DC Loses Another Terrific Teacher

[Anonymous]

PP -- I should have said "forced out" not "fired".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

PP -- is there any truth to the statement that Mr. Riener would spend entire class periods ranting about things that had nothing to do with the class content? Or that he yelled and cursed in class?

Or that he refused to teach anything but AP classes?

(I'm also curious to know if he cut off his finger to get out of serving in Vietnam -- although that's not really relevant."

[Anonymous]

check out his ratings on ratemyteacher:

http://www.ratemyteachers.com/joe-riener/512723-t/3

These go back years.

Seems like one of those teachers who can be inspiring but also very controversial and intolerant of those who don't think as he does.

[Anonymous]

PP again.

OK here's the letter of explanation from Mr. Riener. He probably could have stayed, but they were going to take senior AP classes away from him, and make him teach 3 "regular" English classes. He didn't feel up to that -- feels he has AP down and does it well, didn't want to teach the regular classes.

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/37635.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:check out his ratings on ratemyteacher:

http://www.ratemyteachers.com/joe-riener/512723-t/3

These go back years.

Seems like one of those teachers who can be inspiring but also very controversial and intolerant of those who don't think as he does.

What the h*LL is rate my teacher? That's plain scary. Yuck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP again.

OK here's the letter of explanation from Mr. Riener. He probably could have stayed, but they were going to take senior AP classes away from him, and make him teach 3 "regular" English classes. He didn't feel up to that -- feels he has AP down and does it well, didn't want to teach the regular classes.

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/37635.html

Clearly, he did not JUST retire due to personal choice not to teach AP. He saw the writing on the wall and got out, no?

"I scored so low on the DCPS teacher rating system that I was slated for termination. This system, called IMPACT, in use for the first time this year, specifies that any teacher receiving below a 1.7 on their 4-point rating scale should be fired. I was informed by a DCPS official that if I am terminated, I will lose both my health insurance and my pension. For a cancer survivor with a list of other ailments, that was a prohibitive prospect."

[Anonymous]

While I seethat he was a wonderful teacher to many, I'm sure there's more to the story than meets the eye. It sounds to me that he felt he won the right to be a prima donna because of all he did. That was his assumption, but obviously not the position that his boss took. Look, I'm sorry. If your boss tells you he needs you to put a goddam clock on the wall, you do it.

Just because he went out of his way for the students, including building all those impressive desks for test taking, doesn;t give him a free passf or everything else. I can't stand anyone who pulls the "I am great . See what I've done, therefore I get to break the rules" philosophy. Reiner is even quoted in the article that he thought that because he was a good teacher, he hoped the principle would see his value and keep him despite his refusal to comply with rules.

Reiner supporters...I see your point, and I'm all for questioning authority, but I think there are two sides to the story here. The principle has a job to do too and he has to run the school. If his staff in one department isn't helping him/her to do it, they they threaten the school's success.

[Anonymous]

"I can't stand anyone who pulls the "I am great . See what I've done, therefore I get to break the rules" philosophy."

You know, I agree with this statement. Maybe that's why I find Michelle Rhee so offensive? No, no---wait. It's because she ruined my child's elementary school. Sorry, distracted by the kiddos there!

[Anonymous]

I'm not surprised to get a response like that on this forum. I'm sorry, but that's a cheap shot. She's at the top of the food chain here in DC and it's her show. As long as she's within the law, she's allowed to do what she needs to do.

Besides, how did she alone ruin your child's elementary school. If it was resting on a solid foundation, I'm sure nothing she could have done (firing a principle included)would have "ruined" it. Growing pains, maybe. If the school's foundation was that fragile, then it's got bigger problems.

[Anonymous]

And please don;t flame for the misspelling of principal. I'm sure there are other typos too. Yeesh. You have to walk on eggshells on this board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP again.

OK here's the letter of explanation from Mr. Riener. He probably could have stayed, but they were going to take senior AP classes away from him, and make him teach 3 "regular" English classes. He didn't feel up to that -- feels he has AP down and does it well, didn't want to teach the regular classes.

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/37635.html

Clearly, he did not JUST retire due to personal choice not to teach AP. He saw the writing on the wall and got out, no?

"I scored so low on the DCPS teacher rating system that I was slated for termination. This system, called IMPACT, in use for the first time this year, specifies that any teacher receiving below a 1.7 on their 4-point rating scale should be fired. I was informed by a DCPS official that if I am terminated, I will lose both my health insurance and my pension. For a cancer survivor with a list of other ailments, that was a prohibitive prospect."

Yes, but it sounds as if he were offered a chance to stay on, but would have to agree to teaching mostly the "grade level" classes. And it sounds from his letter than his poor IMPACT ratings were based primarily on observatins of his one junior year "grade level class" -- where it sounds like he really wasn't making much of an effort, and didn't want to, deidn't believe in challenging them or motivating them, and certianly didn't want to have to teach MORE of them.

None of the evaluators, Principal Cahall, Vice Principal Bargeman, and two Master Educators from DCPS, engaged me in a conversation about AP English. Their focus was completely on how I might motivate students in my grade level class. These are students who, while possessing various levels of skills and smarts, are quite challenged when it comes to motivation. I see my role is to expose them to as much reading, writing and thinking as I can. I try to make my classroom a welcoming place for these reluctant students. I don’t think anything is to be gained by greeting them at the door with lots of don’ts. I aim for a relaxed atmosphere, where young people might feel vulnerable to learning something.

I don't know. A high school English teacher can build a lot of desks for his AP students and all that, and that's great, but he shoudl also be willing to teach 11th grade English. Certainly if he is failing to teach his ONE 11th grade regular class, and the evaluators call him on it, he should suck it up, and attempt to motivate his students better -- not just give up on them. Or -- retire.

[Anonymous]

If I understand it, he wanted only to teach students who were already motivated to do well. Is that the kind of teacher we want in DCPS? Sorry, I don't feel badly for him. If he was such a great teacher, he'd be happy to teach general classes and not just to the cream of the crop. I think there is something to what the principal said - anybody could teach the AP classes because those kids are the ones who are already invested in learning and interested in doing well. It's the teachers who are working with the other kids and who are genuinely making a difference who should be retained.

[Anonymous]

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.



Response

Mr. Riener is not even remotely famous for this act of protest and defiance against the U.S. Governent during the Vietnam War. Mr. Riener is famous for being an outstanding teacher who went far beyond the "Call of Duty" to prepare his students for college and lives rich in imagination and analysis of literature, history, and current events.

The event when Mr. Riener lost his finger took place forty years ago. When will the statute of limitations run out on this story? Speaking of which, may I ask you your age?

Yes, as you suggest, let’s take a minute to let this sink in. In the mean time, perhaps you might consider rejecting future historical revisionism and never again taking such a simplistic view of the Vietnam War.

U.S. involvement in Vietnam went on for nearly twenty years. During those twenty years in which the U.S. fought an Undeclared War in Vietnam, more than 58,000 Americans were Killed in Action. Hundreds of thousands more soldiers came home maimed and were treated like refuse in VA Hospitals. Large numbers of Vietnam Veterans came home drug addicted, many had PTSD, others met with scorn and chronic unemployment and even today so many years later our streets remain littered with now elderly homeless Vietnam Veterans.

During those years the U.S. Government supported a coup that resulted in the murder of a South Vietnamese President. The U.S. dropped millions of tons of an anti-personnel weapon consisting of jellied gasoline called "Napalm" for the purpose of burning large numbers of people to death. Also, in a village called My Lai, American soldiers shot and killed 347 unarmed Vietnamese civilians. The U.S. also waged chemical warfare in Vietnam. The U.S. dropped 12 million gallons of the herbicide "Agent Orange" on the jungles and countrysides of Vietnam.

Please, if you didn't live through the experience, don't try to simplify it and don't try to reduce it to a mere walk behind a cabin with some friends.

Also, how can you be so sure that what Mr. Riener was saying in class was not related to the content matter of the day's lesson?

What did we learn from Vietnam? For one thing we learned that today Nike can produce athletic shoes in Vietnam for $5 per pair and they can sell those same shoes in the U.S. for $100 per pair. We have also learned that if you wage a propaganda campaign against a foreign nation claiming that they have "Weapons of Mass Destruction", you can still persuade the American people in the 21st Century to wage war against virtually anyone.

When you were in class, did you ever consider that you may have been observing passion in action, and that you just didn't get it? Or maybe you just didn't care?

Vis-a'-vis your thesis statement, perhaps it was not truly relevant to the assignment. Or perhaps it was so erroneous that it could not be proved and he generously gave you a second chance?

I recall someone recently stated in a post something to the effect that "You have to do what the boss says, and that's . . . that!!" Do you recall that post? Just maybe . . . rewriting your paper would have fallen into that category. You see, when you are a student, it's not about whether you are ideologically right or wrong, it's about you as student mastering the types of writing and analytical skills that will help you be successful in college and in your life. It's up to you . . . will you choose to be open to learning and improving you skills, or will you ignore opportunities to grow intellectually in favor of continuing to insist your thesis statement ten years ago was really right all these years later?

Reconsider your views of the past. In hindsight, was your thesis statement really as strong, powerful, relevant, and provable as you believed it to be at that moment in time?

[Anonymous]

Re: 01:20

I think we here at dcum might be getting a taste of Mr. Riener's personality.

[jsteele]

All of you ready to tar and feather Riener are missing a big point in his favor. The article to which I linked in the original post of this thread was written by Harry Jaffe. If there were any possible way to justify Riener's being forced out, Jaffe would have found it. Just review his past articles. Nobody has been as steadfast in their allegiance to Fenty other than possibly the Washington Post's editorial board.

Maybe Riener was not an effective teacher of normal classes. I don't know whether that is the case, but let's concede it for the sake of argument. There is no dispute that he was a terrific teacher of AP classes. An effective manager, coach, or other leader always aims to deploy resources in the most effective manner. Why then, wouldn't Riener be asked to concentrate on AP classes? It's a well-worn joke that the Army will assign a talented mechanic as a cook and a talented cook as a mechanic, but I am not sure that is the system to which DCPS aspires. What is even less funny about the DCPS situation is that the principal's choice of classes for Riener would apparently cost Riener his health insurance and pension. If that is the case, it appears the principal was actually making a choice aimed at forcing Riener's retirement rather than filling a teaching need. The bottom line is that DCPS has one less effective teacher. It says a lot about some posters here that they are rushing to give their stamps of approval to that reality.