Lean on Me (Keep Case Packaging)

'Crazy Joe' goes Hollywood...
`Lean On Me' has become one of my favorite inspirational movies involving real people and events, despite the simplified and sometimes sappy-sickly-sweet Hollywood `feel-good' treatment it's been given, along with a happy ending that ties everything up a bit too neat and nice. The forces trying to stop Joe Clark's straightforward efforts to turn Eastside High School around has been simplified for the movie, basically involving just a disgruntled parent and the city mayor. Even the many heated arguments between Clark and his faculty & superiors are less than sophisticated in wording and tone. None the less, I've always loved Morgan Freeman's performance of Clark.

Clark's expulsion of the most delinquent students was a pretty neat scene, and was something of a surprise when I first saw it. Anyone who'd attempt that nowadays would probably get sued penniless. And the rooftop scene where he tells expelled crackhead student Thomas Sams to just jump off the roof of the school and kill...

The Reformation of Eastside High School
The movie, Lean On Me, focuses on the vigorous efforts of one man, Joe Clark, to clean up Eastside High School and make it a safe enviroment conducive to learning. The Joe Clark, portrayed by Morgan Freeman in the movie, began his task with a domineering, aggressive manner that held the ideal that the positive outweighs the negative. With a transactional leadership quality, Clark immediately gains control of the schoolthrough "challenging the process" as he reprimands the school's faculty for the current state of the school. His next step was to expell students deemed as undesirable trouble makers. Altogether, 300 students were told that they were no longer welcome at Eastside High School. The antagonist in the movie is a mother of one of the expelled students who immediately begins plotting Clark's demise, and continues to do so throughout the movie. While reforming the school and working to raise student test scores, Joe Clark not only transforms the school for the better,...

Should be required viewing for principals
There's much to learn hear about leadership, management, and discipline. All of which seem to be in short supply in many of our public schools. But that may be more of a result of lethargic school boards rather than faculty. Morgan Freeman is transformed into Joe Clark, the brash, hard nosed, take no prisoners principal of the all too real East Side High. His principles are straight forward. 1) Discipline. No cigarettes, weapons, mouthing off, grafitti, drugs, tardiness. 2) Personal responsibility for both teacher and student alike 3) Pride in yourself, your race, your community, and your institution. 4) Hard work. And perhaps most importantly 5) the value of an education to affect your opportunities in life.

Joe Clark listens, encourages, chastises, and directs students and faculty. And perhaps most importantly he is accessible. Walking the hallways, attending classes. Although his measures may have been at times extreme and not in keeping with popular sentiment you...

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