Word: websterisms
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...This place" is Webster Groves High School, which sits off the main street of a pretty town of old elms and deep porches, about 10 miles southwest of St. Louis, Mo., where, when people ask you where you went to school, they are not referring to college. That's just the way it is here; high school tugs hard and holds on; people graduate and come back and send their kids, who graduate and do the same. This town of 23,000 is not as tony as nearby Clayton or Ladue; it has its mix of $90,000 cottages...
After Columbine, West Paducah and Conyers, some schools have turned into citadels, metal detectors at the doors, mesh backpacks required. Not Webster. The doors are open at dawn and left unguarded; 96% of the kids polled this fall by the student newspaper say they feel safe in school. They say the kids get along pretty well, races mix, jocks and geeks hang out together. And yet they will say, if you ask, "Littleton could happen here." Last spring, after Columbine, someone scrawled a bomb threat on the wall of a boys' bathroom. The marginal kids know they are being watched...
...Webster Groves has made a conscious decision to try to control the weather. The school would much rather prevent a disaster than clean up after one--which means that a child who so much as murmurs a threat toward himself or a teacher or another student is immediately under the microscope. But still the tempests come. "Drinking is the biggest problem," says police captain Doug Jacobs, class of '59, "and the parents that allow it." A child from a prominent family has a beer-and-booze party in the backyard while Mom and Dad are not home. There...
...always faced the tension between roots and wings: how to keep kids safe and grounded; how to let them stretch and fly. But after so many shocking headlines, the adults are edgy and tempted to try to stamp out teenage rebellion and cruelty and popularity contests altogether. At a Webster pep rally, for the first time, individual team members are no longer introduced by name--to keep the cheering and booing from getting personal. Cheerleaders are picked by a panel of outside professionals, the football team rotates its captains so no one is favored, and anyone can show...
...auto shop at Webster Groves, once seen as the dumping ground for bottom-end students, is more popular than ever, and most students taking shop today aren't interested in becoming mechanics or engineers. Students of all abilities--mostly boys but a growing number of girls too--flock to this faraway corner of the school in search of less structure and more responsibility, a place where they get to move around and use their hands. "In a lot of classes, it's 'Do this' or 'Do that,'" says Joe, "but in auto shop you know what you need...