We'll have to disagree. Maybe her story is true...maybe it isn't. So what? Her hs wasn't perfect? What ones are? If I gave a valedictorian speech at my hs, I could have called out a number of people in the admin, including the guidance counselor, who I thought were useless. That included a few religious people as well.
She chose that moment to rant about something personal. She was out of line.
What is she supposed to do? Suck up? For what purpose and to what end? From listening to the level of frustration that comes with repeatedly tying to get through using "channels", what choice was there?
Sacrifice integrity, damn the poor sods who follow, and kiss ass? or...
Show some integrity, spell out what is going on, (as if the parents of at least some of the students didn't know already--from the reactions, the students sure did), and hope, that on the way out the door she can get something to change, not for herself, but for those who follow, who would be subject to the same incompetence and abuses.
Like I said, I'd hire her in a heartbeat. People who cut to the chase and don't tolerate crap are few and far between, given their grievances are justified. Too many are cowed by authority when they should speak up. That's how the education industry has become such a mess, and it won't get any better until people demand those in that industry do their jobs.
I work in the oil patch. "It is what it is" about covers the full range of problems we have in our industry, and soft pedaling it, tolerating incompetence or worse yet, people who don't do their job is a non-starter and will bite you squarely (and sometimes spectacularly) in the ass. People who try to go through channels but aren't afraid to speak up when that doesn't work are a valuable asset, not a problem, so long as their gripes are justified.
Like I said, from the reactions of the students, it looks like hers were.
I went to two High Schools. The one, the public school was grossly mismanaged, had race riots in progress, and I will ever have a serious gap in my mathematical ability because I have had to independently make up for deficits at the hand of an incompetent teacher who could not work the problems, but would not be fired because he was of the same demographic that was doing the rioting.
The school superintendents and the vast majority of the School Board sent their children, by way of 'a little gerrymandering' of the school districts, to other High Schools, which had no such problems. I could go on at length about that, but won't here.
By virtue of having been an advanced math student in the 8th grade and having participated in a 3 county math contest sponsored by the school, (I placed 5th), I was later admitted to a Private School where scheduling was done on a college type arrangement, there were resource centers for working on projects, the faculty and staff were definitely interested in the academic well being of the students, and I was salvaged academically.
Having seen that contrast, and from the reactions of the other students, I'd say her gripes were justified. (Really, police remove a drunken teacher from school property? Hardly a problem free environment.)
