Alcena Boozer, principal at Thomas Jefferson High School in Portland, hopes to leave behind "a tradition that holds the school as the center of a community of life-long learners. Educators today," she says, "have had to become surrogate parents, social workers, an health care givers. All of society's problems have brought to the schoolhouse door." She grants that the educational system may have always acknowledged the importance of valuing every child but reminds us that only "now do we recognize that we have not treated all children in this way." That, to her, is "the major change" in education today. Mrs. Boozer is currently involved in an effort to implement a Transitional Classroom Project that would meet the needs of a community in flux. "One third of the student body is moving in or out at all times," she points out. Such a program, would "serve students who enter school too late in the academic year to earn credit." Only a person as courageous, imaginative, and persevering as Mrs. Boozer would be guided, as she is, by a proverb that says "crises are opportunities borne on dangerous wings."
1970 Oregon State University, B.A.
