the "manic energy" of Joe Nystrom

South High's Joe Nystrom is on the FRONT PAGE of today's New York Times. Best part of the article:

The teacher’s manic energy and persistence may be one reason for his success. In his first-period class the other day, Mr. Nystrom outlined the meaning of basic vocabulary words in statistics — sample, parameter, inference — and then went over nuances.
Using an overhead projector, he drew a contingency table relating the relative preferences of males and females for hip hop, country and indie rock music, then used the table to explain marginal distribution.
Some students struggled to understand the table, and he explained it again — until Ashley Tran, a 15-year-old sophomore, interrupted.
“Oh, I get it!” she exclaimed.
“My favorite sound!” Mr. Nystrom said.

A few comments on the article: reporter Sam Dillon is right to point out that this success has as much to do with expansion of opportunity, encouragement from administration, and convincing students they can do it as it does with paying either teachers or students (which has mixed results). I can only imagine Joe Nystrom had to have said a thousand times that it was a community effort to get that message into the article at all; not, one would imagine, easy to do when being followed around by a New York Times reporter, so well done.
The "violent reputation" is, I think, overplayed (and has been for at least 22 years). It was a tragedy. The larger reputation of the school is hugely more than that, however.
And "gritty"? Mr. Dillon, Worcester hasn't been gritty since at least the 1940's! C'mon, let's come up with something other evocative adjective!