As Charlene Jordan says, "Let's start and see where this goes." This inclination to push on things, to live one's working life with what philosopher Maxine Greene calls "a consciousness of possibility" is an ability to imagine a better state of things, to, in Greene's language, "possibilize." Ed Murphy does that with his curriculum; Charlene Jordan does it as she imagines a new school.
Kids say they want safe places. They're real concerned about that. They also want -- and they're very clear about this -- they want teachers who take an interest in them, and get to know them, and who don't judge them too harshly before they find out what they really can do. I remember one group in particular -- we were out at this middle school, and a girl stood up and said she doesn't want teachers who will judge her too harshly, and other kids started nodding, "Yeah. Yeah." "What does that mean?" I asked. "Well," she said, "sometimes you really do know things, but it takes you a bit longer to say what you know or do what you know -- and we want people who are patient with us and won't rush us."
What's exciting to me is that I'm working with people who are saying, "Let's start and see where this goes." The teachers I'm working with left comfortable positions to work in this school. That's what this is for me, a chance to work with a group of people who reject settling, reject complacency, who want to make a place that we can modify from year to year, try things we never dreamed of. That's what this is for me, a chance to work with people willing to do whatever it takes to educate children.
Look, change is hard. It's not always rewarded. When you do something different -- even when it works -- people don't always look at it and say, "Wow that's terrific!" People are afraid of change. Maybe they're afraid they'll have to change, too -- and maybe they're afraid they can't. I don't know. Changing a system means you have to change something about yourself. It's not just how you do things, but how you think. And, God, that has to affect other things in your life. If you begin to question the "why" and the "how," well, then, maybe you begin to question other aspects of your life. You change how you think about yourself and your life. Scary [laughs] and fun.
My biggest fear is that we are not going to be able to do the kinds of things for children that we want to do. I worry. We're going to have kids who have done very poorly. And we have all these hopes, these expectations for them: we imagine them -- you set it in your head --we imagine all these kids standing and presenting their work at the end of the year. But then you think, "My God, are we going to be able to help this kid do this?" The work we want them to do will be hard. Are we going to be able to help them? Maybe not right away, but by year two or year three? Will we be able to keep believing in them? If we lose our belief in them, we're dead. That's my biggest fear. Will we be able to learn from our mistakes? I hope I can provide the leadership for this to happen.
I've seen success in public schools. And I've seen a lot of awful things, things that make me angry. It's not just to do this to people. Something has to change. But in the alternative schools I've worked in, when I see kids being successful who were unsuccessful before, when I see them beginning to plan for the future -- then I know it can be done. So the question for me becomes, "Who's going to do it?" Well, I want to do it. I want to be part of the movement. Public education is fundamental to democracy, and I believe it is the place where all people should come together.
Of course it's going to be hard. Of course. But too many in this country have the belief that if it's too hard, we should just stop. That we should throw people away. But you don't throw people away. You throw away ideas, maybe, but you don't just toss out a whole generation of kids. It's a struggle. But it has to be done.
This is the biggest public education system in the nation. It's such a challenge. But if we can make public education work for the people in this city, then people all around the country can look and say, "Well, if they can do it, then we can do it, too." And that's what I hope for, that it's not just this little piece of West Fifty-eighth Street I'm going to affect. All these people are doing new schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx and Queens, and if we can all make some important differences in kids' lives, differences people can look at, well, that would be something.
Not too far inside that gate Ed Murphy and Larry Stone were teaching their classes in video production, using the drama room that Ed, over the years, had converted into a studio. Both men were English teachers who have developed their expertise by trial and error. Ed started twenty-two years ago with Super-8 technology and, through donations, grants, and personal expense, has built a classy video production facility.
Driving it all is a demand for quality and originality -- generated by the collective student work, both past and present. So student projects get shown in "premieres" and are celebrated continually. During the first of my visits, Ed premiered two recently completed videos. In the first, a sixty-second instructional video, a soft-spoken, bespectacled boy named Frank had dubbed a lesson on amphibians onto a clip from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. To match the new dialogue with the cavorting turtles, Frank had worked and reworked his script, finding different ways to phrase things, running the tape over and over again -- more than twenty times, Mr. Murphy said -- to create the right fit between word and image. So when Raphael turns to Donatello, nose to nose, he asks, "Did you know there were many kinds of amphibians?" And when the four muscle-bound mutants dive into water, they are asked by a fifth character if they found amphibians there. Finally, as the cartoon closes, the turtles turn to the screen and in a farewell say, "So remember, dudes, when you think amphibians, think land and water."
"It's really powerful," Helen Salcedo said as she walked over to an editing machine. "We don't get a chance in other classes to show our work like this. I like watching other people's stuff. You can make comparisons with what you're doing, and you can learn that way."
"This is a big-shouldered book, full of ardor."
Los Angeles Times
"Possible Lives is anan engaging account of the author's visits with inspiring teachers in tough school districts across the country . . . His purpose . . . is to 'generate a hopeful vision in a time of bitterness and lost faith,' which he does with great success."
Washington Post
"The product of immense labot . . . elegantly rendered."
New York Times
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