It started as a familiar feel-good story: a couple of years ago, an English teacher in Britain used a creative class project to get a group of wayward and uninterested teens excited about reading and writing. But before anyone could cue up Coolio’s "Gangsta’s Paradise" and commission a script for "Dangerous Minds II’, the teacher, Leonora Rustamova, had been fired by the administration of Calder High, in West Yorkshire. It seems that there was a bit of madness to her method. In an attempt to win over her class of boys, notable in school for their bad behavior, she wrote them into a racy fictional story involving sex, drugs, and, perhaps worst of all from the school’s perspective, rampant and unrepentant truancy. The students reportedly became excited about the project and contributed their own passages to what eventually became a book, "Stop! Don’t Read This. " The trouble for Rustamova, who had taught at the school for eleven years and had been given the nickname Miss Rusty by students, came when her husband printed copies of the book for the students using an on-demand Web publishing site, where the content remained available online after the books had been ordered. The school’s administration got wind of the story and suspended Rustamova, for what they called " reckless disregard for confidentiality and child safeguarding issues". The release of the material online was at issue, but the nature of that material couldn’t have helped her case. Parents, students, and some of her fellow teachers came to her defense, but Rustamova was later dismissed. Rustamova is back in the news this week as she awaits a ruling from an employment commission in Leeds on a compensation claim against the school for what her lawyer identified as unfair dismissal. She also said that Stephen Ball, the head of the school, had read an early draft and had approved of the project, a claim that he has denied. Rustamova has not worked since her firing, and has "relied on benefits" to support her young daughter, the Guardian reports. In addition to winning back wages, a favorable ruling would presumably make her more likely to get another teaching position. How far should a teacher go to get her students to read To extreme lengths, one might argue, since engaged literacy provides the framework for social and professional success in adulthood. And yet Rustamova, rather than her students, wrote many of the sexually charged passages, including the Mr. Gay UK line, which she defended this week. And so the how-far question finds its answer: not that far. Still, many students and several of their parents thought the project a success. As one parent told The Sun at the time of Rustamova’s suspension, "It’s a work of fiction. It’s no worse than the TV show Skins. " "Skins", a popular series about sexed-up and drugged-out youths, is in its fifth season in Britain. Like Rustamova’s class project, it is a work of fiction created by adults, but which contains significant input from teen-aged consultants. In this week’s issue of the magazine, Nancy Franklin reviews the new American version of the series, and parses the epidermal ads that have been pasted in New York’s subways this winter.. These kids might as well be naked: they don’t care who sees them, and they don’t care what people think. They’re in their own world, beyond the reach of adults, which means that the adults in their lives have done something very wrong and what adult wouldn’t be threatened by that message Last month, Rustamova seemed baffled that her "harmless" lit project had caused such a stir. For others, the book must appear manifestly scandalous. At the least, it’s safe to say that books and television shows that stir up a stew of kids, adults, drugs, and sex are going to make a whole lot of people uncomfortable. A ruling on her compensation claims is expected in March. The author’s tone in reporting the event might be described as ______.