As a former teacher, a local story that caught my eye...
Twist on an ol' song earns teen suspension
Beth Anne Cox says she meant no harm. Gwinnett County school officials see it differently: They say the 16-year-old threatened her teacher when she sang a parody of the folk song "On Top of Ol' Smokey" in class. Administrators suspended the Peachtree Ridge High School junior for five days. School officials say she disrupted the class with a threatening and inappropriate twist on the familiar lyrics. Beth Anne, who has since apologized to the teacher in writing, says she was humming the tune in class Friday and sang the words out loud when a classmate asked her about the song. "I wasn't talking to my teacher. I was talking with my friend," Beth Anne said in an interview Tuesday. "I would never threaten anyone."
The story doesn't point this out, but in the picture of Miss Cox that accompanied the story, in which she was holding up her "apology," you can clearly make out the comment, "The tone is threatening."
However, Sloan Roach, the school system's spokeswoman, said Beth Anne was upset about a grade and talked about it with her German teacher. Roach said Beth Anne later interrupted the lesson and sang the song. "What she did was perceived to be threatening," Roach said. "It caused a disruption, and the remarks were inappropriate. Based on the facts, the decision was made. It was an appropriate response." Beth Anne disputes the school's account. "I don't know where they got that from," she said. "Yes, I got a bad grade, but I wasn't going to scream and moan and cry about it. I would never threaten my teacher over one bad grade." Classmate Erik Hildebrandt supported her version of the story. He said the classroom was noisy as students played a game to review for a test. "She sang the song to me, and she wasn't looking at anyone else," Erik said. "But I'm not really surprised this happened. They have had their troubles before." Beth Anne acknowledged that tension has existed between her and the teacher. "He's very submissive, and I'm very loud and outspoken, and we just both just get irritated with one another."
This comment seems highly inappropriate to me. Miss Cox has apparently never learned that in the classrom, the teacher is in charge.
Apologies for 'Ol' Smokey' not enough
The Gwinnett County student suspended for disrupting a lesson and threatening a teacher says she won't be in that teacher's class when she returns to school next week. She has since apologized to him in a letter. When Beth Anne's suspension ends Monday, she won't return to her German class, she said Wednesday. "I don't know where I will be second period, but the school said they would find somewhere to put me," Beth Anne said. "They said I can't go back to the class because I threatened the teacher. How afraid can you be of a 16-year-old? I think he just wants to avoid me because he knows he's wrong."
I thought an apology was an acknowledgement of being wrong. If she not only thinks that the teacher was wrong, but that he KNOWS that he was wrong, then what exactly did she write in the apology?
Beth Anne said she wasn't worried about what students would say when she returned to school and that she had received more than 70 e-mails of support. A few students wore T-shirts to school Wednesday with iron-on pictures of Beth Anne, said Alex Baker, Beth Anne's best friend. Alex wore one of the shirts to school Wednesday and said she'd made bout 15 shirts for other students. She said she planned to wear her shirt for the rest of the week. "Beth Anne didn't disrupt the class or do anything wrong," said Alex, who is also in the German class. "What they're doing to her is just wrong."
In addition to the suspension, the school principal revoked permission for Beth Anne to attend Peachtree Ridge next school year. She has attended the high school since her freshman year. Beth Anne said her family prefers the school because it is less crowded than North Gwinnett High, her neighborhood school. Beth Anne will be required to attend North Gwinnett next year, said her mother. Roach said Wednesday that Beth Anne will be able to make up all missed work and receive full credit. Roach said principals review permissive transfer requests annually. She said the principal's decision not to allow Beth Anne to return to Peachtree Ridge next year is final. Beth Anne's mother would like her to graduate from Peachtree Ridge and wants assurances the suspension won't hurt her daughter's grades.
You know, what Mrs. Cox wants is completely irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps instead of making demands of the school, she should teach her child some manners!
Roach said Wednesday that Beth Anne will be able to make up all missed work and receive full credit.
Make up all work!? Full credit?! Then she didn't really get a suspension, did she? More like a week's vacation. Appalling.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Friday, May 05, 2006
Book by Joanne Jacobs
Joanne Jacobs has just published a book Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the School That Beat the Odds (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2005) about a charter school that prepares Hispanic students for college. After 19 years as a San Jose Mercury News editorial writer and Knight Ridder columnist, she quit in 2001 to do freelance reporting, start an education blog and write Our School.
Our School enables readers to step inside a charter school that’s struggling, learning from mistakes, adapting and improving. Our School follows the principal, teachers and students at Downtown College Prep, a San Jose charter high school that’s 90% Hispanic. Most students come from Spanish-speaking immigrant families; most earned D's and F’s in middle school and enter ninth grade with fifth-grade reading and math skills. They were left behind academically but promoted anyhow. Operating with a work-your-butt-off philosophy, DCP now outscores the average California high school on the state’s Academic Performance Index and sends all graduates to four-year colleges.
Thursday, May 11
Washington, DC
On Thu 5/11 at 5:30 pm, she will be speaking and signing books at William E. Doar Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts, 705 Edgewood St. NE, Washington, DC (near the Rhode Island and Brookland-CUA metro stops). In addition, the school’s musical troupe will perform and guests will be asked to donate a children’s book to the school library.
Founded in 2004, WEDJ enrolls students from all over the city. Students take classes in music, dance and theater and perform in at least one public exhibition or performance each year. A longer school day and Saturday classes ensure enough time for academics and arts. Currently an elementary, the school is adding middle and high school classes in the fall.
Wednesday, May 17
Philadelphia, PA
On Wed 5/17 at 5:30 pm, she will be speaking at Russell Byers Charter School, 1911 Arch St., in downtown Philadelphia.
Founded in 2001, the school educates children in kindergarten (a two-year program starting at age four) through sixth grade using the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound program. The school was created to honor the memory of Russell Byers, a Daily News columnist killed in a mugging.
(Both the Washington and Philadelphia charter schools primarily serve black students.)
Here's what Jacobs has to say about the book: I observed classes, faculty meetings, board meetings, disciplinary hearings, parent sessions and school assemblies. I shadowed the principal, sat in on a teacher evaluation, helped the Mock Trial club and tutored ninth graders at the school. I hung around. Our School shows how a do-it-yourself school with a work-your-butt-off philosophy can make a difference for left-behind students. While the book puts DCP in the context of the charter school movement, it doesn’t pretend to be a scholarly study. Think Tracy Kidder meets Up the Down Staircase.
You can learn more about the book at http://www.ourschoolbook.com/, and you can learn more about the school at http://www.downtowncollegeprep.org/.
Reviews of the book
“Our School, a vivid account of the creation and first years of a charter high school, reads like a novel whose characters are both stereotypical and improbable. But this isn't fiction. The challenges are real, the stakes high, the lessons important, and the achievements extraordinary.” - Henry Miller, Wall Street Journal, 11/17/2005
“Our School is eye-opening, chilling and inspiring. Up-close and personal, it follows the lives of the students, parents and faculty who had faith that they could break free and succeed.” - Daniel Weintraub, Sacramento Bee, 11/20/2005
“Our School at once illustrates the possibilities and the challenges of urban education. But it's the former that makes it an exciting and important book.” - Andrew J. Rotherham, New York Post, 1/29/2006
“The story delves into the heart of the charter school movement with a glimpse into the life of a single charter school. Jacobs takes the reader into the lives of the struggling students as they shed their troubled pasts and learn to appreciate the rules and strive for a future in college.” - NewsWire, Center for Education Reform
“DCP is enthusiastically experimental. When something's not working (e.g., trying to teach algebra when kids don't know fractions), they try something else. As Jacobs tells the story of DCP's amazingly committed teachers and their (mostly) courageous students, even hardcore opponents of charter schools may soften.” - Publishers Weekly
“Our School is wonderfully written and wonderfully informative. I cannot think of another book that provides such a close and honest look at a successful charter school serving immigrant kids in grave danger of striking out in American life. The fascinating story that Joanne Jacobs tells zips along like a good novel, but it also delivers an important and optimistic message to educators who want to rescue kids.” - Abigail Thernstrom, co-author of No Excuses and America in Black and White
“Jacobs has written a ground-breaking book about the most interesting, and potentially important, change in American schooling in the last 15 years.” - Jay Mathews, Washington Post education columnist, author of Harvard Schmarvard, Escalante, and Class Struggle
“Our School is today's Up the Down Staircase. It's not often a book about my profession gets it right.” - Robert Wright, teacher, Morrill Middle School, San Jose CA
Our School enables readers to step inside a charter school that’s struggling, learning from mistakes, adapting and improving. Our School follows the principal, teachers and students at Downtown College Prep, a San Jose charter high school that’s 90% Hispanic. Most students come from Spanish-speaking immigrant families; most earned D's and F’s in middle school and enter ninth grade with fifth-grade reading and math skills. They were left behind academically but promoted anyhow. Operating with a work-your-butt-off philosophy, DCP now outscores the average California high school on the state’s Academic Performance Index and sends all graduates to four-year colleges.
Thursday, May 11
Washington, DC
On Thu 5/11 at 5:30 pm, she will be speaking and signing books at William E. Doar Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts, 705 Edgewood St. NE, Washington, DC (near the Rhode Island and Brookland-CUA metro stops). In addition, the school’s musical troupe will perform and guests will be asked to donate a children’s book to the school library.
Founded in 2004, WEDJ enrolls students from all over the city. Students take classes in music, dance and theater and perform in at least one public exhibition or performance each year. A longer school day and Saturday classes ensure enough time for academics and arts. Currently an elementary, the school is adding middle and high school classes in the fall.
Wednesday, May 17
Philadelphia, PA
On Wed 5/17 at 5:30 pm, she will be speaking at Russell Byers Charter School, 1911 Arch St., in downtown Philadelphia.
Founded in 2001, the school educates children in kindergarten (a two-year program starting at age four) through sixth grade using the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound program. The school was created to honor the memory of Russell Byers, a Daily News columnist killed in a mugging.
(Both the Washington and Philadelphia charter schools primarily serve black students.)
Here's what Jacobs has to say about the book: I observed classes, faculty meetings, board meetings, disciplinary hearings, parent sessions and school assemblies. I shadowed the principal, sat in on a teacher evaluation, helped the Mock Trial club and tutored ninth graders at the school. I hung around. Our School shows how a do-it-yourself school with a work-your-butt-off philosophy can make a difference for left-behind students. While the book puts DCP in the context of the charter school movement, it doesn’t pretend to be a scholarly study. Think Tracy Kidder meets Up the Down Staircase.
You can learn more about the book at http://www.ourschoolbook.com/, and you can learn more about the school at http://www.downtowncollegeprep.org/.
Reviews of the book
“Our School, a vivid account of the creation and first years of a charter high school, reads like a novel whose characters are both stereotypical and improbable. But this isn't fiction. The challenges are real, the stakes high, the lessons important, and the achievements extraordinary.” - Henry Miller, Wall Street Journal, 11/17/2005
“Our School is eye-opening, chilling and inspiring. Up-close and personal, it follows the lives of the students, parents and faculty who had faith that they could break free and succeed.” - Daniel Weintraub, Sacramento Bee, 11/20/2005
“Our School at once illustrates the possibilities and the challenges of urban education. But it's the former that makes it an exciting and important book.” - Andrew J. Rotherham, New York Post, 1/29/2006
“The story delves into the heart of the charter school movement with a glimpse into the life of a single charter school. Jacobs takes the reader into the lives of the struggling students as they shed their troubled pasts and learn to appreciate the rules and strive for a future in college.” - NewsWire, Center for Education Reform
“DCP is enthusiastically experimental. When something's not working (e.g., trying to teach algebra when kids don't know fractions), they try something else. As Jacobs tells the story of DCP's amazingly committed teachers and their (mostly) courageous students, even hardcore opponents of charter schools may soften.” - Publishers Weekly
“Our School is wonderfully written and wonderfully informative. I cannot think of another book that provides such a close and honest look at a successful charter school serving immigrant kids in grave danger of striking out in American life. The fascinating story that Joanne Jacobs tells zips along like a good novel, but it also delivers an important and optimistic message to educators who want to rescue kids.” - Abigail Thernstrom, co-author of No Excuses and America in Black and White
“Jacobs has written a ground-breaking book about the most interesting, and potentially important, change in American schooling in the last 15 years.” - Jay Mathews, Washington Post education columnist, author of Harvard Schmarvard, Escalante, and Class Struggle
“Our School is today's Up the Down Staircase. It's not often a book about my profession gets it right.” - Robert Wright, teacher, Morrill Middle School, San Jose CA
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