Re: see other sources

To say it, with mimic, facial expressions to give it the right meaning, in a context is ok, I guess. But writing it? Maybe it's a bit more difficult to get the "joke" for the girl or at least the mother.

Agreed. I don't really fault the mother, at least not for the initial reaction. If I had a little girl who brought home a paper that said "-20% because you're a LOSER" I'd be pretty mad at the teacher too.

However, if the grade was an honest 80% and the "because you're a LOSER" jokingly referred to why the student missed 20% of the questions, as opposed to being some sort of "loser penalty", then I can at least entertain the thought that this was a joke poorly executed and taken a little too far.

Of course, the news articles don't really let us know what the situation was like. Perhaps the teacher had discussed this at all the teacher-parent conferences, but this mother missed her appointment. I don't know. But the fact that the other parents rallied around the teacher suggests that we haven't had the whole story.