Classroom

A Haverford Middle School teacher was charged yesterday after allegedly pointing a starter pistol at a 13-year-old student's head last week and threatening to "kill this girl" following horseplay in a classroom after school. The eighth-grade math teacher, identified by police as George Trabosh, 44, of Norristown, was charged with simple assault, making terroristic threats, and recklessly endangering another person, and will be notified by summons. A hearing is scheduled for May 30 in Haverford District Court.

As a group of adult visitors entered the Camden, N.J., public elementary school classroom, the roomful of young students barely looked up. Instead, with eyes fixed on the classroom teacher, the students watched for a hand-signal instruction. With a simple wave of the teacher's hand, the students silently and immediately closed their books and folded their hands on their desks to await further instruction. The sense of complete control struck classroom visitor James Brunswick, organizer for the Network for Congregational Development (NCD)

A photography instructor at the Art Institute of Philadelphia in Center City was wounded in a classroom Monday night when a bullet came through a wall from an adjacent classroom and struck him in the arm. The 29-year-old instructor was treated at Hahnemann University Hospital and released in good condition. His name was withheld by police, hospital and institute officials. Leo Orsino, vice president of the institute, 1622 Chestnut St., said the instructor was teaching a color photography class to about 15 students when the shot was fired.

Cinnaminson's Board of Education introduced a broad policy last week that prohibits teachers from engaging in political activities concerning controversial or sensitive issues within school buildings and during classroom time. Complaints about classroom politicking surfaced in recent months, when several parents and residents said teachers were using students as pawns during contract negotiations and budget deliberations. More recently, when the district faced severe program and personnel cuts, some parents strongly objected to their children being used as messengers to distribute literature that contained information on the budget cuts.

Mike Buck was in full crossing-the-roaring-creek regalia. Tibetan cap with hanging ear flaps. White underdrawers, worn as Bermuda shorts, with red hearts rampant. Ankle boots, soaked under the water roaring thigh-high against him. Not what one normally wears to a classroom. Not the normal classroom. But out in northwestern Chester County on Friday, in the woods of Hibernia Park north of Coatesville, the 12-year-old was in a classroom. So were the 35 other seventh graders and their two teachers from Radnor Township Middle School, a Delaware County public school.

The 20 sixth graders looked shyly at each other in the Newtown Junior High School classroom and tried to suppress giggles. Guest speaker Bill Mauro waited for an answer. Two ways that the virus that causes AIDS can be transmitted already were written clearly in yellow chalk on the board. There was only one other obvious answer left. The hum of the fan in the silent classroom was beginning to sound louder and louder when one brave soul spoke out the word sex to complete the list of answers.

Sarah Caputo and Jill Harkinson, both classmates at Shady Grove Elementary School in Whitpain, were up to their elbows in hot pink paint earlier this week. They also got some on their cheeks, noses and foreheads. "Keep going," professional artist Barbara Hagendorf urged as the pair worked on a mural at the school with other fourth and fifth graders. "Now start the other one. It looks really wonderful," she said. The project is part of an artist-in-residence program at the school.

The Medford Lakes Board of Education, embroiled in a dispute with members of the Shamong Township Board of Education about how much to charge Shamong for renting classrooms in Medford Lakes, expects the county superintendent to make a decision in the matter within a week, according to Joseph Butcher, the Medford Lakes superintendent of schools. Medford Lakes, which has the capacity to serve 1,000 students and now has about 500 pupils enrolled, began renting classroom space to Shamong two years ago. For 1985-86, Shamong is paying Medford Lakes $90,000 for nine classrooms, Butcher said.

In an effort to add classrooms to the Knowledge A to Z (KATZ) Academy Charter School in Camden, the city Planning Board approved a proposal Thursday that would eliminate a pool in the Parkside Boys and Girls Club, which houses the school. The school wants to fill in the pool to make room for seven classrooms, bringing its total to 15. The extra classrooms could add 112 students, said Marcella Dalsey, president and cofounder of the charter. The school now has 135 students in the Parkside building and 60 at a former school in the city's Rosedale section.

A rising number of New Jersey students say they learn more when they can put their teacher on pause - or rewind and replay. Instead of listening to lectures in school, they are watching their teachers' lessons on computers or cellphones at home. Then when they come back into the classroom the next day, they tackle the kind of problems that used to be assigned as homework - only now, a teacher or their peers can help them immediately when they get stuck. It is called the "flipped classroom," a national trend that is a growing part of the fast-changing world of education as teachers harness the power of digital tools.

ERLENE BASS NELSON taught kindergarten in the Philadelphia School District for 51 years, and there was no doubt that she enjoyed every minute of it for one, simple reason: She loved the children. Children, she once said, "are spontaneous, they're loving, they're forgiving - and every day I had an injection of pure love into my soul and into my heart. " Spending all that time in a school district that was often short of money and afflicted with labor problems, violence and other woes.

Jordan Shapiro's class last week delved into a weighty discussion of Plato's allegory of the cave and shifting perceptions of reality. Front and center on the classroom wall behind him flashed a constantly shifting series of posts on Twitter, all under the class hashtag of #Mosaic1. With her Nook and phone at hand, sophomore Kaylyn Christian, 20, tweeted: "Are you really happy if you live a successful life in the shadows?" Shapiro's Temple University classroom is definitely not the norm in academia, but it could be a harbinger of the future.

THE MOTHER of the 5-year-old girl abducted from her kindergarten classroom at Bryant Elementary, in West Philadelphia, earlier this week has retained high-profile attorney Tom Kline. Kline on Thursday told the Daily News that Latifah Rashid contacted him Wednesday for help in the ongoing investigation around her daughter's abduction - about which police have reported no new developments. "She wants to turn her attention to taking care of her daughter, and so she thought that she needed help and reached out to me, and I told her that I would undertake the task," Kline said.

How could this happen? After all the sad stories that have been told about child kidnappings across America, how could the brazen abduction of a little girl from her West Philadelphia school happen? As more disturbing details unfold, it has become clear that the Philadelphia School District dropped the ball in what a spokesman admits was "a complete breakdown in protocol. " Kindergartner Na'illa Robinson was easily taken from her classroom at Bryant Elementary Monday by an unknown woman who was able to skirt school security procedures easily.

THEY'RE STILL out there, the bastards who pulled little Na'illa Robinson from the comfort and innocence of her kindergarten classroom and thrust her into a world of pure terror that included being stripped, blindfolded and then abandoned on the grounds of a frigid, darkened playground, with just a damp, black T-shirt to keep her from freezing to death. After a passer-by, Nelson Mandela Myers, found the 5-year-old girl hiding like a wounded animal under a yellow slide early Tuesday in Upper Darby, authorities said she told him that she had been stolen.

WASHINGTON - Open your notebooks, and sharpen your pencils. School for thousands of public school students is about to get quite a bit longer. Five states announced Monday that they will add at least 300 hours of learning time to the calendar in some schools starting in 2013. Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Tennessee will take part in the initiative, which is intended to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive globally. The three-year pilot program will affect almost 20,000 students in 40 schools, with long-term hopes of expanding the program to include additional schools - especially those that serve low-income communities.

The era of Norquist-ism Grover Norquist has a list of 258 members of Congress who have signed his pledge to never raise taxes, and he claims that if they break this pledge they will anger their constituents ("Norquist: GOP will keep tax vow," Tuesday). This reminds me of Joe McCarthy, who had a list of suspected subversives in the 1950s, and was later censured by his Senate colleagues. We need honest, thoughtful debate in Washington, not intimidation by lobbyists. Republican leaders need to step forward and work with Democrats to find a way to increase revenue and decrease expenses.

Clara Paglione Mantini, 92, of Exton, a "favorite teacher" to many of the elementary-school students she instructed during a 46-year career, died Tuesday, Nov. 27, of a bone ailment at home. Mrs. Mantini was born and raised in a tightly knit Italian community in Camden. She graduated from Camden High School in 1938 and four years later from Glassboro State College. She specialized in fifth graders, aged 10 and 11, because they loved doing the projects she concocted - singing, baking, making Easter candy and Christmas decorations, and raising money for the needy.