Battle for Room 314

[Gul Dukat]

I came across this book while on one of our other forums.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...e-for-room-314

In a fit of idealism, Ed Boland left a twenty-year career as a non-profit executive to teach in a tough New York City public high school. But his hopes quickly collided headlong with the appalling reality of his students' lives and a hobbled education system unable to help them: Freddy runs a drug ring for his incarcerated brother; Nee-cole is homeschooled on the subway by her brilliant homeless mother; and Byron's Ivy League dream is dashed because he is undocumented.
http://www.dinduplantation.com/forum/forum.php
In the end, Boland isn't hoisted on his students' shoulders and no one passes AP anything. This is no urban fairy tale of at-risk kids saved by a Hollywood hero, but a searing indictment of schools that claim to be progressive but still fail their students. Told with compassion, humor, and a keen eye, Boland's story is sure to ignite debate about the future of American education and attempts to reform it.

Ultimately, he failed to teach nigglets and couldn't figure out...
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[Sandy]

I went through kinda the same thing, but with one big difference. He was stupid and should have known better. What did he think, the city's program was going to put him in Stuyvesant?

This comment is stupid. It blames "poverty" and even "worksheets," when, like you said Dukat, . What does the twat think he should have done, not assigned any work? The one correct part is that a teenaper being "punished" got to sit back in a mini vacation from class. I wonder if there's even one public school left that properly takes care of problems. Half the schools won't do anything because they're run by bleeding hearts, and the other half are afraid to do anything. I can personally testify that human parents have their equivalent of "he beez a good boi an sheet."

I think the kids' behavior had little to do with the fact that their inexperienced teacher was a gay white man and much to with the poverty of their families---both financially and experientially. It also was the result of an ineffective administration that is described by one student as "three hundred strikes and your (sic) out." Mr. Boland saw one of his students, who was being punished for egregious behavior, in the principal's office lying on a couch, listening to his iPod, eating candy. I did feel that mister (as the kids called him) should shoulder a chunk of the "blame". As a first year teacher he didn't have enough tools in his box and needed regular meetings with his selected mentors rather than just crisis meetings. He wasn't consistent about which discipline battles to fight. He also handed out far too many worksheets which 90% of the kids refused to do or did very poorly.