Write and Wrong

WARNING: Please, PLEASE.... Trust your children's teachers. Even if you don't always agree with them.

Teachers, whether they are whatever box you want to put them in, are essential good people. We have got to learn to let them DO THEIR JOBS! If there are "cursed words" in contemporary literature, they have been trained to deal with it. They are working very hard and facing community, administration, union, and student pressures all at once: All for a relatively living wage.

Once again I am beside myself as to the complete throw away society we have become. We throw away the old, the sick, the young, the impaired, and apparently we feel we have enough good teachers to just start throwing them away as well. Its time to wake up people in order to reach all the youth and give them an education they have to be in school for one and motivated for two. After all they are who will be here when we are all gone running things right! This book is fantastic and they can relate to it. I have a high school student who saw the movie and read the book and who has been reading and writing in a joural. It has improved writing skills and shows that hard work and dedication pays off. I have read the book and seen the movie as well. If people are afraid of a little cursing and true emotions of how someone is feeling then they are probally not dealing well with life in general. I thank Erin Gruwell and Connie Heermann and all the other teachers who have taken the time to make a difference to the youth of America who I feel have been screaming out to us for help for years! The Township Board has made a devistating mistake that has not only impacted its teachers but its youth and its future !

I am currently taking college course to become a teacher. My 16 yr old son's english class read the book last year. Prior to the class reading it, the teacher sent out consent forms for the parents to sign. I did sign the consent but asked to have a copy to read prior to the class reading the book. Although the first couple of chapters were filled with a lot of hate and cursing, I must say I was completely blown away by the book. These students were speaking from the heart. Most had a lot to overcome in order to even attend class. It inspired me a great deal and after reading it, I found my son and his classmates all agreed they loved the book. Mostly because it portrays the REAL emotions of today's youth but also shares their lives in ways most books don't even compare. I'm in Wayne County Indiana and am ashamed to know that Perry Township is not far from me. Some people in the educational system have no clue as to what kids in today's society are actually going through but this book tells it like it is! These students all went to college, know that much inspired my son to attend college also when he graduates. He is LD and knows he has a long road ahead of him but kowing others in his same circumstances were able to do, wil help him mentally once he is there! I say wtg Freedom Writers, Erin and Ms. Heerman

I was a student at Perry Meridian High School and am ashamed to hear about the injustice that has been served. I hope the newly elected Board will overturn this and give Connie Heermann her job back.

This is exactly why I am afraid to go into the teaching field! America is no longer America. Few can battle the hypocricy.

It doesn't make any difference in the U.S.A. anymore if your right. It all must be politically correct!

In the same issue that Jonathan Alter called for easier routes for administrators to fire teachers, Anna Quindlen gives us an example of how easy it is. Unions are not perfect, but teachers need to be protected from the capriciousness of administrators and bureaucrats

This is an outrage. Typical closed-minded censorship by timid, weak, hypocrites who don't understand kids and who don't give a damn about anything but their careers. Here is a link to Perry Meridian High School's web site, with photos of all the creepy administrators who committed this atrocity. I urge everyone to call them and tell them how shameful an act of cowardice they have committed.
http://pmhs.msdpt.k12.in.us/administration.html

Children are strong, competent and capable constructors of knowledge. They are fantastic learners. I wonder, what knowledge did they construct from this situation?

Children are not dumb. They are strong, capable and competent learners. I wonder, what was the lesson they learned here?

As a teacher for 24 years and as one who goes well above and beyond what is expected of me, Ms. Heermann is a teacher who I certainly look up to and admire! After just reading this article "Write and Wrong", I am angry beyond words. I just looked up the website for the Perry Township School District and found that e-dress for the Principal of Meridian High School is "not available." I wonder if it was yanked in response to this article? I hope heads are hanging low as a result of showing up the administrators and school board members to be the cowards and "glacial movers" that they are. I am furious that Ms. Heermann is on an 18 month suspension! I would hope that some school district will grab her up and pay her what she is REALLY worth!
Administrators are the problem with American education. Legislators and administrators think they know what students want and need....rarely, if ever, do they ask the teachers! I am absolutely fuming right now about this injustice. Ms. Heermann is indeed a HERO!

As a teacher of children in the "at risk" population, it astounds me that the administration would take such a role. As a high school student, I lived in a gang infested area. My senior year Sociology teacher showed us the movie "Colors". What a highlight of the year were the uncensored discussions we held about that movie and life in general. When you trivialize the lives of students, you fail them.

hero! !

I read THE LAST WORD by Anna Quindlen, "Write and Wrong," Published Jul 12, 2008. From the issue dated Jul 21, 2008.

In the essay she describes the experiences of Connie Heermann attempting to use ???The Freedom Writers Diary??? in her high school class. Her comments are excellent. I find myself becoming very angry at the kind of behavior shown against a teacher, Ms. Heermann, by school administrators. Originally I intended to become a high school mathematics teacher. While I was a married twenty-five years old student teacher I had an experience that caused me to decide to abandon secondary teaching as my goal. One of my ???remedial mathematics??? students came to me complaining that when he went to vote in the student body elections, the site where he was to vote was out of ballots. No alternative was available for him to cast his ballot: he was not allowed to go to another polling site in the high school, no additional ballots were obtained. He simply was told he could not vote. I shared with him the outrage of this treatment. I suggested that he challenge the whole election. He did. But no remedial action was taken. Instead, as a student teacher, I was warned by the principal to ???mind my own business.??? He said that if I persisted, I would be failed in my student teaching. I did not have the courage demonstrated by Connie Heermann. I kept my head down, completed my student teaching, and abandoned high school teaching. I went on to earn a Ph. D. in mathematics and on into university teaching.
Is there some kind of flaw or error in the way administrators are selected that discriminates against people capable of courageous actions?
Zenas Hartvigson
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
Colorado University at Denver
zhartvigson@cudenver.edu

Where is Perry Township?