Our Teachers Could Use Some Cheerleading, Too

Not long ago, I heard a lovely story about a young lady from Michigan who represented her high school at a national cheerleading competition, even though she has only one foot.

It reminded me that cheerleaders often have to do something extraordinary or be truly exceptional to gain any positive public attention, even though hundreds of thousands of these girls--and boys--have been doing their best on behalf of scholastic athletics for as long as most of us can remember.

And then I heard what has been going on lately at Canyon High of Canyon Country.

There have been enough hardships for teachers who face staff cutbacks, salary slashes and joblessness without the additional hassles that have cropped up for Denny Thompson and Cynthia Wheat and other faculty members from this particular Santa Clarita Valley high school.

Thompson, the vice principal, has received death threats. Wheat, a 26-year-old English teacher in her first year at Canyon, has been the subject of a petition by parents for her dismissal.

Why?

Because they didn’t like the way she chose the cheerleaders.

And you thought people took football and basketball seriously!

The way I understand it, Wheat appointed eight captains from a 42-cheerleader squad for the 1991-92 term before the official tryouts, just as the previous cheerleader coach did. She thought it a proper reward for girls who showed leadership qualities the previous term.

Next thing she knew, Wheat said, she was being accused of favoritism and incompetence. During school, some of her students became disobedient or sassy. After school, in the parking lot, the teacher found her automobile scratched by a sharp object and pelted with eggs.

For her supervisor, meanwhile, things were even worse. Thompson said he was called four times by an adult male threatening that “you or someone in your family will die” unless all the cheerleaders were permitted a tryout to be captains.

Wheat even suggested that some of her cheerleaders were afraid to do certain pyramids or leaps because they were no longer positive their partners would be there to catch them.

I ask you, is this a touching story or what?

Last week, I heard about competent, popular teachers of economics, drama and other departments from Van Nuys High School discovering that their jobs had just been eliminated for financial reasons. I saw an interview with a student who said she was abandoning her intention to become a teacher because not only was the profession low-paying, it might turn out to be no-paying.

The Los Angeles Unified School District recently served layoff notices to 980 teachers while informing 1,193 other employees of the school system that they face reassignment or demotion in order to trim $317 million from the district’s current budget.

Sometimes I think about this when some of those baseball players get so hot about squeaking by on a couple million a year.

I wondered what a little community involvement might accomplish for the teachers.

Unfortunately, there’s involvement and then there’s involvement. The upshot of the ugly mess at Canyon High is that the school superintendent is wondering whether it might be best to simply disband the cheerleading squad entirely, if it is going to cause this kind of anxiety and anger.

That would be a shame. Cheerleading is an important extracurricular activity in high school, and obviously a meaningful one to the students who take part.

But it is hardly essential to the operation of the school, and certainly not worth the $800 paid to the coach annually if she is going to be subjected to this kind of persecution.

The students, parents and faculty need to work this out sensibly before the administration pulls the plug on the whole thing, just to spare itself the aggravation.

So often, children are smarter or more mature about things than adults. What I would like to see is the student body of Canyon High prove it. Do the right thing here. Act responsibly, discuss it among yourselves objectively and ask your parents to butt or chill out.

I know being named captain is an honor, but the essence of cheerleading itself is to show support. At least the rest of the squad is picked fairly, by an impartial judging panel from something called the National Cheerleading Assn., so it isn’t just some popularity contest.

Life’s tough enough, man, so give a teacher a break.

Nobody has to be a teacher, you know. Teachers are there for you. Be there for them.