GILROY
– When Kristen Porter returned Friday afternoon to her classroom
to clear out her personal effects after she was unceremoniously
fired that morning, she was greeted by family, fellow teachers,
parents and one of her students in an emotional scene.
GILROY – When Kristen Porter returned Friday afternoon to her classroom to clear out her personal effects after she was unceremoniously fired that morning, she was greeted by family, fellow teachers, parents and one of her students in an emotional scene.
As a distraught Porter pulled items from her desk while others set to work tearing down posters and downloading computer files, an attorney paced in one corner of the classroom and campus security asked The Dispatch’s chief photographer to leave the premises.
On the whiteboard was a message: “Thanks for being a wonderful teacher! You have taught us so much – we will miss you!”
Porter’s students are reeling from the news that not only was their teacher fired from Gilroy High School, she will not be back in the classroom to finish the school year.
Five classes, including three junior classes and two freshman classes, will be taught by a substitute teacher for the next two months, leaving students and parents to question why.
“I was in tears about it,” junior Lindsey Beckle said. “That is so unnecessary, she’s not doing anything wrong. She’s not a murderer or an ex-convict or anything, and that’s how they’re treating her.”
Porter was escorted off the GHS campus shortly before the first school bell rang Friday morning. She was barred from her classroom several weeks after learning she won’t be hired back next year and less than 12 hours after speaking out at a school board meeting.
Beckle also spoke in front of school board members at Thursday night’s meeting, defending her English teacher as “amazing.”
“(Porter) has taught me things that I never expected to learn and things that I had never heard of,” Beckle told trustees. “Like, what a hyphenated modifier is, or what a paradox is or that there are different kinds of commas …
“My writing has improved dramatically, and that is really awesome because now I actually enjoy reading my writing.”
Beckle and other students will lose out with the 10-year teacher gone, said Beckle’s father, Kyle.
“I’m very disappointed in the way it was handled,” he said Friday. “She is actually a teacher. She’s not just there, but she truly cares about her students.”
Although Kyle does not know Porter personally, he said she reaches out to parents.
“She is the only teacher to ever have written me an e-mail saying, this is what is due in the class,” he said. “How many other teachers do that? None.”
Chris Hunt, a junior, said he felt confused when he heard that Porter was asked to leave her classroom Friday morning.
“I was kind of shocked,” Hunt said. “She was a really good teacher – I learned a lot. I liked all of the things she did.”
Literature came alive in Porter’s class, Hunt said, through “psychodramas,” in which students act out parts of books like “The Scarlet Letter.”
“It would always relate to what we were working on, and it was always a lot of fun,” Hunt said. “It just kind of sucks because now we’re going to have a sub for the rest of the year, so we’re just going to be doing essays and basic stuff.”
