On Jim Sporleder’s first day as principal at Walla Walla’s alternative high school in 2009, he didn’t exactly get the red carpet treatment.
Lincoln High School, then called the Paine School, was something of a dumping ground for kids who weren’t making it in the city’s mainstream high school. At the alternative school, the atmosphere was tense and unpredictable. F-bombs flew freely.
“On my first day at Paine, my jaw was glued to my chest,” Sporleder said. “It was one of the most out-of-control environments I’d ever seen.”
Sporleder had expected out of control, just not this out of control. When he tried to engage with the students, they often ignored him.
“I hadn’t experienced that much rejection since I started dating,” he quipped recently, thinking back.
Several years later, however, grades and graduation rates had shot up. Suspensions and expulsions had plummeted. Graduation rates increased fivefold. The transformation was so dramatic that Robert Redford’s son, Jamie Redford, spent a year documenting the metamorphosis in his film “Paper Tigers,” released in May at the Seattle International Film Festival.
To continue reading this article by Kathy Aney, go to: http://www.eastoregonian.com/eo/local-news/20160203/new-approach-transforms-walla-wallas-toughest-kids
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