Some thoughts about Scars from the Tornado and my current situation

While without a doubt the main charges against me in my current situation have to do with my novel, No Child Left Alive, the charges that have troubled me the most are the ones that say that I was attempting to profit off my students' work that was included in the book Scars from the Tornado.

As everyone knows who follows The Turner Report or who has noted my Facebook postings, I lost more than $4,000 in Google Ads that I thought I had canceled. The ads were designed to promote Spirit of Hope, the second of the two books John Hacker and I did on the Joplin Tornado. The money from those ads, had they been successful, was going to be used to pay for everyone at East to receive a paperback copy of Scars from the Tornado. When I did not have enough, I later made the book available as a free download and gave away 1,111 of them, giving free paperbacks to those who contributed stories and to various local libraries. I also had to pay designer David Hoover for his excellent work on Scars from the Tornado.

During testimony May 23, Superintendent C. J. Huff made some condescending remarks referring to me as a "celebrity teacher" and claiming that I bragged about the Amazon rankings for my books (the idea about writing about the rankings is not bragging, but to remind people about the books) and much ado was also made about the fact that my name is on the book and not the names of the students. And there was also the matter of missing permission slips.

As I noted during my testimony, if HR Director Tina Smith had allowed me to respond during my April 8 interrogation, all of the charges against me could have been resolved in 45 minutes. That was never the plan, of course.

To understand what I did with Scars from the Tornado, it is necessary to take into consideration the two tornado books John Hacker and I did. In 5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado and Spirit of Hope: The Year After the Joplin Tornado, the names Randy Turner and John Hacker were put on the book. All of those who contributed chapters were prominently mentioned in the books, both in the table of contents and on their stories.

I used the same approach with Scars from the Tornado. My name is on the cover, but the names of those who contributed chapters are featured prominently, both in the table of contents and with their stories.

Much of the criticism during the hearing was because I never put anything in the advertising for the book about how the proceeds from the book would be used. That is exactly the same approach I used with 5:41. I don't want people buying a book because it is for a good cause; I want them buying it because it is a good book. If it is a substandard product, I do not care where the money is going, it is a ripoff.

As my Facebook friends are fully aware, I was also searching for a charity or a cause to which to donate the proceeds and debated several good ideas people had. I finally decided, with the help of some of the students whose work appeared in the book, to try to implement an idea from my colleague, Sheri Cornett, who suggested setting up a foundation or a fund with money going to a school which ends up in a tragic situation such as the one that hit East two years ago. "Paying it forward," Sheri called. The kids loved the idea, and I did, too. They would serve as the board of directors for that foundation.

My plan was to have a signing sometime in late April or early May, allow the students to have a real author's experience and sign books for those who wanted them. All of the proceeds, somewhere in the neighborhood of several hundred dollars probably, would have most likely gone to the Moore, Oklahoma, schools. There is a question now whether that book signing will ever take place.

The first inkling I had that there was any concern with the book came the week before spring break when my principal came to my room and asked how much money I had put into the book. I told him about the Google advertising and the money I owed David Hoover.

The next thing I knew, on Monday April 8, I was being accused of profiting off the children's work and without their parents' permission. I had a folder full of permission slips I had taken home from school the day before spring break. On that day, Principal Bud Sexson came into my room just before I was to head out on break and said, "HR wants your computer." After he left with my computer, I decided it might be wise to take the permission slips with me. I did it because i did not trust the people who were conducting the investigation.

At an earlier point in the school year, I had checked the permission slips. I had signed slips for everyone who contributed to the book, with three exceptions- myself, fellow teacher Kathy Weaver, and Rylee Hartwell, who wrote the foreword. For the first two, I did not need one. I made a mistake by not getting one from Rylee's mother beforehand. The addition of the foreword to the book was a late decision and it slipped through the cracks. I was wrong.

As it turned out, at some point during the year, as the folder with the permission slips lay in one of my desk drawers, some of the slips must have fallen out. Considering that the administration had only one parent testify against me, and that was a parent who signed the permission slip and whose form was in the folder, certainly backs up what I am saying. That parent appeared to have not been concerned about the book until administration told her I was making a profit off of it, had my own name on it, and was advertising it on Amazon. She was entirely truthful in her testimony, but I have no doubt that had I been given a chance to talk with her, her concerns would have been addressed and could have easily been worked out.

However during the hearing, the administration first tried to act like my permission slips were not valid because they were poorly written and because they referred to a book called Eagle Pride and not Scars from the Tornado. I am surprised administration did not think the Board of Education was intelligent enough to determine that at some point the name of the book changed and Eagle Pride and Scars from the Tornado were one and the same. The title was changed after I read a phrase in one of my students' works that I thought made a much stronger title.

After administration discovered before my hearing that  I had permission slips, something I had never been asked about during my four-minute interrogation by Tina Smith, the charge changed to publishing the book without permission from administration.

To get permission from administration, we are told that everything must go through proper channels. For me, that meant talking to my principal, Bud Sexson. That was something I did right after I returned to school in August 2011, three months after the Joplin Tornado. I told him about what I had planned- that I wanted to use proceeds from 5:41 to publish a book featuring stories written by East Middle School students about their tornado experiences and our first year in a warehouse school. He did not express any concerns about the idea, and in fact, seemed to like it, and even said to make sure I had signed permission slips from the parents of students whose work was included in the book.

Considering that to be approval, I announced the plan to my fellow faculty members at our first group meeting, a meeting that was also attended by the principal. Again, no objections were voiced. There was no reason for me to assume that I had any other steps that I needed to take.

If I did not firmly believe I had permission, I would not have written the following passage in the September 6, 2011, Turner Report, in a post titled "A Portion of 5:41 Proceeds to Benefit East Middle School Writing Project:"

In the back of my mind, I wanted to do something to help my students deal with the aftermath of the May 22 tornado and I wanted it to be done through writing.

I have held off on announcing this project until I had everything pinned down, but the communication arts (English) teachers at East and other faculty members are working on a year-long project that will culminate in a book and documentary video about our year in the warehouse.

The working title: Eagle Pride: East Middle School's Journey after the Joplin Tornado.

The book will concentrate on the 2011-2012 school year in a makeshift school building in an industrial park. It will also feature the students' recollections of the cataclysmic event that made the move necessary.

The book will feature the best work of our sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, photos, and contributions from some faculty members.

Sixth grade communication arts teacher Nina English, who did the design work for 5:41, will handle the same duties on this volume.

When the book is published, John and I are committed to seeing that every EMS student and staff member has a copy. The book will also be sold to the public with proceeds going to the East Middle School Communication Arts Department, hopefully to begin a long line of student publications.

Though some of those plans and the title of the book changed, the basic plan remained the same. I would never have announced it without feeling I had permission. In fact, in that same blog post, I wrote the following:

Our principal Bud Sexson okayed the project a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to wait to make the announcement until I had checked out some possible complications.

As excited as John and I are about the unveiling of 5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado, these past 10 days or so, we are just as excited about giving the students and staff of East Middle School the opportunity to be part of a quality project and make sure that not only will we have a year we will never forget, but that we will be able to share that year with the thousands of friends Joplin has across the United States and the world.

On August 15, 2011, the first day of the 2011-2012 school year, Gov. Jay Nixon was at the school. Since I had first period plan time, I took my digital camera and began following the governor, shooting pictures. After I had taken only a few, Bud Sexson approached me and said, "They don't want you taking any pictures."

I told him the pictures were for the book. He did not say, "What book? I don't know about any book." He said, "I know, but they don't want you taking pictures." I was never told who they were, but I had a feeling it was administration and not anyone from Gov. Nixon's office.

The next time I talked to the principal about the book was when Assistant Superintendent Angie Besendorfer sent an e-mail out, recommending a publishing company that published student work. The company took a cut and provided some proceeds to the school. Later that day, I stopped by the principal's office, reviewed that e-mail and noted that the company was simply sending the work to Create Space, the Amazon-owned company that I do my publishing with and noted we could keep more money for the school by not using the company mentioned in Dr. Besendorfer's e-mail. He agreed, so I proceeded with the project.

In ensuing months, I had only a couple of brief conversations with the principal about the book. Both times, he told me to make sure I had signed permission slips. At no point did he ever tell me he wanted to review the contents of those permission slips or to look at the slips themselves.

At a faculty meeting in March, I announced the book was being published.

So imagine my surprise when I was preparing for the case and examined some of the materials we received after issuing a subpoena to the district. One was an e-mail from Principal Bud Sexson to Tina Smith.

When I saw that, I became worried that it was simply going to be a matter of who people believed. Was the principal's version, which did not include at least six times that I told him about the book going to be believed, or was mine?

That is why it was especially gratifying, though I cannot recall it being mentioned in media coverage of my hearing, when we were able to discover two unimpeachable witnesses, the president and treasurer of the East Middle School PTO, both of whom were present at a May 2012 planning session- 10 months before the principal says he heard about my book for the first time- who vividly recall him not only talking about the book, but talking about what a good thing it would be for the children to be involved in such a project. It would help them through the healing process, he indicated.

The permission slips were poorly worded (it was the first time I have ever done such a thing and considering everything that has happened, most likely it will be the last), but I would have been happy to have rewritten them and had them signed again had I known that was a problem.

Anyone who knows me knows that I would never do anything to profit off my students' work, but I will do everything I can to see to it that they receive the recognition they so richly deserve. There was never any reason for me not to believe that I had the permission of the district to publish the book. I went through the proper channels.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I do not take kindly to people attempting to destroy my reputation through a series of well-placed allegations and outright lies. And it is even worse when I know that my own taxpayers' money is allowing these people to mount their vendetta.
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(Information about the allegations concerning my book No Child Left Alive can be found at this link.)