DC Loses Another Terrific Teacher

[jsteele]

Harry Jaffe, a Fenty sycophant and by extension, a Rhee supporter, gets a bit of a rude awakening when his daughter's teacher gets the ax:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-loses-another-terrific-teacher-1000832-98550609.html

"So why, I must ask, would she allow Wilson Senior High to force out Joe Riener, a great teacher who taught students to love literature and prepared many to score well on Advanced Placement tests? Could it be that her vaunted IMPACT evaluation system is flawed, and personal preferences can get in the way of impartial evaluation?"

I love this part:

"My question for Rhee: Can her new system accommodate quirky but passionate educators who can inspire?"

Apparently, Harry hasn't been paying very close attention.

[Anonymous]

Wonderful, quirky librarian was fired from my son's DCPS school. I think he was the best educator at the school and really connected with my son personally. He's now at one of the top private schools in the city.

[Anonymous]

It gets worse. According to the terms of the new contract, teachers can't grieve dismissal for an unfair IMPACT evaluation.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_
straight_up/2010/07/can_dcps_teachers_
still_grieve_dismissal_for_poor_performance_
after_all.html

[Anonymous]

The worst aspect about the combination of IMPACT and the new contract is that teachers are not just forced out of a school due to a personality conflict, but they are forced out of the system. If Wilson's principal couldn't work with Reiner, he should have given other DCPS schools a chance to recruit him.

[Anonymous]

perhaps Reiner will find a home at Washington Latin

[Anonymous]

Oh no, this can't be!?!?

Mr. Riener is an outstanding teacher and his commitment to Wilson High School is unsurpassed.

During these past fifteen years, Mr. Riener has taught hundreds, perhaps thousands of students college level/quality writing skills. The vast majority of students who have graduated from Wilson during these years with the skills required to be successful in college have been taught by Mr. Riener. On an academic level the loss of Mr. Riener is a great tragedy for Wilson.

Wilson never had a more committed teacher than Mr. Riener. He sponsored the school newspaper, he was involved with school plays and he was instrumental in hiring Ms. Bronstein who is masterful at the art of theater production. Mr. Riener remained involved in every aspect of Wilson’s theater productions. He also worked tirelessly as a carpenter building sets for school plays. The Wilson Players remain as one of the greatest assets in the Wilson Community.

The school has been falling apart for decades and there was no decent location in the entire building to administer A.P. Exams. For years A.P. Exams were administered in the Library with students sitting at round tables facing each other. Clearly, this was not ideal for the integrity of the testing process. To remedy this problem the administration decided to move the testing location to the auditorium.

This solved the integrity problem and allowed for more space to accommodate the growing number of students taking A.P. Exams at Wilson. However, it also presented a different problem, which was how would the students spread the tests and their scrap paper across their laps in auditorium seats to take the exams and to score well?

Well, Mr. Riener came to the rescue. Mr. Riener measured, designed, and built strong, sturdy, smoothly sanded, durable wooden desk tops that comfortably fit across the arm rests of the auditorium seats. With the help of parents and students, Mr. Riener built enough of these desk tops to accommodate every student taking any one of the roughly twenty-two A.P. Exams administered at Wilson every year. Some English and History Exams are taken by more than a hundred students at the same time. So, one can only assume that Mr. Riener and his crew of helpers must have built at least that number of desk tops.

The school is going through extensive renovations at present and it will not be occupied during the 2010-2011 school year. When the students and staff return to a renovated Wilson High School in the Fall of 2011, presumably they will have created facilities that can more effectively be used for large scale testing than the auditorium has been in the past. That being the case they probably won't have any more use for those desk tops.

It's kind of sad in a way. In a time of real need when there was no other alternative, those desk tops served Woodrow Wilson High School very well and now they will just be tossed out to the trash bin.

Those discarded desk tops are kind of like Mr. Riener himself. Fifteen years ago when DCPS desperately needed quality teachers, he stepped up and served the school and its students in every way possible and now he too is being discarded to the trash bin.

The newly renovated Wilson High will be shinny and clean. They even say it will have bright and sunny atrium. Unfortunately, it will not have one of its all-time brightest lights. Today, Wilson lost an individual who has for so many years inspired the hearts and illuminated the minds of Washington, D.C.'s children.

go tigers???

[Anonymous]

jeff, the post by 12:52 is beautifully written, I hope you can find a way to highlight it on the site

[Anonymous]

This is tragic. I'm grieving for all the dedicated inspiring teachers that Rhee is purging.

Fenty should care now that he is in DCPS, but his children won't go to Wilson anyway.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:jeff, the post by 12:52 is beautifully written, I hope you can find a way to highlight it on the site

I agree. It's a great post. If the author will give me permission, I will repost it on the home page.

[Anonymous]

Yes, hear hear 12:52.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:jeff, the post by 12:52 is beautifully written, I hope you can find a way to highlight it on the site

I agree. It's a great post. If the author will give me permission, I will repost it on the home page.

Sure Jeff,

That would be nice.

Thanks

[jsteele]

Thanks! I just added it to the Home Page.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:Harry Jaffe, a Fenty sycophant and by extension, a Rhee supporter, gets a bit of a rude awakening when his daughter's teacher gets the ax:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-loses-another-terrific-teacher-1000832-98550609.html

"So why, I must ask, would she allow Wilson Senior High to force out Joe Riener, a great teacher who taught students to love literature and prepared many to score well on Advanced Placement tests? Could it be that her vaunted IMPACT evaluation system is flawed, and personal preferences can get in the way of impartial evaluation?"

I love this part:

"My question for Rhee: Can her new system accommodate quirky but passionate educators who can inspire?"

Apparently, Harry hasn't been paying very close attention.

The "scores" that matter to me when talking about Riener are his AP numbers -- how many kids have taken his class over the last five years and what is the grade span that they have gotten on the AP exams? Is he teaching kids to pass AP with a 3 or greater (greater, preferably, since although a 3 is a "pass" it is still not enough at many schools to earn college credit)? A large AP registration with strong pass/performance numbers should matter more than IMPACs numbers, especially if a principal can drop the IMPACT score as alleged by a PP.

Can anybody speak to Riener's AP test numbers?

[Anonymous]

Mr. Reiner - if you are listening-- we would LOVE you at Washington Latin. Please contact the Head or Dean of Academics-- trying to build a quirky and passionate HS for inquisitive kids there. I am sorry Wilson (you are OUR family's inbound HS). We have been rooting for you for years. To see you lose quality teachers to an unfeeling, unthinking system is a tragedy for you, all our kids, and our neighborhood. I'm sorry .

[Anonymous]

According to a comment on Jaffe's article -- Riener was fired because he refused to teach anything but AP classes. Is this true?
Also that yelling and cursing in class were common occurances.

The author of this comment says "we" which makes me think he is someone working for the school system in some way.

I am one of Mr. Riener's former students. In all of my years in the DC Public School system, Mr. Riener was the only teacher for whom I ever wrote a paper. His classes were always lively, and reading "Cider House Rules" in class with him was one of the highlights of my career.

That said, this article is a gross misrepresentation of the situation. Nowhere does it mention the thing that Mr. Riener was most famous for, which is that he cut off his own finger to avoid the draft. Let's take a minute and let that sink in. He cut off his own finger with an axe in the woods behind a cabin with some friends. While not representative of his teaching, this story does represent his general attitude. Mr. Riener was quirky and unpredictable. He could spend entire classes ranting about things in no way related to the content matter. Yelling and cursing was standard practice. He once refused to grade one of my papers because he disagreed with my thesis.

Pete Cahall knew perfectly well that whatever the IMPACT results said, students loved Riener's classes and because of that, were far more interested in the subject matter than they would have been under a different teacher. Riener chose to retire because he did not want to teach anything but AP classes. Perhaps he did not want to have his subject matter dictated by the system. Maybe he thought he knew better. Blame the Man, whatever. But leaving aside the fact that when you have a job, you do what your boss tells you to do and that's that, Mr. Riener's refusal to teach regular classes is shocking. His gift for engaging students is only further reason for him to share it with students who too often get the bottom of the barrel.

Michelle Rhee did not fire Mr. Riener. We cannot possibly emphasize this enough, Mr. Riener was not fired, he retired. I am sure Rhee and education leaders wants every teacher to be able to inspire students the way that he did. But no one wants a teacher who thinks he is somehow above the rules. Clocks on the wall aside, Mr. Riener's teaching style would have had zero value if it weren't for his individual personality. In this case, we are lucky that Mr. Riener was a good influence and not a bad one. But that is the exception and not the rule. Most of the time, DCPS teachers who disregard class guidelines are incompetent and have a heartbreaking affect on students learning.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-loses-another-terrific-teacher-1000832-98550609.html#ixzz0txbZV51O