Better Seen and Not Heard? High School Students across the Country Are Running into the Same Roadblocks, No Matter Where Their Beliefs Fall: Must They Leave Their First Amendment Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate?

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For two months Amy Sorrell's job as an English and journalism teacher at Woodlan High School in Woodburn, Ind., was on the line. She didn't have an affair with a student, nor was she slipping brandy into her coffee. Sorrell, 30, simply OK'd a short op-ed in the school newspaper.

"I can only imagine how hard it would be to come out as homosexual in today's society," sophomore Megan Chase wrote in the January 19 issue of The Tomahawk, reacting to a friend's having come out to her. "There is nothing wrong with them or their brain; they're just different than you."

Shortly after the newspaper hit the cafeteria, Sorrell says, she received an e-mail from Woodlan principal Ed Yoder reminding her to run all contentious articles by him. …