Do you remember a blog post about a photography and interview initiative called the Humans of New York? I wrote about it here.
It seems that a frustrated parent of a high school student who had no Spanish teacher decided to let it all out when asked what she was feeling, and the Humans of New York entry about her went viral. Now the school district must save face and choose among many offers of help.
Brandon Stanton saw Annette Renaud on the subway and asked to interview her. As Soni Sangha writes for the NY Times, Renaud was upset.
” ‘We’ve got a new mayor and a new chancellor … So we aren’t blaming them. But they need to know how impossible they’ve made it to help our kids. Trying to get something fixed in these schools is like praying to some false God. You call and email hoping that God is listening, and nothing happens.’
“Someone was listening,” says Sangha. “The post immediately went viral, with 150,000 likes on the Humans of New York Facebook page, it was shared more than 16,000 times, and it had strangers from across the city and the country pledging to call the school in protest on behalf of the students. Someone in Michigan started a change.org petition calling on the school to hire a foreign language instructor; another Connecticut petition asked the Department of Education to help the students — it has more than 1,000 supporters. …
“ ‘We continue to work closely with the school community to ensure students have access to the courses they need,’ said Marcus Liem, deputy press secretary of the New York City Education Department. Mr. Liem said that officials from the department were planning to meet with the school’s administration about this and other issues even before the posting, but that those meetings have now been moved up.” Read it all here.
Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
Alejandra Figueroa, a senior at the Secondary School for Journalism, believes the loss of her Spanish teacher jeopardizes her chances for an Advanced Regents diploma.
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