Harvey Lipshculz, why still teaching?

People in their 70s or 80s and still teaching is unlikely but not impossible.

I had a cousin who was involved in a "save his job" campaign for an English teacher who the school board was trying to force to retire because of his age.

I had a World Literature teacher in HS who was kinda like Harvey Lipshculz, she was old and her mind was starting to go. On the second day of class she changed all of our assigned seats (which she liked to keep alphabetical order) because the list that she started with (which had been printed before the actual semester had started) had been changed around as the administrators had to fine tune kids' schedules.) That was normal and expected but than the next day we came in and she insisted that we were sitting in the wrong seats and made us move back to the first configuration. Than the next day she told us we were in the wrong seats and made us move back to the second configuration. This went on for about a week. When we tried to tell her that she kept moving us back and fourth because clearly she was working off of two different lists she insisted that there was only one assigned seating list and we were the ones who kept sitting in the wrong seats.

That was just the beginning of it. When we read the Odyssey she kept switching from Greek to Roman mythological names. Our book listed the Greek names but she kept jumping into Roman ones in mid-lesson. For example the book said "Zeus" but she would often say "Jupiter," same with "Poseidon" and "Neptune" or even "Odysseus" for "Ulysses." Actually she almost always said Ulysses, even though the book said Odysseus; I think because the Kirk Douglass movie (which we did watch at the end of the semester) calls his character Ulysses (the Roman name) but sticks to the Greek names for the rest of the characters. It was incredibly confusing for most of the students, not the least of which because she spoke with a country accent that barely even sounded like English for most of us suburban kids that made up her class.

In my experience, I had different types of teachers, such as young teachers who THOUGHT that they were better than everyone else and elderly teachers who actually treated us as though we were their own children or grandchildren. I couldn't stand those who acted like they were better. I would think, "He says he's so high and mighty, well I'd love to kick his ass." With Harvey Lipshculz, he DID teach the kids. It's true that his comments were unprofessional, but there are teachers who say way worse things than that, and they are still teaching. Other teachers and principals would say, "They do have the right to express themselves because it's freedom of speech."