Thursday, April 26, 2007

Sorrell Gets To Keep Job--At Another School

Amy Sorrell, the Woodlan Junior-Senior high school journalism teacher and advisor to the student newspaper which published Megan Chase's editorial promoting gay tolerance, gets to keep her job after school officials spent the last two months trying to fire her. It would appear the growing and sympathetic national attention for her plight was more than school officials could handle. She will have to move to another high school in the East Allen County School system where she will teach English and be barred from teaching journalism for three years--an apparent face-saving move for the disgraced administrators responsible for this mess.

1 comment:

Edward Fox said...

The school board has really disgraced itself. That is of course her "crime". She innocently afforded the principle and then the school board to express on a national stage, their ignorant prejudice. For that she must be punished.

Fortunately this country has limits and the Internet, and the board found that legally, and to avoid even more bad publicity, they could not fire her. Being an excellent teacher and doing your job are not grounds for dismissal, however much it is in the interest of such incompetent administrators. So, these are very ignorant people and stupid also, they make a display of their impotent fury by moving her to another school (what pedagogical purpose could that serve? Or is the purpose of the school board to defend a disgraced principal from the wages of his folly?) They also will not allow her to teach journalism.

People in the district should meditate on this demonstration that any proof of actual ability to teach your subject is grounds for immediate dismissal lest you make your colleagues and "superiors" look bad by comparison.

Which raises the question: "Where were her colleagues?" Apparently they are so spineless that they cannot stand up for each other even when (especially when) they are in the right. Or is it that her colleagues are so ignorant themselves that they have to cogitate whether tolerance is something that can be safely mentioned in their schools?