A classmate asks Maloney what he learned. That the idea that because places like South Providence are isolated from the rest of the city means they're isolated internally as well isn't true. It's a vibrant community. I t's Thabiti Brown's day to teach the course section on urban education, and he splits the students into three groups based on the nature of their internships and asks them to design a high school for South Providence. The students part like amoebas and get to work.
Silver looks on like a proud parent.
But his approach is very clever. I've been pushing him to think about his pedagogical goals from the time we began our Odyssey on my laptop computer, back in my apartment in New York. Stuck among them is a letter from her professor at Columbia, the renowned sociologist Herbert Gans, praising her work as his teaching assistant. Pamela Petro is a freelance writer in Providence.