In a sad example of a missed educational opportunity, a "zombie survival skills" class has been canceled at an Oregon middle school. Parents questioned the educational value of it, and when the superintendent got wind of it, he put the kibosh on the class.

Superintendent Fred Maiocco told the East Oregonian that he "couldn't believe that would actually be a class." It was replaced STAT with a plain old exploratory reading class.

Great, now what are these kids going to do when the zombie apocalypse comes?!

It seems like whenever we read about teachers, it's because they're doing something like having sex with their students or binding them with duct tape. If you got your impression of teachers only from the news, you would never send your kids to school. Occasionally, we hear some good, but usually only when it's something extraordinary -- like the teachers who died with and protected their students inside Sandy Hook elementary.

Like most of us who went through 12 years of primary school, I never saw any of these types of things. I saw good and I saw not-so-good -- but I never saw jaw-droppingly extraordinary or Earth-shatteringly horrific. Most teachers are just regular people who happen to want to teach your kids -- and who happen to be forming who they will become as adults. They deserve our respect, and yet they get so little of it that they're quitting the profession in droves.

Here are eight things I'd like to thank my teachers for.

My son has a case of IDWS (I Don Wanna-gota Skools). You know that illness that causes you to try any tactic to avoid the dreaded S-word?

Just today, he told me that he couldn't go to school because his stomach hurt ... and his leg ... and his elbow ... and he may have had a nasty hang nail .... REALLY? This is what you're going with? The old stomach/leg/elbow ache? Listen kiddo, I invented the 'sick' ploy and frankly, I expected more from you. So much more.

Look kids, don't act like you're disappointed too. I've got your number and I'm pretty sure my kid isn't the only one relying on such amateur techniques. Which is why I decided (as a seasoned pro) to give you youngsters some sound advice so you can stop embarrassing yourselves and make us proud.

These tips will help you gain your parent's sympathy and maybe even regain their respect. Good luck:

My nine-year-old tween daughter recently declared that she had nothing to wear. Since I’m usually behind in the laundry department, I figured she might be right. Upon inspection of her closet, however, I found several outfits hanging up, washed and ready to be worn.

“They’re Gymboree,” she told me with the same disgusted, I’m-too-old-for-that tone she might have used if I handed her a Dora coloring book to occupy herself. So Gymboree is apparently out, and Justice in is. It’s not going to be long before she’s going to be shopping for more grown-up undergarments either -- and into the debate about Victoria’s Secret for tweens we go.

You have to be living under a rock to miss all the slew of parents publicly humiliating their teens in order to punish them for their bad behavior.

And while my own parents had creative methods for punishing us as kids that were very effective, they were done in the privacy of our own home, and not for entire world to see.

Lately, I believe this public shaming trend is more about the parent getting attention rather than actually disciplining their child, and quite frankly, it disgusts me.

Every time I see a kid being forced to wear a sign in public about how he did something terribly wrong, it makes me feel sad. But the look of utter humiliation and agony on 12-year-old Erol Faustin's face made me feel incredibly sad. It's not that the Florida sixth grader didn't do something wrong -- he did. When he was told to put his backpack away, he cursed at his teacher, calling her a b*tch and said he didn't give a f*ck. Not cool. That's why the school suspended him for three days. Fair enough. 

Except the punishment didn't seem fair, or "enough," to Faustin's mom, Lisette Lopez. So she hopped on the public shaming bandwagon and made him dress up in a suit and hold an enormous sign confessing his crime outside the school every morning and afternoon of his suspension. And he did. In silence, with tears rolling down his face for most of the time.

Before bullying was an emotional hot button, a Google searchable word and an incendiary issue, it was nonchalantly considered just good ol’ fashioned, red-blooded American teasing. I grew up on the wrong side of it. No one—including parents or teachers—really took that kind of thing seriously back then, aside from the occasional fist fight in retaliation. (I alas didn’t even do that.) It was the 80s, and kids were just being kids. In the jungles of the inner city and the public school system, I was plucked off by wild packs of beasts feeding off my many flaws for their own self-esteem building and social standing. Yeah, I was that kid.

Two California parents are fighting for the right for their son to attend middle school. The 11-year-old was kicked out because he carries the gene for cystic fibrosis. Note, he has the gene and not the actual life-threatening disease.

Last week, Coleman Chadam was told he would have to transfer to a school three miles away because he may pose a health risk to another student at the school who does have the disease.