“Talking out both sides of your mouth”. A teacher explained this phrase to me. It means to be a hypocrite, to say one thing and then say another. Politicians are often accused of such behavior. But this was wasn’t a politician they were referring to; it was the Superintendent of the Lansing School District, T.C. Wallace.
This is the 5th year in a row that Lansing high school’s test scores have not met the requirements which state that each year the test scores of state placement tests should rise by a certain percent. This has caused the school district to consider an “educational reform”, where every teacher is to be evaluated.
By this April, all the school’s teachers and administrators will be “evaluated”. In the speech given to the Eastern student body by T.C. Wallace, of which I was in attendance, he stated that none of the teachers would be “fired”, but he faltered when asked by a student, “If the teachers aren’t being fired, they why do you have to rehire them?” His stuttered answer, in which he would try to explain away the 2.6 million dollars being spent on this reconstitution, was quickly drowned out by boos shouted out from the student body, in which Wallace couldn’t suppress but the school’s principal, Ms. Diggs, who will be leaving Eastern High School at the start of the 08′-09′ school year, quickly suppressed the noise.
The woman who spoke before T.C. Wallace’s speech to cover up for his tardiness to the assembly was the most forceful of the four men sitting on stage with her. While her ideas were biased in the simplest of words, she spoke with fire that commanded respect. In her speech, she commented on how poorly the school was doing, how it was the teachers fault for not captivating the students enough on their lessons to make them want to come to every class, to help those who would ask for help and the families in need. She reminded me of a puppeteer in the way she controlled the stage.
If only T.C. Wallace was as gifted with his speeches. His speech was a waste of analogies that didn’t make sense to try and make sense out of another analogy. This was roughly about squashing the rumors around the reconstitution. It really didn’t work and left the students, myself included bewildered. No ones questions were really answered and we are still left in the dark.
Gianni Risper is a 15 year old student at Eastern High School.
Editor’s note: Some thing has to be done about the scores and Lansing School District students need to assess their grades and their behavior as well.