Based on true story...

LEAN ON ME

Wow...is that happened for real????is that a real teacher....good example and charismatic.....He have his own opinion, style and ways....i like the spirit.This is a teacher,daring and creative as well.The Principal, Joe Clark, is hired in 1983 to run one of the worst schools in this state. His mission is to turn this crime, drug, and graffiti infested school around completely in one year’s time. Clark must bring order and peace to this school and must also bring up the learning level of the students so they can pass the state’s minimum basic skills test.Joe Clark is a former Army drill instructor who uses tough discipline as a means of changing Eastside High School. His methods in doing so were very much controversial. He got the nick name of "Crazy Joe" Clark by using a bullhorn and a baseball bat within his school to terrorize and intimidate the students as well as the facility. To his supporters this tactic was to be motivation for the students and teachers to do better. According to a Mississippi State University Memo dated back in March of 1996, it stated that within two years Eastside High was declared a model school by New Jersey’s governor and in 1986, Clark was named one of the nation’s 10 "Principals of Leadership".


One of the first things Joe Clark did to reform this school was expelling 300 minority students who he claimed were "educationally hopeless and overage underachievers, parasites, hoodlums, and drug pushers" (Education Digest, 1989). To make sure these now ex-students stayed out and could not return, Clark chained and locked the school doors from the inside. Clark demanded respect from not only his students but also with the facility. If respect was not given Clark simply removed you from the school.There is some differences between what happened in real life and how the director, John Avildsen, portrayed Joe Clark in the movie Lean On Me. In the movie Clark was able to raise the student test scores to a level that protected the school from being taken over by the state. In real life, Eastside High was never in a threat of a take over. Clark has claimed that during his first year as principal he doubled the test scores of the students, but according to the Education Digest, 1989, they state that there is no such evidence to support Clark’s claim of this. However, he should be solute of for what he did.He is a true teacher for me.....