Children don’t always understand how damaging bullying is and will never stop if their parents, teachers, or coaches don’t teach them that it’s unacceptable.
After Todd Kennedy, coach of the Durham Middlefield Football team, learned that one of his players had bullied another student at school, he decided to have a talk with the entire team to show them that bullying would not be tolerated on the team. And when he found out it happened again, he decided to address the bully in front of the team. The boy claimed he didn’t do anything, but Kennedy had him run a few laps around the field, and commended the boy for not complaining after he finished.
But when the team’s board members found out about the punishment, they suspended him immediately, and then fired him the following Monday after the board unanimously voted he was unfit to coach the team. “[One of the board members] said why did you feel that you were qualified to handle this bullying incident? I’m like because I’m a father. You start questioning yourself, absolutely,” said Kennedy, whose two sons no longer play on the team.
Aside from Kennedy’s boys, other parents like Shannon Riso decided to take their kids off the team for wrongly firing a coach who did the right thing. “Bullying is okay – that’s the message I got,” Riso said. “That’s why my son is not going to play for them. I want him to be around better role models than that.”
Watch the entire video below to see this dad’s response after being fired for punishing a bully.
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[Featured image: CBS]
Football Coach Is Fired After Making Bully Run Laps is an article from: LifeDaily