It s a rough journey, with many surprising turns. His mother and his church offer bedrock support. But his urban education is full of yawning holes, and his father is either absent or in prison during most of his childhood. Along the way, Suskind explores such thorny issues as affirmative action, race relations, and educational opportunity gaps that SAT scores can t begin to measure. If she saw teens clustered on street corners, she would automatically cross the street.
School is only one place where they ve known trouble.
But these gritty details tell only part of their story. Some will fall through the safety net Reynolds and his teachers cast. And success is not an unreachable goal, as this collection of thoughtful, passionate essays reveals. Although the book was published in 1993 after the first year of the program, the stories it tells still ring true for new teachers and those who haven t forgotten what it s like to be a rookie in the classroom. The book profiles seven newly recruited teachers who struggle with their own lack of formal teacher preparation and their students negative attitudes toward education.