It is a shame indeed that teachers should be hesitant to speak their minds to the administrators at their schools, for fear of being dismissed.

In March of last year, Mr. Todd Friedman, an English teacher at Midwood High School in Brooklyn, filed an unfair-labor charge against the administration there for “a new ‘dumbed-down’ curriculum and unfair evaluations”. Just this month, he was fired for no good reason at all, on a technicality.

He committed the apparently egregious error of personally buying copies of Shelley’s Frankenstein for his students, and charging them $2 a copy - a fraction of their price - to make up some of the difference. In the end, he still lost money. He wanted to ensure that all of his students had their own personal copies they could write in, so as to enrich their experience reading the book, by charging them less than the school bookstore would and encouraging them not to rely on free copies in school’s vaults, which as school property cannot be written in. In addition, his actions provided an opportunity for low-income students to have the same resources as their peers.  

We the undersigned demand that the administration of Midwood High School and the NYC Board of Education reinstate Mr. Todd Friedman as a teacher with the full rights and tenure which he had before he was so unceremoniously and discourteously removed simply for pursuing perfection and intellectual freedom. Further, we demand that he receive an apology.

Please help by signing the petition and sharing it with your friends! 

Link: https://www.change.org/p/michael-mcdonnell-stand-with-friedman

Thank you so much! 

Update: Mr. Friedman is in this situation because he told books to his students. THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER PROBLEMS OUT THERE IN THE WORLD OMFG. Under the DOE, it's not right to sell anything to your students and make a profit. Mr. Friedman did not make any profit! He lost money! He did this so his students could have a better experience reading the book! 

This whole teacher sells stuff to student thing has gone on at my school for YEARS! And it's always been like this for a very long time and no one else complained! 

Mr. Friedman is in this situation because last year, he spoke his opinion and voiced out about the new curriculum (which some of you may know is really dumbed down and stupid. I saying kids are spenting 40 minutes learning how to do 2+2 because- common core smh.) Is a teacher not allowed to have any say in what they're teaching? Why is he the only one who got ratted out for selling books? 

this is really unfair!

I hope you can all help by signing the petition and to those who already signed, THANK YOU! 

You can find out more by looking up the #IStandWithFriedman or #StandWithFriedman tag on FB!