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Editorial Review Product Description
Honest, engaging, and inspiring, Our School tells the story of Downtown College Prep, a public charter high school in San Jose that recruits underachieving students and promises to prepare them for four-year colleges and universities. The average student enters ninth grade with fifth-grade reading and math skills. Many have slid through school without doing homework. Some barely speak English.
Tracking the innovative and pioneering program, award-winning journalist Joanne Jacobs follows the young principal who tries to shake the hand of every student each day, the dedicated teachers who inspire teens to break free from their histories of failure, and the immigrant parents who fight to protect their children from gangs. Capturing our hearts are the students who overcome tremendous odds: Roberto, who struggles to learn English; Larissa, a young mother; Pedro, who signals every mood change with a different hair cut; Selena, who's determined to use college as her escape from drudgery; the girls of the very short, never-say-die basketball team; and the Tech Challenge competitors. Some will give up on their dreams. Those who stick with the school will go on to college.
This gritty yet hopeful book provides a new understanding of what makes a school work and how desire, pride, and community--ganas, orgullo, and communidad--can put students on track for success in life.
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A must read for Charter School advocates and opponents alike
Jacobs brings alive the true challenges in organizing, operating, funding, and sustaining a charter school in her wonderful book, "Our School."The going certainly isn't easy.Despite support from the Board of Education, the Mayor of San Jose, and private money from Silicon Valley, Downtown College Prep struggles to survive.The fact that the school does survive -- and prosper academically -- is testament to the dedication, enthusiasm, and tremendous hard work of the founders and staff of the school.Jacobs tells a very inspirational story.
'Inspiring' is true.
'Our School' is an inspiring read, especially for those teachers who are working with students in less-than-ideal environments.
Although 'Our School' talks a lot about the American school system, the ideas and discussions on pedegogy are universal.
Our School: Chasing dreams by rewriting the rules
Diminutive Selena gripped two sides of a basketball with uncertainty before finally giving in to the shouting principal/coach on the sideline, begging her to shoot.
She shot-putted the ball forward ... and watched it sail wide of the backboard by two feet.
Selena was one of the key players on the most unlikely girls basketball team ever to win a high school game -- a team that "Our School" author Joanne Jacobs hilariously describes as "the shortest basketball team in America."
"Our School" is not about sports, but this team -- eight girls hovering around five feet tall, among the few at their school who could muster the C average required to play -- is the perfect metaphor for the academically undermanned students that San Jose's Downtown College Prep charter school promises to someday send to college.
The Lady Lobos are mostly Mexican immigrants who know little about the game they've decided to play and are short of skills needed to succeed. But with enough "ganas" -- Spanish for desire -- perhaps they can somehow pull out a victory.
Likewise, "DCP students enter the school academic losers," Jacobs writes. "They don't know how to play the game. By the standards of middle-class high schools, DCP students aren't really in the game. But they keep working, they get better. If they stick with it, they'll win a college education."
Jacobs is the education reporter and former columnist for the San Jose Mercury News now nationally known for her popular education blog, [...]."Our School" is her book chronicling the years she spent observing as two idealistic teachers attempted to write their own rules and build a high expectations high school for low performing kids in an impoverished, gang-ridden inner city.
The book is both a pleasingly written, novel-like tale of kids who struggle â" and mostly win -- against tough odds and something of a guide for would-be school charter school developers, complete with a "how to start a charter school" chapter as an appendix.
For the motivated teacher, or otherwise inspired individual, who has thought of breaking out on their own to start their own charter school, Jacobs' book is really a must read. The "Lessons Learned" chapter alone is filled with telling stories and sage advice from DCP's founders.
For instance, they sorely underestimated how much catching up their entering ninth graders would need on very basic skills after years of neglect in the school system. It wasn't enough to set high expectations and seek to inspire them. The kids, plain and simple, needed to know how the speak English and multiply. As a result, DCP ended up much more structured and regimented than anyone ever expected because that's what the kids needed.
The school leaders also had to come to terms with the necessity of tossing kids out, especially for misbehavior. DCP throws out a lot of kids, a detail likely to catch the eye of charter critics, who complain that other public schools would love to have that nuclear bomb in the war to maintain discipline and order. "Our School" makes the point many times that discipline is a key. The leaders believe rules must be enforced consistently and unwaveringly, and they don't hesitate to expel even kids they like who fail to get with the program.
DCP's success is undeniable by the book's end. Just as the short kids on the girls basketball team work hard, get better, begin to compete and finally actually taste real victory, so their classmates, too, are reborn in academic success. All that stick with DCP to the end go to college and the school's test scores ultimately rank among the best around.
Still, the future of the school is far from certain. Teacher turnover is heavy. By its very nature, Jacobs tells us, the school tends to attract young dreamers to its teaching staff â" not the types to work at one school and retire 30 years later. By the book's end, one of the founders is even working on getting out.
Sustainability is a big question for charter schools, even excellent ones like DCP.
I also wonder if "Our School" won't someday be viewed as a period piece, unique to the early days of the charter movement when the romantic vision was that pioneering teachers would break free from bureaucracy and reinvent education.
In fact, the "mom-and-pop" charter schools â" truly independent and run by local folks â" may be a dying breed. An ever increasing share of charters are run by national management companies, such as Edison Schools and Heritage Academies, and more recently, non-profits and school districts themselves.
Even so, as the charter movement continues to grow, Jacobs has done a nice job encapsulating what these new public schools are supposed to be about and how they are different from traditional public schools. It's a good primer for the average parent â" those who've heard of charters but not really sure what they are exactly. And the story is an enjoyable ride right to the end.
"Pulled by my mother's dreams, I walked barefoot across the border from Mexico," Selena's begins her college essay. "I was six years old."
But with wild basketball misses behind her, on track for a diploma and a college scholarship awaiting, Selena will cross the commencement stage ready to chase her own dreams.
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The story of two people making a huge difference
On my blog, Why Homeschool, I posted back in December about attending Joanne Jacobs' kickoff event for her bookI bought the book back in December and had Joanne sign it.But I've been distracted, partly by blogging, and only recently got around to reading Our School.
Our School is basically a biography of Downtown College Prep, DCP.This is a charter high school in San Jose.Joanne leads us through the birth of the school, founded in 2000.We are introduced to Greg Lippman and Jennifer Andaluz who started the push for DCP.We read of the struggles to get funding, to get a location, and to get students.
Most of the book is about incidents that happened at DCP, or in connection to DCP.It like reading a story.Along the way Joanne slips in information about charter schools and education in general.The book is well written, very engaging, and hard to put down.
Many charter schools are very selective about who they let into the school.Often they only want students who are motivated and doing well in school.There are two elementary charter schools in my neighborhood.There is great competition to get in, so the schools are able to pick the better students.
DCP was created with the intention to help those who were fluking to get back on track for college.Greg and Jennifer were going after those who were no longer in the game.They set themselves a daunting task.In some ways DCP trying to help their students catch up is a Don Quixote mission; it is an almost impossible task.Most of the freshman class was functioning around the fifth grade level.Most of them don't know how to take notes.Most of them don't want to be in school.Most of have trouble reading.A Don Quixote mission might even be easier.
Our School recounts the efforts of the teachers at DCP.One of the nice things about a charter school is they are not bound up with so much bureaucracy.The teachers at DCP would try something, and if it didn't work, they would change quickly.Over time they found ways to help the students dramatically improve their reading.They taught the students how to study.And over time most of the students became engaged and were on track for college.They accomplished these Herculean tasks.
This is a very inspiring and moving book.We get exposed to some of the problems with public education, and we see how a couple people were able to make a great difference. This is a good book to read.
Great Read, Great Resource
As a school psychologist, I saw many students who struggled and sometimes gave up. I enjoyed reading "Our School," which is about a charter high school that recruits freshmen who've earned D's and F's and graduates them with the skills and motivation they'll need to earn a four-year college degree. At Downtown College Prep, students and faculty experience many "glorious failures," learn from their mistakes and go on to do better the next time. As a charter school, DCP has the flexibility to try new ideas to find out what works best for its students, most of whom come from low-income, non-English-speaking families. The book is a well-told eyewitness account infused with humor. I really liked the chapter about Ride the Carrot Salad. "Our School" is a great resource for teachers and other educators, and I think anyone who cares about our schools will find this book a rewarding read.
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