KSBW 8 News – by Felix CortezTen cents for every minute I’m late to class! Janitorial bathroom duty for misbehaving? Twenty-five cents to borrow a pencil?
Alisal High School students in Salinas were shocked the moment their social studies teacher, Steven Munoz, passed out copies of a letter written by their principal on Thursday.
Principal Ernesto Garcia wrote, “Parents/Students, There have been some very severe cuts in the school budget due to the nationwide cuts in educational spending. All teachers have been directed by the principal to enforce the following rules.”
The principal listed nine new rules that Munoz’s students immediately began objecting to for being outrageous and unfair.
To make matters worse, the bottom of the letter states, “If you have any questions or concerns please contact…” but all contact information was blacked out with ink.
“It kind of gets them riled up and then I tell them it’s all fake,” Munoz said.
As soon as strong feelings resonated through the classroom, Munoz told his students, now you know how American colonists felt when Britain announced heavy taxes on the colonies. That’s what America would be like today if taxation without government representation still existed.
Colonists expressed their defiance over Britain’s taxes in 1773 by dumping chests of tea into Boston Harbor, followed by the American Revolutionary War, and Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Munoz has been doing his creative learning exercise for seven years, and students in past classes kept the secret well.
But on Thursday, one sneaky student quietly rebelled against the teacher’s instructions before Munoz collected all of the letters back.
The student snapped a photo of the letter with a cellphone and uploaded it on social media. As soon as it popped up on Twitter, parents saw it and thought it was real. So the photo went viral, and before sunrise Friday, one alarmed parent called KSBW’s newsroom to alert reporters about the public high school.
“One of the students decided to take a picture of it without my knowledge and posted it on Twitter. I found out at 10 o’clock last night. I was up until midnight trying to figure out what happened. It just kind of blew up and went out of control,” Munoz said.
Despite the social media snafu, Principal Garcia said he supports the teacher’s creative style 100 percent.
“Mr. Munoz is an awesome teacher. This is one of the ways he engages his students (and) gets them hooked on the day’s lesson,” Garcia said.
As far as the reaction on social media, Garcia said, “To me it’s a little funny that people are so naive that they would see a document like this and actually think a principal would charge students.”
Of course, the social media leak presented Munoz with another opportunity for educating his students. He followed up on Friday with a lesson about the power of what teens decide to post online.
If I remember right, Salinas is one of the cities in Monterey County, CA that recently received a huge, black, MRAP.
Yep . . . here it is!
http://calfire.blogspot.com/2013/12/public-safety-news-salinas-police-under.html
. . .
Once again, when people can’t distinguish satire from reality, you know you’re living in a world that is completely upside down and messed up and this proves it.
“That’s what America would be like today if taxation without government representation still existed.”
Still existed?
Did I miss something?
You didnt I experienced the same thought. What representation, where is it. Oh we are taxed for sure everything is taxed but we get nothing for it. Congress has deaf ears to the people they only listen to Israhell.