There’s more to the story of our daughter’s academic success than teaching her at home when one of her teachers was not doing an acceptable job. We also left the TV off Monday through Friday and provided a place for her to do her homework. Research shows that kids watch too much television. On weekends, we watched about two to four hours of TV—no more and we watched as a family. She has never had a TV in her room. No video games either. We also took her to the library once a week and checked out books. When she was done with her homework each school night, her only form of entertainment was to read, and she did.
In 1977, Covina Valley School District wanted a tough substitute to tame an unruly art class at Las Palmas Middle School. The art teacher at Lao Palmas had a breakdown and was in the hospital under a doctor’s care. The Las Palmas’s principal called the principal at Giano Intermediate.
At the time, Giano had a reputation as the toughest school in the San Gabriel Valley due to the local street gangs. The principal was Ralph Pagan, a Korean War Veteran. He’d been hired to tame Giano. I’d subbed at Giano many times the previous year, and Ralph recommended me for the job. I met the VP at Las Palmas after school one day, and he let me into the art room. What I saw shocked me.
Discover It’s the Parents, Stupid
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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition].
His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 