Philadelphia

IT’S HOT. Afternoons in Philadelphia have been pretty much brutally hot since we got here, but today, was downright perverse.  Anyway…

We met Michele Jackson and her son Ryan, who is a student at Science Leadership Academy, one of the two charter schools Sabina and I are working with.

Ryan, came to Science Leadership Academy last year from Gesu school, an independent Catholic school in North Philadelphia educating children from pre-K through eighth grade.

At Gesu, which mostly comprised a demographic generally considered one of the hardest to educate_  poor African-American kids_ Ryan, couldn’t be himself.

“Oh, you’ re a white boy,” his classmmates would say to him when they saw him riding his skateboard.

 ”I don’t like basketball or football,” Ryan told us. ”If it doesn’t have to do with a computer I don’t like it. They [students] would call me a geek, a nerd, slap my hand down when I raised it in class.” 

At first, Ryan fell out of place at Gesu, but Michele’s encouragement helped a bit.

“I was at working at the time, so I couldn’t talk on the phone,” Michele said. “But he would text me when he was having a rough time, and I’d tell him ‘hang in there Ryan, it’s only until the end of the year and you’ll never have to see these kids again.’”

By the end of the year though, things had gotten worse. Ryan’s grades had fallen from A’ s and B’s to C’s in his final semester. When the school year ended, Ryan, a gifted sholarship student, had failed to make honor rolls, and Michele immediately went looking for a different option.

She searched for a high-quality public school for Ryan all summer until she heard about Science Leadership Academy, a brand-new (Sept, 2006) Philadelphia magnet school for science, technology, mathematics, and entrepreneurship.  She heard that the students at the school hardly used pen and paper and instead they used a school-issued laptop. She also heard about the communautarism the school emphasized.

Finally she heard that the school,  the school, although, publicly financed (a partnership between the School District of Pennsylvania and the Franklin Institute) like any other SDP schools, was relatively different in spirit; school officials there really try not to get caught up in or distracted by the city’s sometimes troubled and messy education bureaucracy (magnet versus charter, union versus non union, etc) .

 What matter most to them was what was happening inside the classroom. 

Michele, who is 48,  was a product of the School District of Pennsylvania ( now the seventh-largest school district in the country with a 185,000 students), monochromatically black and overwhelming poor since well over half of the students had family incomes low enough to make them eligible for subsidized lunch from the federal governement.

She was familiar with failing schools and poorly trained educators who didn’t seem to care much; thus, she understood the necessity to find a school that could provide sensitive and perceptive educators like 23-year-old Math and English teacher Matthew Kay and history teacher Diana Laufenberg. Both were known as visionaries, relentless out-of-the-box thinkers, with boundless passion for the kids. Both were committed to raise student achievement level.  Both were educators that care.

“It wasn’t just about the academic,” Michele said of her decision to send Ryan to SLA. “It’s really about the environment. He can be himself here.”

Today Philadelphia School District is changing but still paying the price for decades of substandard school system. The needs are great but resources can be relatively thin many educators told us. 

Yet, despite SDP facade of decaying walls and peeling paint, more students than not believe they can be successful.

Students like Ryan for example. 

Sabina and I went to tour the school and visit the students a few times this week. It offers an educational landscape unlike any other.

 ”Because Technology is the future,” Michele said.

And I gotta say this: watching these kids triggered parts of my brain I didn’t know existed. Seriously, the school is amazing.

The first time I walked in the building I sensed this vibe… It came rushing to me in the form of one word_  one word only because it captured the spirit of the school, the educators, the students, and the mood of the academic airspace.

The word is cool.

People use the word cool to describe a person, place, thing, a speech, an attitude, an abstract idea, the weather. It means tranquil, clear, focus, chill, calm, beautiful…

Cool is technology; a mixture of fear and fascination.

Cool is memorable. Like Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open on one leg. How he had two eagles and a chip-in birdie in one celestial six-hole stretch on Saturday; how he rolled in a twenty-footer to defeat Rocco Mediate on Sunday; how he had to make do-or-die birdie putts on the 18th hole on successive days, with defeat staring him in the eyes; and then endured 19 extra holes on Monday to finish the thing off.

Cool is smooth, controlled, knowledgeable and forward-thinking. Like Barack Obama. How he has mastered the art of oration; his ability to get inside each listener. The sharp delivery, the rich phrasing ladened with a youthful sense of  dynamics, the artfully pacing, and the timely and skillfully placed pauses to provoke “call and response” with the audience. 

Cool is evil genius. Like Miles Davis. ”Endearing with his music, offending with his personality.” Just consider the cover of his album ”In Person at the Blackhawk, Vol. I,” on which he is draped in a pimp-like checkered overcoat. Bent over to light a cigarette, his face is made barely visible by side lighting. Engulfed in darkness, the only other face you see is that of his wife-to-be, the dancer Frances Taylor, peering intently at her man… A bad man of the highest order. 

Cool is change. Like the press in the new digital era. Like the Patriots announcing each 2009 draft pick on Twitter. Or baseball players announcing their retirement on their blog. Or even Like Barack and his BlackBerry.

Cool is a school like SLA:  free from tensions or violence.

The perfect place for Ryan.