School discipline and the writing of No Child Left Alive

When my attorney cross-examined me (in school termination hearings, the prosecution is allowed to call you as its witness), May 23, I talked about the reasons I wrote No Child Left Alive, the book which is at the center of the Joplin Schools administration's attempt to fire me.

As far as I can tell, not one media outlet picked up on this- yet it is one of the most important things that was brought up during the hearing.

I started writing No Child Left Alive following the administration's successful effort to push former South and East Middle School Principal Ron Mitchell out of a job. After a few weeks, I put it aside, until an incident that happened in the fall of 2011.

During a fifth hour fire drill at East Middle School, I was taking roll when I noticed two students, two of the biggest boys in my class, horsing around, throwing punches at each other. At least, I thought they were horsing around. When I stepped forward to stop the nonsense, I quickly learned that this was not horseplay. The two were really going at it. One of the young men, who probably had at least 70 pounds on me, gave me a hard shove, nearly knocking me over.

Again, I tried to stop the fight and he gave me another hard shove, knocking me to the ground. Coach Tim Spiers, who was on the East Middle School faculty at the time, was able to get the young boy to an administrator. Spiers told me, "That young man is not going to be back in this school."

Knowing what I thought I knew about the lack of tolerance that is shown, and rightfully so, to students who attack teachers, I thought Spiers was right.

It did not take me too long to discover that things had changed, and not for the better. A few moments after we returned to the building, the assistant principal came up to me, before I even had a chance to go back into my room and asked, "Do you really want to hurt this young man's education?" He did not appear to be comfortable asking me the question and I have always believed he was sent to my room to ask it.

How do you answer a question like that? "Yes, I want to hurt his education," or "No, I will apologize to him."

I simply answered, "No."

That was the end of the conversation.

After class resumed, the principal announced over the intercom that teachers should read the message in their e-mails, something which is done any time that something needs to be spread quickly across the school without students knowing it.

When I opened my e-mail, I was stunned to see the announcement, "Contrary to rumor, Mr. Turner was not assaulted today."

This fire drill took place during the middle of the week. The student who assaulted me was placed in ISS (in-school suspension) and returned to my classroom the following week. He never gave me another problem the rest of the year.

I never wished this young man ill. It never was about him. To me, the inaction on the part of administrators sent two, equally disturbing, messages. To students, it said nothing serious will happen to you if you attack a teacher. To teachers, it sent the message that we were targets and nothing was going to be done about it.

At that point, I resumed writing No Child Left Alive and did not stop writing until it was done.

Many of the things I wrote about were based on stories that have been told to me by teachers, some from Joplin High School, some from teachers across the country with whom I have been communicating since I began writing about educational issues.

The Joplin Schools, as well as schools across the country, are steeped in a new administrative culture, that says if you control the message, you control the problem. If people are not told of the problems that exist in our schools then those problems do not exist.

That culture is explored in my book which deals with excesses that can take place in efforts to keep students in school to improve the graduation rate, including playing games with grades and attendance statistics, the fear that teachers have once they discover they are being encouraged to not write referrals for students no matter how egregious their transgressions may be, and the idea that a slick public relations machine can make any new program sound like a gift from heaven.

As he testified at my hearing May 23, Superintendent C. J. Huff said he saw nothing in my book that had anything to offer about education. All he was worried about was that I had "dangled" it in front of unsuspecting students, which was the new argument administration made about my "crimes." Since they could not find any student who had read the book (not one student nor one parent testified at the hearing that anyone had read the book), now it was no longer that I had assigned this book to "download and discuss," it was the possibility that someone had accidentally reached a website that I had not used in class for more than two and a half years (and even then it was only for a few weeks during a 20-minute class called Encore when I used it to prepare for standardized testing), then clicked on a link I had placed there, and then read the book. And even then, I had copied and pasted my story, which was primarily about the murders at Sandy Hook and the way that schools misuse discipline statistics, on a Sunday. The free download was available for only two days, Sunday and Monday. That week was the week before Christmas break. On Monday, my students did some work to prepare for the third quarter civil rights research project. High school students spoke to my classes about the project on Tuesday and on Wednesday, a half-day, some of the same high school students and some others spoke to my class about various topics having to do with what they will face when they go to Joplin High School.

And since I did not assign any homework over the Christmas break, and we began the civil rights project immediately after we returned from vacation, just when would we download and discuss the book?

It's no wonder they dropped their initial contention. It made no sense from the beginning. As for "dangling" it in front of students, all administration ever had to do was tell me that I had put that on Room 210 Discussion and it would have been removed immediately.

At the hearing, I was asked why I did not immediately remove it after my four-minute interrogation by H. R. Director Tina Smith. I said I was concerned that people might think I was admitting that I had done something wrong and it could harm my case.

The administration's attorney acted as if this was some "ah-ha" moment and that she had caught me in a character flaw. "So you put your needs in front of the needs of your students?" She kept hammering and hammering on this, and in a sense, I did...if you really believe that there were hundreds of students who downloaded the book. As far as I can determine, no one did.

After my "interrogation," in which I was not allowed to explain any of these things, I had no idea what was going to happen. I did not know what to do. It is easy for the administration's attorney to criticize me for not shutting down Room 210 Discussion immediately. I hope she is never put in a situation where she does not know where to turn and is expected to make all of the right choices.

It was apparent after my hearing that any of the problems that came up as a result of either No Child Left Alive or Scars from the Tornado could have been settled the day of my interrogation, but allowing me to address those concerns was never a part of the plan.

Tina Smith tried to explain that during her testimony by saying that she changed her plan because she knew I was recording the interrogation. After that, she says, she decided just to stick with the questions she had on her list. Pardon me if I am skeptical about that story. If I were in her position and were certain I was being recorded, I would have been intelligent enough to have offered time for an explanation, if nothing else, just to create the illusion of being fair.

It sounded to me like it was just an attempt to explain her decision to try to ruin a man's career on the basis of a four-minute question-and-answer session, which spent little time allowing me to answer.

I heard five members of administration attempt to destroy my reputation. Those parts were included in the news accounts and should have been. If people are willing to do whatever they can to destroy a hard-earned reputation with a thin fabric of innuendo, then the public has the right to know these are the people who are directing their children's education. These are the people who have been charged with making sure our children become fine upstanding members of society- not just fodder for our business partners, but people who contribute to making this a better world.

We learned on Thursday, May 23, that if a teacher writes a book with adult content and it cannot be proven that any child has read it, that our administrators have no problem with reporting him to Family Services, the Joplin Police Department, the Jasper County Sheriff's Department, the Jasper County Prosecuting Attorney's office and the U. S. Attorney's office.

The day before the hearing, as my lawyer and I were meeting with our witnesses, the husband of a parent who testified on my behalf asked what I thought was an excellent question. "Is this all there is or is there something else we are going to find out tomorrow?"

I answered him honestly, "That's all there is."

I can understand that question. That was another part of smearing my reputation, really the only "dangling" that was done. Administration allowed the idea to persist that there was something more and when there was nothing more, something had to be created- either the types of slander that two of the administration witnesses tried unsuccessfully to sell or the idea that C. J. Huff promoted with the "How are you going to feel if you let this man continue to teach and something else happens a few years from now?"

Huff had alluded during a speech to the East Middle School faculty a few weeks ago that he would have his side on May 23, indicating that there was more to be revealed than what I had written about on this blog.

There never was anything more, just the hint that something might happen in the future.

And meanwhile, while all of the attention has been paid to me and to my book, the problems that caused that book to be written in the first place, are in danger of remaining unaddressed.

That would be a crime for our teachers, students, and everyone in the Joplin R-8 School District.