How Engineer Brad Ports Became Surrogate Father to Neglected Students
How Engineer Brad Ports Became Surrogate Father, Mr. Ports, to Neglected Students
Brad is an engineer by trade. “Teaching chose me,” he said, after he experienced a massive layoff in 1990 at McDonnell Douglas (nowadays Boeing), where he worked in St. Louis, MO. He started his four-year teaching journey at Gateway Institute of Technology, a St. Louis public school. His first adventurous undertaking was to create the bulk of an intense, high-tech 3-year curriculum that no other high school offered to this detailed level in the US: Aviation Maintenance.
Little did he know, he would become more than a teacher to his students in the 12th and 13th* grades. Oftentimes, he found himself being the surrogate parent who took those lost and neglected students – his children – under his wings. He protected and guided them to the right path of success. Many of his students turned out to be pilots, engineers, and even an aviation missionary in the Amazon. Below, Brad recalls some poignant stories on how he and his fellow educators turned the lives of students around. He also offers his take on the school system: what helps the students and what fails them. (more…)
Shirley Tang is a fierce advocate for students and families in this fight against the school to prison pipeline. The name uCANcomplain alone says a lot and she has the courage to back it up. These days it truly takes a village to deal with all of the potential forces that work against our children’s success. So glad that Shirley and uCANcomplain is out here fighting on our side**!
It amazes me that hundreds and thousands of children are emotionally and psychologically damaged in the schools through both intentional and unintentional bias and discrimination and so little is said. Adults are Bullies too! Thank you Shirley Tang and uCANcomplain. Seems the only way to hold people accountable is to make their bullying public.
From a watching Canadian — I really like this site and think it’s time for parents to be more accountable for their children. It’s the parent’s job to stand up for their child’s rights and be their voice when need be and Shirley is doing just that. If parents are not present they can not keep teachers and schools accountable. Great work “U Can Complain” and I do hope parents can come together and fight for their Children’s rights, education and protection!
Education is political. Education is a business. It is a bureaucracy that can become stressful to wrestle. As the guarantee of the current US Department of Education becomes entangled with more Civil Rights cases regarding education, many students and families are failed for justice. uCANcomplainBlog.com offers a platform to expose the truth and tell your story. Sharing stories is a catharsis for parents, students, teachers, and advocates.