John P. Dwyer, Ph.D. Response to Charges Mr. Fairbanks Made December 14, 2007 I. Summary of principal’s conference on December 4: a. “Syllabus states that students may receive extra credit” is based on outdated attachments, my syllabi, which Mr. Fairbanks was informed were immediately electronically altered to conform to his and Ms. Hayes orders on the day the message was received, 10/23/’07. Furthermore the students were immediately notified on 10/24 and 10/25. The syllabi do not show extra-credit any more. To aver that I’ve clearly violated the Code that provides teachers “Shall accept no gratuity, gift or favor that might influence professional judgment” is a specious charge. I was given this order without any request for or opportunity to explain the pedagogical rationale developed over 40 years of teaching experience: students at schools like LHS have many family and social problems that negatively effect their grades and they need a safety net. Unlike the many teachers who give extra credit for bringing in cat food for the Humane Society, Beanie Babies for the Iraq troops, funds and food for adopted poor families (like the Pauls), participating in car washes, etc., I recognize that many of our students not only have no books in their homes but have never been in a bookstore. My opportunity provided them with a learning experience. Anyone who has previously done it learns that there are many versions and translations of say The Canterbury Tales. The student must learn what are the publisher, the author, the date of publication, and the ISBN number. They have had to tell the clerk exactly what they want and order the precise book to get the credit. Some bought them online and the lesser expensive used books have been perfectly acceptable; it just had to be the precise edition to make a class set. I personally do not need or want 30 copies of the book; my next year’s students do. Why? The Reader’s Digest-type slices of literature in our Holt textbooks are inadequate for motivating students to complete the study of whole texts. My students read these donated class sets closely and completely with me. b. That the “Page 3 activity in the Advanced Placement syllabus” dealing with writing the “death row inmate, Gregory Capehart” indicates that I have not used good professional judgment, that I never thought to review this with administration, and that it violates the Administrative Code: Teachers “Shall make reasonable effort to protect the student from conditions harmful to learning / or safety is also a specious charge. I clearly informed Mr. Fairbanks that Mr. David Roe of the College Board directed me by telephone on 11/20/’07 to include this in my syllabus in order to have it approved. I did; it was approved on 11/29/’07. I mailed a copy of the approval to Mr. Fairbanks on 11/29 and he replied 11/30, “about time…there goes one stress attack.” He told me to remove it on 12/03/’07. I replied that the approval would last at least two years and the College Board wouldn’t have to know that we removed that part. Mrs. Caraker added that I might have to resubmit next year if the District changed the course from paired to every other day. Nevertheless, I returned to my classroom and immediately complied. It is no longer in the syllabus. Mr. Fairbanks knows this and so again, this charge is specious. As Joe Landon’s commendation of LHS’s students from 2004, as the many NDN articles show, as the Channel 20 news reports indicated this activity was approved by Dr. Bruce Myers, principal of LHS, before it was attempted. Mr. Capehart is not a death row inmate--due to the heroic efforts of the LHS student body to require a DNA test for him. It was ordered; Judge Tepper in Pasco county “vacated Gregory’s death sentence” and he was moved from Starke, Florida to Pasco County Detention Center where he now languishes without funds to pay his lawyer, Mr. Daniel M. Hernandez, P.A. He is not on death row. c. This charge has the wrong date. I requested and received permission to take a personal leave day on 11/30. What I do on my personal leave days is not subject to review by my principal. To characterize my involvement with these students and this issue as “I discussed, encouraged, and provided . . . permission slips” falsely insinuates that I applied arm-twisting pressure to have them skip school. I did not. In fact, I did not decide to go to this superb educational event until the previous weekend when it became clear that many wanted to go and there were no obstacles. On 11/28 I provided four students who asked with parent permission and medical release forms from Vanderbilt Presbyterian Church who donated their 15 passenger van, a professional driver, and the gasoline to transport 12 senior and junior LHS students who decided on their own that they wanted to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in their Miami march. They decided to do this on the basis of their Naples CIW experience which included a Saturday meeting on September 29 featuring guest speakers. Students were informed that this was not a field trip and not a School-Related Activity for which they would be excused. They met the single van in a public parking lot at 5:15 A.M. and returned safely at 8:00 P.M. I watched over them the entire time and permitted no misbehavior. The youth minister commented at the end of the trip that they were the best-behaved teenagers he’d ever taken anywhere. As this was clearly and repeatedly announced and characterized as a non-school sponsored activity, to charge me with “violating school district policies and procedures relative to field trips” is wrong. This CIW action was not a field trip. Nevertheless, it was a unique opportunity and a grand learning experience. As any of my students past and present will affirm, I always do “take reasonable precautions to distinguish between personal views and those of” CCPS and LHS. Amnesty International and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are internationally renowned award-winning human rights organizations. I have worked personally with officers in both organizations since their inceptions. The CIW has been written up in leading magazines such as National Geographic and The New Yorker and also received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and the 2007 award from Anti-Slavery International (ASI), the world's oldest international human rights organization for their work against slave wages and modern day slavery. Letters of commendation from the RFK Institute and the CIW are included in this rebuttal package. d. On October 8, among other concerns, Mr. Fairbanks directed me to allow all students requested by office personnel to leave my classes. I informed him that I never obstructed any student from leaving my classroom when requested by any office. I guessed that the sign on my door saying “Please Do Not Disturb When Class Is In Session” was the problem and so replaced it that week. I have never failed “to follow school procedures of allowing students to leave [my] classroom when called out by various administrative individuals or offices.” This charge is wholly without regard to the truth. II. Directives: a. Being directed to “remove all reference(s) to the purchase of books, materials, gifts, etc. by students in return for extra credit” is surreptitiously redundant. Mr. Fairbanks insinuates that I have not informed him and have not already acted in obedience to his former instructions when, indeed, I have. It also insinuates that I am guilty of accepting “gifts, and money” in exchange for grades. I never have. Please see the footnote #1 above. There seems to be smoldering subtext here that insinuates that I am recalcitrant, when in fact, I am and have always been all obedience. b. Being directed to “delete the page 3 activity on [my] Advanced Placement syllabus” is also surreptitiously redundant. Mr. Fairbanks insinuates that I have not informed him and have not already acted in obedience to his former instructions when, indeed, I have done both. It also insinuates that I have not fully explained that the presence of the assignment is due only to satisfying the requirements as stated by Mr. Roe of the College Board for the approval of the syllabus. After including the assignment, the syllabus passed. Mr. Fairbanks also fails to ask me to produce the pedagogy and history behind this assignment. I nevertheless have already attempted to explain it verbally during several of his many conferences with me. He seems not to remember. As Mr. Roe explained to me, the syllabus should show real life connections between the texts considered in class and such things as the Capehart success already experienced by LHS students, a part of recent Lely history that everyone should feel great pride about. I gave Mr. Roe many examples of what my students do outside of my class, including the CIW actions; he was positively impressed by them all and suggested that I put the Capehart assignment together. I have already informally encouraged correspondence with him by students in past years, always suggesting that they use the Lely address so that their private addresses are not accessible to the criminal element in which Gregory is currently forced to live. There are restrictions that the Department of Corrections places on correspondence such as no stamps other than US postage, no money. These real life connections with such texts as Crime and Punishment also involve higher cognitive operations about the legal system and make the literary connection between slave narratives like Frederick Douglas’s and prison narratives. I never have asked students to do any of this for credit. But some have written and shown the class the responses they receive from Greg. I also warn them to tell him not to give any of their personal information to any other inmate. Many of my A.P. students also join Lely Amnesty and follow the organization’s website suggestions for writing to prisoners of conscience around the world as well as writing to the authorities on their behalf. Overall it certainly is a real life connection of the highest order. I disagree that this is an activity that is inappropriate for senior high school students. I also disagree that, given my precautions, it could place students at risk. Our ESOL classes urge authentic learning that draws real life connections. Nevertheless I did immediately remove it from the syllabus as Mr. Fairbanks directed. c. Being directed “to provide [Mr. Fairbanks] with a copy of all future syllabi for [his] approval before sending them out ignores the fact that I always have done this. For years as has been required for all teachers, and for the past two years that Mr. Fairbanks has been with us at LHS, I have prepared and submitted my syllabi before school begins. He is very much aware of this as the roof leak that destroyed all my classroom rug, books, equipment, and handouts on August 6, 2006 required his personal assistance. His own secretaries (to whom I feel the deepest gratitude) re-typed and reproduced the syllabi for all courses during that preparation week. To make an issue of it now is surreptitiously and gratuitously disingenuous. To require me to submit “any writing assignments, field trips, and other activities that could be perceived as controversial” is wholly out of order. Anything can be perceived by somebody in the community as controversial. As I previously stated, the only field trip I’ve ever taken my Collier County students on was in 1973. We toured the Ringling Museum and attended Richard III in Sarasota. I do not take my students on field trips. And I very rarely miss a day of school. My professional judgment after 40 years of exercising it is impeccable. To substitute Mr. Fairbanks’ judgment for mine, especially about writing assignments, is absurd. I have 17 years of formal study in my subject area. He has none. In the grand order of things, as well as academically, I far outrank him. “Plac[ing] the district of Lely High School in a negative light” is not what my actions nor words have ever done, excepting for the small fractious factions whose complaints are ever-present. The implications of this directive cover over Mr. Fairbanks’ substantial disregard for me and my history. The Burger King action should have been totally off the record. d. Being directed to cooperate to “release students immediately when they are needed by guidance, discipline or other administrative offices” is repeated here for the third time. Beneath this repetition must lie Mr. Fairbanks’ resentment toward what I do in class. As my students’ daily writing attests, what I say daily is replete with knowledgeable information that cannot be obtained elsewhere. I have studied long and hard to achieve my three wholly academic degrees and my masters in education. I continue to study my subject on a daily basis. I have an expertise with English literature not easily found in south Florida. What students receive from me is valuable to them, and I suspect that some of them refuse on their own recognizance to leave for an administrative, attendance or guidance concern. Although I rarely interrupt my verbal performance to openly acknowledge the entrance of someone with a request, it is always delivered immediately, and I have never hindered any student from leaving my class. I should not be taken to task for failing to cooperate. I resent frivolous interruptions; nevertheless, I do cooperate. e. Being directed “not to take class time or other time to discuss the subject of this discipline and other related matters that are not part of the curriculum” is an unwarranted restriction of my freedom of speech. Curriculum frays out beyond the boundaries of the page and the text into real life. Literature is about life and one of the major reading strategies is to draw personal contemporary connections. I cannot ignore nor pretend that what is being done to me isn’t. Mr. Fairbanks’ ill-disguised fear is that exposing such continued proof of his overzealous campaign of punitive harassment of me (and my family) will create a reaction among the many community members who affirm and appreciate what I do and have been doing for my students in Naples for the past 35 years (excluding the five years I spent back at Notre Dame working for my advanced degrees at my own cost). If Superintendent Thompson has a problem now with his style of leadership and administrative decisions, he will not be grateful for the furor that punishing me with a three-day suspension without pay will cause. LHS teachers might be further intimidated, but they already are so much that none will even go to the school board meetings and only a handful gather around the flagpole to Work to Rule. Intimidating them further won’t quiet the already silenced. Authentic learning takes place in a literature class by connecting the past, the present, and the future in an instant. Perhaps in an elementary class or a middle school class, a literature course is quite different and disconnected from everything else. It shouldn’t be. It cannot be at the senior high level. III. Summary The assertions that I have violated district policies and procedures and the teachers’ professional obligations, and my ethical responsibilities as an educator are fabrications, none of which is true, as my above explanations make clear. I can hardly be charged with not striving for professional growth when I sold my home on Woodridge Avenue and spent the proceeds on going back to Notre Dame. Calling into question my professional judgment and integrity necessarily redounds upon the questioners. I do not know if there are persons or factions that have prompted Mr. Fairbanks to make these accusations, itself reminiscent of a military tribunal in which one is never able to challenge his accusers. But I do challenge Mr. Fairbanks, the only one whom I see making these wholly false allegations. As far as I know I have maintained “the respect and confidence of [my] colleagues, of students, of parents, and of other members of the community.” I also would like to aver that I’ll match my principles with anyone. I’m very conservative about following my well-developed and theologically formed conscience. Two weeks ago Mr. Fairbanks assured me that my job was not in jeopardy as rumor had it. Now I worry about people like the school’s private investigator, Peter DeBaun, motivated by an unknown group like Richard A. Somerby’s group of veterans who drove English teacher Ian Harvey out of town and out of the country. I think if these charges stand, Mr. Fairbanks’ assurances will be just another one of his lies. A student overheard him at a softball game a month ago telling an adult, “Dwyer’s on his way out.” Besides pointing out that the attachments to Mr. Fairbanks’s memorandum are out of date and that no syllabi are handed to students or parents this late in the year, I want to explain my counter-charge of Fairbanks’ harassment. I’d like to point out that I, being unsuspicious of anyone being out to get me, began keeping records of Mr. Fairbanks’ summonses only on 9/28 after several had passed unremarked. During October, I recorded more than six “interviews” with him on various topics, always beginning with something about the AP syllabus or the Macbeth production not being yet approved but always bringing up many other matters of concern, chief among them discovering whether or not I was “dwyerj1” in the Comments of the electronic Naples Daily News. I unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. He had already been informed of that in my presence at a football game last year. I have contributed over 640 pieces of writing under that name, all of which, save one, I stand behind. One contained misinformation provided me by Mr. Fairbanks, whose name I did not mention, that the superintendent had reduced the position of the PRHS yearbook teacher from 1.0 to .6 after her students showed up at the Administration building to make their calls while under supervision. Until the lie was pointed out to me by someone from PRHS, I trusted Mr. Fairbanks as a source of truth. He handed me a packet of Naples Daily News Comments someone had copied and given him after the October 5th Kelly Farrell article, “Attorney Jerry Berry teaches Lely High students a lesson in law.” The first page had one of my Comments bracketed with yellow highlighter. I did not meet my accuser. On 11/01 Mr. Fairbanks wrote, “I read your blogs. You make it hard for me to want to accommodate the play (Macbeth).” My anonymous “blogs” as he calls them, were under scrutiny and undemocratically disapproved of by the CCPS administration. Joining together my Comments with the production of Macbeth is a non-sequitur that caused him not to attend any of the eight nights it was performed. To insult my hard-working students and their Director by ignoring their repeated invitations was unconscionable. It hurt the students deeply as his reserved first row seat with his name attached remained empty. Using my anonymous Comments as a rationale for deciding to invoke the threat, “I believe and research shows that we need to move some upper level teachers/ veterans, who are considered experts, down to some of our more struggling students levels so that they will be successful and less [sic] will drop out,” is also a non-sequitur. My assignment to teach seniors through the last six principals’ tenure at LHS was based on my seniority, my education, and my having expertise with not only teaching the subject, British literature, but also with producing top-quality college recommendations. That my opinions, judgments, beliefs, and politics as expressed in these electronic Naples Daily News Comments offend some in the administration is not a valid reason to attack me or my performance with my students. To reassign me to teaching freshmen would most certainly not be “for the good of the kids.” However well I do with teaching freshmen, the seniors need my irreplaceable services. Even though I am all obedience to my administrators, they should not be permitted to fail to consult me and arrogantly exercise techniques of continual harassment such as these reassignments. I haven’t met anyone in CCPS who has more seniority or a better education than I do. Harassment? Mr. Fairbanks admits summoning me to his office 17 times this semester. I have received 27 complaints from him since the beginning of October. No principal of the many I’ve had in my 40 years of experience has ever had negative accusations such as those produced by Mr. Fairbanks. Mr. Fairbanks has issued me a “formal reprimand” and is recommending to the superintendent that I be suspended for three days without pay. Please deny Mr. Fairbanks’ recommendation to suspend me without pay, and please grant me the courtesy to attach this rebuttal to his reprimand if it must go in my file. Sincerely, John P. Dwyer, Ph.D. Addendum: I might easily suggest that Mr. Fairbanks has violated many ethical standards himself in his efforts to micromanage our high school and me in particular. He issued a MEMORANDUM to both my wife and me saying we had violated State code 3.a by Working to the Rule which called for union members to take their “duty-free lunch” by not reporting to lunch duty stations. In many previous incidents, teachers in our school have skipped their lunch duty and were privately asked, sometimes publicly asked, to report. My wife and I have never missed our duty in front of the library at lunch until the Work to Rule request. Mr. Fairbanks claims that “students could have been hurt” by our “not being in the assigned area.” He claims that “in recent documentation from CCEA, it stated that teachers should inform principals when “working to the rule.” Mr. Fairbanks was fully aware of our working to the rule from his certain knowledge that we gathered around the flagpole with other supporters before school. He has punitively reassigned us to outdoors at the front of the school, knowing I have skin cancer and have doctor’s orders to stay out of the sun; he has punished my wife and me by reassigning our once per week lunch duty to 4 duties in front of the school. He has refused for months to listen to my assertion that the fire alarms in my building were not operating (and still are not fixed), called me into the principal’s conference room with a fire chief, Ms. Caraker, and Polly Henry (when I had requested the presence of Mr. Farmar from the CCEA) and coarsely yelled at me in front of these four other adults for not responding to a prank fire alarm during the same class period of a loud student protest (the alarm was barely audible, coming from the same distant area as the protest)—not taking any measures with the many other teachers who did not exit with their classes; taking my AP students' class time for presentations by Herff Jones, a hypnotist, a lawyer and policemen; telling everyone his heart is saddened by Jonathan Tuttle and forcing everyone to vote on a new schedule; refusing to support or attend the student production of _Macbeth_, refusing to allow future Shakespeare productions by the Shakespeare Academy because of my electronic comments in the NDN; suggesting I discipline my son for disobedience for rewiring the light & sound system and altering speakers given to him by the orchestra director--were things not done in good faith. Moreover, issuing a MEMORANDUM through Ms. Caraker concerning my not awarding class participation points to students absent from class and arbitrarily changing my room assignment when it is one of the most thoroughly enhanced rooms in the building and the only one in my hallway that is not a science laboratory are truly disruptive of what last year were subjects of public complements during faculty meetings. Attempting to frighten his best educated, most popular, and hardest working teachers (and students) into silence and non-cooperation with the CCEA’s current issues, especially the schedule change issue, is not good stewardship.