topic.

[Eternal_Freedom]

*shrug* Shooting is a big part of my family life but my son has been told by teachers that it's not appropriate for school, so my kids have been told to forget we have guns when at school. It's actually kind of sad, because he basically can't talk about a big portion of our lives and what he does to spend time with me.

Shooting is an olympic sport and gun ownership is high in rural Ontario but don't you try and have a rational or productive discussion about it, just implement a policy that doesn't require staff to use their brain.

It's bizarre. I took marksmanship in high school for three years and we had multiple shooting teams but you basically couldn't talk about it outside those classes because everyone was fucking nuts about the topic.

Strangely, over here in England you can talk about guns and bombs and even nukes all you want and teachers don't seem to care. In fact we used to use planes or guns or bombs all the time in physics or mecanics examples.

[Mr. Coffee]

See, stupid shit like this is why I despise zero tolerance policies. It completely removes any need to actually think. It's a fucking poptart, what's the kid going to do with it?

Mrs. Scrabbopple! Timmy is holding Denise hostage with a poptart and won't share the green crayon!

Timmy, share the cray... Oh Sweet jumpin' Jesus on a purplr pogostick, he's got a gun!

Bring me all the blue and yellow crayons or Little Suzy here gets strawberry jam in her hair!

Seriously, this zero tolerance bullshit is getting out of hand.

[SAMAS]

Dude, it may have been because of lawsuits, but it's not up to school administarators anymore. It's all law now.

That's the idea. By blindly following the Law to the letter, they hope to wash their hands of anything resembling responsibility. Because if a teacher does use their own common sense, and it just happens to be the one time it goes wrong, they could be found liable and sued.