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Changes at Paradise High School

Greg Schofield

Paradise High School has gone through a lot of changes about it titled, “Hell Breaks Loose in Paradise.” Despite
since the Camp Fire. Beyond basic changes like combin- this major P.R. debacle on their hands, the people of Para-
ing the junior high and high school students onto one dise supported Franklin in her endeavors, voicing strong
campus, the way classrooms work has changed as well. support for her and voting out the school board members
Technology and media have become heavily integrated who attacked her. Though Franklin eventually resigned,
into classrooms, with many teachers using online resourc- it was not under negative pretenses--she left as a teacher
es like Google Classroom for many of their assignments. loved by her students, whose lives were more informed
Since many of our students live outside the normal school and better because of her lessons.
district boundaries, this makes it much easier for them
to complete their work. PHS is no stranger to modern It is not often that a small town like Paradise makes na-
curriculum though and has been pushing the boundaries tional news, and it never seems to happen during positive
since the sixties, with one teacher in particular being a circumstances. But every time it has, the community has
hallmark of this: Virginia Franklin. rallied together to make something of it, and to prove that
no matter how small our town is, we still have a big heart.
Franklin was a social studies teacher at PHS, who cham-
pioned a unique mindset of the time in regard to cold At the time he wrote this, Greg
war tensions. Through debates, mock senate hearings, Schofield was a 17-year-old senior
and a slew of sometimes niche sources, she presented at Paradise High School. His hobbies
every side of the international argument of communism include programming, military his-
vs. capitalism, and let her students decide for themselves tory, and reading fantasy/sci-fi novels.
which was better. While these methods made her popular After high school, Greg plans to at-
amongst her students, it was still the 60s, and McCarthy- tend San Diego State University and
ism was a major political force in the country. Franklin major in Computer Science, with a
was attacked on all sides by organizations ranging from minor in History. Greg chose to work
the John Birch Society to the Elks Lodge for being pro- at the Gold Nugget Museum for his senior project because he
communist and anti-American in her teaching styles, and feels it is important to preserve our history now more than ever,
the attacks got so intense that Life magazine wrote a story considering how much the Camp Fire took from us.
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