Cross Over
Sorry, Sadie Hawkins. In Spurger, Texas, a longtime homecoming tradition is no more. TWIRP Day, short for “The Woman Is Requested To Pay,” featured role reversals such as girls opening doors and buying sodas for boys. But a parent complained that the accompanying cross-dressing promoted homosexuality. From now on, reports the Associated Press, the event will be known as Camo Day, during which both boys and girls will be encouraged to wear black boots and army fatigues.
Whip It Good
The way Steve Unfreid sees it, he was fired as principal of Matanuska Christian School in Palmer, Alaska, for turning the other cheek. To discipline two boys who’d been caught kissing girls, Unfreid had a teacher flog him with a belt in front of the pair until they repented. After the school’s board of directors fired Unfreid this past fall, he told the Anchorage Daily News that he’d been inspired by Jesus’ teachings. “I’m not bitter,” he said.
Open Minds
A 6th grade teacher faced jail time and a $1,000 fine this past fall after running into an obscure closed-door policy. Susanna Robinson was charged with violating a state fire code for propping open the door to her overheated classroom. The charge was retracted, according to the Charleston Gazette, after Robinson explained that her Union, West Virginia, school’s windows don’t open and that adjusting the temperature, which one student compared to “a volcano,” is forbidden.
By the Book
The kids who once killed time watching TV at the Clean Rite Center laundry in Brooklyn, New York, now have something better to do. Science teacher Georgina Smith started reading aloud to them; soon they were asking for homework help. The Associated Press reports that she persuaded the facility to donate $12,000, and now the Brooklyn College School of Education gives grad credit for working with the kids. The program’s name? “Wash and Learn.”
