The gloves are off! And I for one think this is very important to encourage and embrace right now. Especially since I am afraid that those who are playing it safe by not weighing in are or certainly could very well be empowering the very elements theyd rather not see come to light by means of their lack of using their voice at this juncture to debate this stuff in a public arena.

Its no secret that the higher one climbs in education, the more it is ones interest to play it safe and not say what you are really feeling. Why? Because the higher you ascend up the totem pole, the more you have to risk by someone not liking, not appreciating, not wanting to hear that you disagree with their take on things.

Ultimately, this sets up conflict, confrontation and show downs which can cost people their status, positions, and favor with the in crowd. Even their livelihood.

Id suggest theres even a cancer to be acknowledged in this quietness, in the lurker who feels strongly about many of these issues being discussed but dares not speak up because it might come back to haunt them one day in their professional future.

This is why I have so much respect for the folks who are calling it like they see it. I might not agree with everyone (clearly, I do not) but I do feel at this point it is critical to acknowledge how deeply I respect their willingness to openly even nakedly participate in this Common Core dialogue.

Lets make no bones about it CC is coming. It has been adopted by more than 90% of the United States. And being that it it is still not scheduled to hit until 2014 and we havent even really seen the assessments that SBAC and PARCC will cook up assessments that are sure to reach deep into the many nooks and crannies of all our nations classrooms these conversations could very well determine the shape of our collective future.

Some people have literally called out their own bosses in the past few days. Theyve actually shared how foolish their superiors initial approach to embracing CC is proving to be. In a more fascistic world, it wouldnt be a stretch to see someone terminating these brave people for insubordination. (Perhaps, the protections provided by unions do have a place after all?).

Some people have called out the top educational leaders behind CC. By name. My feeling is that all of this is a VERY GOOD thing.

If CC cant stand up to our scrutiny, it does not deserve to carry the day. The entire Common Core should be assaulted with our best shot. It needs a stress test, its feet held to the fire. What is the problem with having a public inventory taken of the various merits and shortcomings of Common Core?

Of course, for the people with political considerations, the problematic nature of this is evident indeed. But Common Core is not about me, its not about you and its not about which  butt-kisser knows how to keep their head down, go with the flow and remain a YES man (or woman) on their school site, in their district, or at the county, state or federal offices in order to protect their status.

Lets put this bad boy in the water, submerge it and see if she really is waterproof where Americas kids need her to be. Water will find the creases but only if we allow this to happen.

Now, maybe I have been flippant when I should have been more attentive? Or maybe I have come across as all-knowing when I should have been more willing to admit I put my pants on one leg at a time like everyone else and am swimming in waters a bit over my head? No doubt, that in my zest to keep up with the flurry of CC commentary the past few days, Ive made errors.

But please people lets not stop participating in this conversation. Perhaps this kind of dialogue is happening in print in other areas of the educational universe, but nowhere (that I have seen, at least) is the discussion about CC so diverse, deep, fluid and challenging.

So real.

If CC has merit, it deserves the right to stand up for itself and prove this to all of us. And if it has gaps, flaws or shortcomings, those factors are the MOST critical to expose right now. (Of course, if corruption has played a role in the forming of the CC, we need to root it out. NOW! Really, why wouldnt we?)

I learned an exceptionally valuable lesson when I got to visit the Apple campus in Cuppertino and go behind the scenes with the lead designers of the iPhone. They showed me this nut-so washing machine that could simulate heat in the Sahara as well as polar temps that would only be found in the Arctic. The thing would spin, bash, hammer and genuinely abuse iPhones with the sole goal of seeing what the shortcomings were BEFORE they went out to market with it.

The adoption of CC is so immense we need to do this. It is not in our best interests to play it safe, right now.

Be heard. Its time for the gloves to come off! Weve been presented with Common Core, now lets see what its really got to offer.

The school said the arrests were part of an investigation into students selling drugs, not just possession.

TCU Chancellor Victor Boschini said the arrests were made in conjunction between the TCU and Fort Worth Police departments early Wednesday morning.

TCU Police Chief Steve McGee said the students were considered drug dealers, selling cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana and prescription drugs to undercover officers both on and off campus.

The investigation began 6 months ago.

The university says the arrests were at both on and off campus locations, including at fraternity housing.

McGee said the students were parts of multiple loosely tied groups.

Creative Commons helps you share your knowledge and creativity with the world. Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

(Nod to for showing this on his blog first)

Instead, they will have a true break between the first and second semesters of school, similar to college schedules.

Tuesday, the Collier School Board approved the 2012-13 academic calendar that will end the second quarter and exams before winter break.

“We had to focus on our priority — student learning,” said district Human Resources Director Debbie Terry. “We didn’t want students to have to go off on winter break doing projects for after the break.”

District members said many parents had complained that their children were too bogged down with work during the holidays to relax and enjoy the time off from school.

Board Member Pat Carroll said it has always been one of her priorities to end the first semester before winter break.

The approval comes after a recent bill proposal by Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, that would give local school boards the authority to set an opening date for schools to accommodate the completion of student class work and assessments during the fall.

Collier Schools fully supports Montford’s bill and as a result, approved two 2012-13 calendars — one that complies with the current state requirement that school cannot start earlier than two weeks before labor day and a second calendar that would start school three weeks before labor day.

The School Board unanimously voted to adopt the second, early start calendar unless the bill is not passed, in which case the board would accept the regular calendar starting school Aug. 20. The favored, early start calendar would begin school Aug. 13 and would give students an entire week off for the Thanksgiving holiday rather than just the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the holiday week.

Both calendars end the first semester before winter break.

“Students will gain time mentally and physically by having all the work and exams happen before the December break,” Collier schools Superintendent Kamela Patton said.

Patton asked that parents postpone scheduling vacations until the district knows the results of the legislative session determining which academic calendar the district will use.

In other School Board news:

School Board members voted unanimously to place the district’s tax neutral referendum on the November general election ballot.

If it passes, the referendum would give the district the authority to decrease its capital budget by 0.25 mills and increase its operating budget by 0.25 mills. “There’s no extra cost to the taxpayers,” Chief Operations Officer Michele LaBute said. “It’s just a shift in funds.”

The referendum would move $14 million annually from the district’s capital budget to the district’s operating budget. It must be approved by the Collier County Commission before it can be placed on the ballot.

The district updated its three-year strategic plan to align it with Patton’s goals and new state requirements.

Patton said the entire strategic plan will be revised and condensed this summer. Changes made to the plan include an effort to increase parent involvement and to report on the percentage of high school students taking at least one AP, dual enrollment or advanced level class.

Other changes made were data-related. For example, third grade retention rates increased from 2.5 percent to 4.8 percent in 2011 due to the new and more difficult Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test for reading. The district hopes to decrease the number of students repeating third grade within the next two years.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, in Chicago, also threw out a settlement negotiated between a disability-rights group and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction after a federal district court found the Milwaukee district liable for systemic violations of federal special education law.

The ruling stems from a 2001 lawsuit alleging problems with the way the Milwaukee district identified students eligible for special education services. The district judge approved a class covering those students in the Milwaukee system who were eligible for special education but were denied or delayed in gaining access to the process for developing individualized education plans, or IEPs.

The judge found the district liable for violating the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s “child find” provision, which requires that districts identify children with suspected disabilities and refer them for evaluation on a timely basis.

The liability decision prompted settlement talks between the state Department of Public Instruction and the class represented by Disability Rights Wisconsin. The state agreed to order Milwaukee Public Schools to meet certain compliance benchmarks and agree to an independent monitor.

This led to a 2009 district court order establishing a court-monitored remedial plan for identifying specific members of the class. The cost of the plan for the Milwaukee district was estimated between $11 million and $40 million.

The school district appealed, and in a Feb. 3 decision in Jamie S. v. Milwaukee Public Schools, the 7th Circuit panel ruled unanimously for the district on some issues and 2-1 for rejecting the class.

On the class-certification issue, the court cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes, which rejected a large class of female employees who alleged sex discrimination at the retail chain.

The 7th Circuit panel said the class certified in the Milwaukee case was too broad and ill-defined, in violation of federal civil rules.

“That all the class members have suffered as a result of disparate individual IDEA child-find violations is not enough,” the appeals court majority said. “It does not establish that the individual claims have any question of law or fact in common.”

Judge Ilana Rovner dissented on that issue, saying that while she shared some concerns of the majority, “I believe that notwithstanding the inherently child-specific nature of child-find inquiries, a class action based on a truly systemic child-find failure may be viable.”

The panel was unanimous in ruling that the settlement negotiated by the state education agency trampled on the rights of the school district. The Department of Public Instruction “cannot unilaterally force [Milwaukee Public Schools] to take specific remedial action,” the court said, and the settlement “attempts to do exactly that.”

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports on the decision here.

Online education allows you to enhance your skill sets and gain more knowledge without discontinuing your existing job. It provides flexibility and convenience to pursue the online degree at your own pace. However, the question remains; how do you finance your online degree or opt for various forms of financial aid?

Different Ways of Financing Your Online Degree

There are different ways to finance your online education which include:

• Federal financial aid
• State financial aid
• Employer scholarships
• Private grants
• Scholarships

While federal and state financial aid requires the amount to be paid back to the lenders, scholarships and grants are performance based and are offered based on the scholastic achievements of the students.

Applying for Federal Financial Aid

If you are considering an online degree and want to consider financial aids, you need to meet certain criteria. If you are considering an online degree or certification program, you should have a minimum of a high school diploma or its equivalent. You should also have built a good academic performance over the years. If you are interested in specific need-based financial aid, you should first fill the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) a form used by the U.S. Department of Education. This can be obtained from the website of FAFSA www.fafsa.ed.gov. According to the norms, the financial aid offered cannot exceed the cost of attendance as calculated by the financial aid office of the university.

Choosing the Right Form of Financial Aid for Online Education

You can choose from two types of financial aids merit-based and need-based. You can choose grants, scholarships or government-subsidized loans offered at considerably low interest rate and with education tax benefits. This form should be submitted to the Department of Education by January 1 along with details on the amount your family will contribute to manage the college expenses which is considered as the Expected Family Contribution (EFC). The amount that you can get is decided by the federal government.

Grants are offered as Pell Grant and the TEACH Grant based on your performance and the amount received needs not be repaid. However, the federal loan programs are offered as different options and can be Federal Direct Subsidized and Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loans, the Perkins Loan, the Parent PLUS Loan and Graduate PLUS. These are student loans which need to be repaid with additional interest amount.

Seeking finance for online education is easy and can be done quickly without much complication. You can just approach the financial aid office of your university and collect all relevant information about it and apply for a financial aid by filling the FAFSA form. You can then choose a financial aid which matches your requirement. Most of the loans are offered on a first-come, first-served basis so you need to apply for it at the earliest.

1. For n equations, you need n variables to solve.  The GRE will often present you with two or more equations with multiple variables. If there are 2 variables in an equation (for example, x and y), then there must be 2 equations that each contain those variables in order to solve. The two common ways to solve are Substitution and Combination.
2. Substitute carefully for Functions.  It’s helpful to think of (x, f(x)) as another way of writing (x, y). For many function questions, you can Pick Numbers or Substitute for the variables to solve! For example, if a question provides a Function such as f(x) = 3x + 2, and wants to know what f(x – 1) is when x = 3, first rewrite the function, substituting x – 1 in for x. We would get: f(x – 1) = 3(x – 1) + 2, or f(x – 1) = 3x – 3 + 2. That becomes f(x – 1) = 3x – 1. Now the question asks what f(x – 1) will be when x = 3. Substitute in x = 3 to solve. f(x – 1) = 3(3) – 1 becomes f(x – 1) = 9 – 1. The answer is f(x – 1) = 8.
3. Know your number properties. The GRE tests number properties heavily, and you must be comfortable with words like integers, rational numbers, primes, etc. The properties of odds and evens, integers, fractions, positives, and negatives will all appear in various questions on your GMAT test as well. Don’t ever make assumptions about unknown variables. Unless you are told otherwise by the limitations in the question, variables can be negative integers, negative fractions, zero, positive fractions, or positive integer. You may need to Pick Numbers from multiple categories, especially for Quantitative Comparisons questions.
4. Flip the inequality when you multiply or divide by a negative number.  Remember that when you multiply or divide by a negative number, you must reverse the direction of the inequality. The non-flipped version will almost always be one of the wrong answer choices (of course!).

-4x + 5 > 17

-4x > 12  (When we divide by the negative 4, the sign is flipped)

x < -3

5.     Remember that Quadratic equations have two solutions. You’ll need to be able to FOIL and Reverse-FOIL on the GRE. Get a quick refresh here with Grockit Tutor Jordan Schonig.

x² 7x + 6 = 0                        This is called the “quadratic.”

(x – 6) (x – 1) = 0            These are called the “factors.”

            x = 6, x = 1                        These are called the “roots” or the “solutions.”

For more help with any of these algebra concepts, jump into a Group Game in the GRE Grockit lobby to work with other students studying for this year’s test. Explain difficult concepts to others and get help from your peers!

On the coach again, we moved to the beautiful Oxford and its many attractions. Here, after an interesting guided tour of the city lasting about one hour, we had a lot of spare time to explore some of the Museums, like Ashmolean and Pitt River Museum, and take a look at the numerous University Colleges.

It was a really beautiful day full of culture, history but also fun. We saw the second largest library in the UK, in which J.R.R. Tolkien had the idea to write The Lord of The Rings and of course we also saw the building where Harry Potter was filmed!

This is a must-do trip!

-Roberta, Intern at British Study Centres Brighton

While I was completing all of these other acts of procrastination, I was mentally composing another essay for an upcoming deadline, a piece has been freaking me out, both as a writer and a teacher. In order to be successful in this piece, I must come clean about my homework practices. For non-teachers, that may sound like an easy task, but its not. Homework is a time-honored tradition among teachers, a sacred cow best left undisturbed to chew its cud in the median. We go about our daily business in its shadow, so used to its presence right there in the middle of things that we dont even see it anymore. Even discussed delicately, teacher-to-teacher, it elicits fight-or-flight defensiveness in some and outright anger in others.

But its good to sharpen your Ticonderoga #2 and poke that cow from time to time, isnt it? Otherwise, how  do you know if its just resting or if its been dead for a while and you just had not noticed?

As I am writing about homework elsewhere, I am taking on another sacred cow at my school over here the writing assessment. These assessments make up the giant pile of menace stacked next to my desk, and as I dont want to get around to grading them, I thought Id spend some time poking them with a proverbial stick.

Twice a year, we give the students a prompt, two days to prepare an outline, two class periods to write a four-paragraph essay. Based on the responses I have read so far, this years questions went fairly well, and I actually like reading these essays once I am into the groove, but its an endless task. So, if I have to question why I give homework, I also have to question why I spend four full days a year of class time and hours at home spent grading on these writing assessments.

The students dont enjoy writing them, I hate grading themso whats the point?

In order to answer that question, I went over to my office and pulled out a couple of my students files. Because we give these assessments every year from the third grade on up, I can spread a students entire writing education out in one place. I can see how handwriting, vocabulary, and syntax evolve over the entire length of one students education. Most importantly, I can see their individual voices evolve as thinking becomes more complex, more sophisticated. Its fun to pull these files out when a student is frustrated with the slow pace of his or her learning, or an apparent backsliding in skills, and show them how far they have come in such a short time.

One of my favorite things about my job is the strategizing I get to do behind the scenes. As I teach my students for three straight years in Latin and/or English, I have the opportunity to do some real long-term planning for the future. I taught high school English before I moved to middle school, so I know what will be expected of them in a few short years. Many of them will go on to attend the very school I used to teach in, so I have very specific goals about where they need to be in terms of independence, organization and self-advocacy by the time they head off to high school.

In sixth grade, we coddle them as we ease them into the relative chaos of middle school class transitions and increased homework load. In seventh grade, however, I ease off a bit. I give them a little bit more rope and see what happens when they are expected to plan ahead or stay on top of a long-range assignment. In eighth grade, I really let them have their heads, and expect that they will know how to take charge of their education when no one else is looking out for them. Writing assessments are part of that process. I hand them the prompt and directions, and they are expected to prepare their notes or outline, find supporting evidence and plan their writing. I give them no other guidance than the prompt itself. Timed writing assignments will become a fact of life for them in the coming years, and its fascinating to see their progress as they master the task.

When I was first hired at my school, I was informed that the writing assessment was simply a part of what I did in English class, and I was too overwhelmed with the details of a my new position (including my first year teaching Latin, twenty years since I last cracked open a Latin text) to question any reasoning behind the tradition. But now, long settled-in and armed with perspective and experience, I think its good to question what I do the things I do. This weeks re-evaluation of my homework practices has been really enlightening - I have dropped some of the less effective assignments and shored up my reasoning behind the better ones. So much of what I do, particularly the most subjective aspects such as grading and assessments, leave me feeling uneasy at times, unsure of my standards, perspective, or reasoning.

In the end, some of those cows were long dead and really needed to get rolled out of the road, but I am quite fond of the ones that remain. When I return to school in the New Year, the students will notice a change. I will be more confident in my choices, and the road ahead will be much less congested. True, the writing assessments will remain, lying placidly in the middle of that road, but at least I will be able to explain why they are there.

In this weeks free movie, youll see how to take a photographed portrait, apply the Photocopy filter and then adjust and finesse your drawing with the Levels command, Gaussian Blur, a little hand-work , and finally some advanced layer effects. The result is a technique that can work on any well-defined portrait. For example, check out how this unsuspecting photo booth poser in the upper image can become the proto-Nagel woman you see in the lower image below .

For members of lynda.com, Deke has an exclusive movie in the Online Training Library^® this week called Adding a crosshatch shading pattern that really sells the illustration effect. By the time you go through Dekes meticulous steps, youll take this dramatic photo on the left and turn it into the deadly line drawing on the right:

See you back next week with another technique from Deke!

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques collection on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery
• Photoshop for Designers: Layer Effects
• Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Advanced Blending
• Illustrator Insider Training: Rethinking the Essentials

I am thrilled to share this very special guest post from eleven year old Mallory; sixth grader and world-change agent.

You will be amazed and inspired as you hear her describe the day she made the decion to change the world.

In October 2011 I sat down to write my Christmas list for my parents, I looked around my room and I realized there was nothing I needed, nothing I wanted. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about the children in Africa, and how they weren’t going to get Christmas presents, and there was a lot of things that they needed. So, I sent my mom an email with my Christmas list, one thing on it, to help Africa.

See, in August of 2010 the Ugandan Orphan Children’s Choir came to my church to perform, and I got to meet the children, and they were amazing. They were so loving, and just wanted to hug me and hold my hand. My mom had also started doing work for a couple of organizations that helped in Uganda, so she had taught me about the children there.

The day after I sent the email my Mom and I sat down and talked about what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to help. I contacted Amazima Ministries and Project Have Hope and I told them what I wanted to do, and I asked them how I could best help them. That is how Project Yesu was born.

My goals at first were simple, I wanted to raise $600 to sponsor 2 children, one from Amazima and one from Project Have Hope. When you sponsor a child, it pays for food, medicine and sends them to school. I also decided I wanted to send Christmas cards to the children in Uganda, I mean who doesn’t like to get a card, it makes you smile. So I drew two different card designs and I contacted a local printing company and asked them if they would donate the printing of 650 cards, they did.

So I started to tell people about Project Yesu, and my mom helped me start a blog so people could read about it. I met with my Children’s pastor and asked if our youth group could help me with the cards, because I wanted them to be personal, so I needed a lot of help to write out 650 cards. I also spoke to my youth group, and told them about Project Yesu and about the children in Uganda and asked them to help me raise money. Every week I set up a booth at my church to tell people about my project, and the word spread.  

In only 8 weeks I raised over $2,400 and I was able to sponsor 7 children. It was way more then I had originally planned on and it was great. I got to meet some wonderful people, and tell them my story. I was invited to go to WAYFM a Christian radio station because they learned about my project, and I was even on TV. The NBC station out of Nasvhille did a story on Project Yesu.

I read a quote one day from Mahatma Ghandi that said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. That’s what I want to do, I want to be the change, I want to make a difference, I want to help people. Everyone thinks kids are selfish or that we’re just kids and we can’t do anything like this. I want to show people what a difference one person can make. If someone, because they heard about me, or met me, decides that they can be a change too, then it will spread from me, to that person, to another person and so on.

Kids have good ideas, and you know what? We don’t know all the reasons why it won’t work, we just know we what we want to do.  I know with Project Yesu, I am making a difference, not only in the lives of the seven children in Uganda who now have food, medicine and can go to school. But I am making a difference in the lives of my family, my friends, my teachers and even people I have never met before.

I want Project Yesu to continue to spread and grow, and to do that I need people like you, who are reading this post to spread the word and to help me. My goals for 2012 is to raise $4,500 who knows maybe I’ll double that this year or even triple that and be able to help more and more children in Uganda. I plan to travel to Uganda in December of 2012 to hand deliver the Christmas cards to the children, to meet my sponsored children and to love on the children of Uganda who have changed my life.

If you want to know more about Project Yesu, or how you can help you can find me on 

• Facebook  
• My site.

I am selling T-shirts and wristbands to raise funds, and I am also looking for families, groups, classrooms or anyone to be a part of the Be The Change campaign by collecting coins to donate towards Project Yesu.

So I have accepted the challenge to be the change….will you?

There are some who would think that your internet privileges should be revoked should you never have run across lolcats photos of cats, often in humorous positions, captioned in what seems like a rudimentary form of English. One of the most famous lolcats, rather overweight specimen of a cat, bears the caption I can has cheezburger?, which helped spawn not only a plethora of other lolcat images, but also the website icanhascheezburger.com (which has just celebrated its five-year anniversary), where people can submit their own.

lolcats are a prime example of what is known as a meme: an image or concept that spreads rapidly from user to user over the internet (also known as a macro image). There are many of these, and to the unfamiliar their names seem very odd indeed, for example: socially awkward penguin, good guy Greg, nope! Chuck Testa, and internet husband. Confused? Luckily there is a site that seeks to help out those dazed and confused by the huge variety of memes that have gained popularity or notoriety knowyourmeme.com.

However, it seems that in the 5 years since the meme first became popular online and spawned thousands of copycats (sorry), there is more to lolspeak than meets the eye. So much so, in fact, that Jordan Lefler, a student at the University of Louisiana, has published a 129-page thesis entitled I can has thesis?: A linguistic analysis of lolspeak. In the thesis she explores lolspeak from its very roots as an image meme, to its evolving linguistic properties. While it may seem to be a randomly warped version of English, it turns out that lolspeak kind of like ebonics is an artificial dialect in its own right, and actually has its own syntax, formulas and punctuation rules, the proof being that there is enough structure there for somebody to write an entire thesis about it.

You can read the entire thesis for free on the lsu.edu site.

I blogged about a man’s passing yesterday and one thing I didn’t mention which I now feel I ought is that Fred was a reader. Big time. It’s not something lost on me that 1) I know my fair share of “successful” people and 2) to a person, I can’t think of one of them who is not a reader.

I wonder if the next generation, the one being raised with the web and such, will prove the corollary, however anecdotal, different?

Are all these folks I know who are successful successful because they read or did they become successful as a by-product of being a reader? I really do wonder.

During the eulogy, his son mentioned his father’s favorite book of all time? (No, not anything I have written but I do think that because I’m an author Fred held me in a little bit of a “we’re in the club” light as he’d written books in his field of medical specialty himself.)

His all time favorite title? A book I’ve never read, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT.

Sure, I’ve seen the Brad Pitt movie – and I really, really liked it – but as the son spoke about why his dad was so nuts for this book, I realized, “Man, I gotta read this novel.”

So death brings a book rec. Who wouldda thunk?

Three days before Christmas, officials with the Keller Independent School District notified Haltom City police of the accusations. A 17-year old female student had told her parents that she had a sexual relationship with 34-year-old teacher Chad Eric Bearden and the adults contacted the school district.

The teenager claims she and Bearden had sex on two separate occasions at his apartment in Haltom City.

The girl was not a student of Beardens at the time of the alleged offenses. The teenager attended Keller Central High School, while Bearden taught at Hillwood Middle School, also in the Keller ISD.

An arrest warrant for Improper Relationship Between Educator/Student was issued for Bearden, who turned himself in to the North Richland Hills Jail on January 5.