High-School Confidential

West Kootenay teacher reprimanded for threatening, shaming students
                                                    Tyler Harper - Nelson Star, Feb 1, 2018

Following is a letter to the Star, in response to online comments/commenting on this article being closed to readers after only a few days.

The letter ends up published almost unrecognizable. Observations critical of the Star's reporting are omitted; much of what is left has been reworked off-point. 
Gary Poignant's uberediting lacks journalistic integrity.

Letter to the Editor
As reported - the reprimand of Dec. 2017 is for "several confrontations in classes that left his students feeling threatened and embarrassed."

It is not clear if all "his" students felt threatened and embarrassed or just the 5 who seemingly complained, 2015-16.
This is crucial - yet clearly no students were interviewed for this article.
Neither was the teacher.

While he may have been somewhat over the top in the listed incidents, mechanics and hockey-players feeling threatened, embarrassed, humiliated, shamed in them seems somewhat over the top as well.

Whining teenagers and frustrated teachers are all-too-familiar characters in today's high-school drama - but the article completely fails to develop these.

It is so poorly researched - and not at all reasoned - that readers were possibly lining up with comments.
But within days, (according to Harper) - "Comments were closed because several were defaming both the teacher as well as affected students."
If "several" were defamatory - others obviously were not, and those should be posted as long as it takes.

(To the public) The Star just chucked in the whole thing because it was too-rocking-the-boat for them, while Facebook - paid for dealing with Black Press commenting ... actually is behind this bit of censorship in Smallishtown.

End of letter

Sharing Your Locker!
The Facebook connection works like this:
Non-believers can't post Star comments unless they become Facebook converts. Once in the fold, logging in below the item to be commented on will allow this and having the comment appear on Facebook as well.
Facebook is in charge, and a commenter posting something determined crossing-the(ir)-line is identified and filed away in Zuck's mind-palace: there forever!
"Several" crossing-the(ir)-line comments led to the programmed decision to discontinue commenting altogether on this article at very out-of-town Facebook Central, according to very out-of-town criteria. With the Star not really there there.

Facebook manipulating the Nelson public's opinion!
Facebook censoring what we read and write! 

Also see posts
Facebook Intimacy 
13 Mar, 2017
and
nelsonblackhole.com
4 Oct, 2016

My Teacher Doesn't Like Me! 
Heavily leaning towards EW!!! BAD TEACHER!!! - while not taking into account the reality of high-school life today (Anti-Bullying Day in Nelson!?) - the article itself - dealing with stuff from 2 years ago - is actually "defaming" and "shaming" the teacher widely in our area through Black Press: it presents neither independently sourced evidence nor his own story.

It seems highly irresponsible of SD8 Superintendent Christine Perkins to have superficially discussed - thus the post/letter - with Reporter Tyler Harper the teacher's official "... signed consent resolution agreement with the BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation in which he acknowledged 5 instances of improper conduct ..." and both having no qualms in sensationalizing this obviously no-way-out confession of sins - in public.

All around - what about privacy concerns, what about empathy? 
What can students learn from this?

Also - leading the article with a large photo of L.V. Rogers automatically points at the school as a place where this stuff happened (happens?), while not identifying it as such-or-not specifically. 

Where is the editing in this write-up?

I Hate School!
While the above article is presented as a singular aberration - a context for it may be found in the article below, 2 weeks later. Although the same reporter fails to see/produce a connection publicly.

          Number of students graduating from Grade 12 on the decline 
                                             Tyler Harper - Nelson Star, Feb 14, 2018

Reading this one might imagine rampant frustration among teachers. Plural!

Because what we do learn is that the SD8-Kootenay Lake graduation rate has dropped 3% to 69% - while during the same period the provincial rate has risen from 83% to 84%. More perplexing yet is the contrast between SD8 and SD20 (Trail, Castlegar), with a graduation-rate there of 93%.
Graduating aboriginal students here decreased 10% to 58%, and special-needs students were down 9% to 49%.

Granted - Perkins only recently inherited this mess from Jeff Jones, yet there are records, reports; admin staff supposedly has not changed. Mind you - the latter could also be part of the problem. She now being "shocked" shows a lack of preparedness for the job here, and "we want to go from average to amazing" is unrealistic P.R. - we need to move up towards average first!

Perkins saying "there's no one reason for the declining numbers" - and promptly providing none at all - seems to mean she doesn't have a clue. And Harper doesn't pick up on this.

"Right now the plan, according to Perkins, is to take a close look at each student individually to make sure they are on track to graduate."

Towards an excellent supermarket job? And who will take this individual close look but - of course! - the teachers: now to become specialists in raging hormones with no matter how much MORE skill, time and patience that takes. In not enough classes for ever-plugged-in, predictably feckless teens.

While teachers are just trying to make it through one more day: who is going to take a close look at their individual needs?

A close look should be a given at any time, and presenting it as an epiphany places local education back in the dark ages. With Perkins seemingly not grasping: any permanent positive changes need to be based in a complete system-overhaul. Cleaning house: without that the graduation-rate can't move anywhere but further down. 

Readers'/parents'/teachers' comments/responses on both seriously wanting Star write-ups are crucial. Generally for the sake of area-education - and specifically for one of them as a mindless hatchet-job, liable to destroy an unsupported while stressed-out teacher's life.



This Star don't twinkle!




Images:
Kolenya
STLFinder


Tyler Harper, Reporter
tyler.harper@nelsonstar.com

Gary Poignant, Editor
gary.poignant@nelsonstar.com

Eric Lawson, Publisher
eric.lawson@blackpress.ca

Board of Education
board.education@sd8.bc.ca