A Georgia schoolteacher was suspended after pretending to shoot first-grade students during a lesson about the Newtown, Conn., massacre.
The Odyssey School instructor was playing a sort of hide-and-seek game with the students, when he pointed to some and said, “bang, you’re dead,” Atlanta’s Fox 5 reports. Some parents said their children were having nightmares; however, none of the students has taken the counseling offered by the Newnan, Ga., school.
The teacher, identified by the Times-Herald as Mariano Pacetti, “exercised bad judgment,” Odyssey School director Andy Geeter told the paper.
Geeter emphasized to Fox 5 that Pacetti, who’s listed on the school’s website as a band instructor, is popular and respected. He was subbing a physical education class at the time of the incident. He will be required to take some additional training. Geeter elaborated on the suspension in an email to The Huffington Post.
“It was an administrative decision made by me after conversations with the parents, classroom teacher and Mr. Pacetti as well as consultation with our head of school. He is now back at work,” he said.
According to a “Whatever Happened To…” profile in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Pacetti is an “accomplished saxophonist” who appeared on Cleveland’s “Hoolihan and Big Chuck” TV show in the 1970s. Nicknamed Mushmouth, Pacetti battled challengers in pizza-eating contests on the popular local program.
Play-combat has become a touchy subject in schools, especially since the Sandy Hook shooting. Earlier this month, a 7-year-old from Colorado was suspended for throwing an imaginary grenade in a playground game he called “rescue the world.”
