Chalk up a win for education over indoctrination, and for parents versus the left-wing edu-crat blob. 
USA Today reports that “A Missouri teacher resigned last week after parents complained about a pride flag in his classroom and the district told him to take it down.”
The teacher, John Wallis, taught “speech, theatre and world mythology at Neosho Junior High School.”
Now, USA Today intends for readers to be unhappy about this outcome, since it made no apparent effort to contact parents of Wallis’s students. In fact, this being USA Today, most of the story relies on content from Wallis’s Twitter account and an original report from a local paper.
But Wallis’s own account speaks volumes:
“At the beginning of the school year, I had two signs above my whiteboards that read 'In this classroom everyone is welcome' and an LGBTQ+ pride flag on my bookshelf," he wrote on Twitter. "This was an attempt to make my classroom more open and welcoming for all of my students and nothing was ever taught about the flag because it stood there as a reflection of my classroom as a safe space for my LGBTQIA+ students.”
This is a junior high school. These kids aren’t much past Pokemon. Depending on the quality of Neosho grade schools, some may only have a tenuous grasp of the alphabet to start with, and they don’t need an activist drone larding it up with flavor of the month sexualities.
Back to Wallis’s lament:
“I was then instructed to take my flag and signs down,” he wrote on Twitter. “In fact, the use of the pride flag in my classroom was compared to hanging the Confederate flag in my classroom.”
The Confederate flag? Those fascists!
But here’s the good part: The instructions from Superintendent Jim Cummins are written in clear, unambiguous English:
“Our classrooms cannot become a personal platform for pushing one's personal agenda. Your position in the Neosho School District is to teach speech and drama classes … if you are unable to present the curriculum in a manner that keeps your personal agenda on sexuality out of your narrative and the classroom discussions, we will ultimately terminate your employment.”
"It appears that there is a different set of rules if you are an LGBTQ+ educator," Wallis said on Twitter. Of course he did. And of course he’s now got a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.
And really, who could blame him -- it must be disheartening for a professional teacher who’s dedicated the best years of his life to his students to have this happen …
Er, wait. Wallis is 22, and “Cummins wrote Wallis was hired Aug. 13, 2021 and resigned Sept. 1, 2021 by letter.”
Umm, still, he’ll find some better, more enlightened place to bring his passion for inspiring young scholars.
Well, maybe not. “Wallis said he planned to "pursue a different career path."
If you read deep enough into the story, it turns out Wallis is from Neosho and, as a gay left-winger, has a giant chip on his shoulder about how backward the place is. But here he is teaching at the middle school. Nobody should be shocked it didn’t turn out well -- least of all Wallis. But he probably never wanted it to.
Of the ordeal of being told to simply do his job, Wallis said:
“My only happy moments were the ones in which I saw my students, and when I was leaving the building,” he said. “It was no longer an environment that was beneficial to my mental/emotional health nor was it conducive to learning for my students.”
Maybe that new career path is “drama queen.”
