Original subtitles

(car honking)

(kids chattering)

- [Man] Shawn, wanna go with me?

- [Boy] Why?

- From your perspective now,

as you look at our society right at this moment,

we have a lot of unemployed people.

We have great--

- [Man In Background] A lot of homeless.

- Right.

A lot of homeless people.

A great deal of inequity, as far as the wealth is concerned.

How can democracy

use the experience

of what's gone on in the labor movement

from the socialist point of view, perhaps,

to effect change?

- Well, I think what it is that, for instance,

I mean this isn't the best time to talk about it,

but the thing that happened to Rodney King.

The decision that was made is probably not made

because the people were racist,

the jurors didn't make a decision because, like,

I don't like a black guy,

I think it was more that they were more middle class.

They moved into a middle class neighborhood,

and the middle class are the people

that want the protection from the police,

and that want the police to be believed.

And that's one way to get it.

You know, by voting for,

well you have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

They need to get this person who's drunk,

they need him off the road.

I mean, you have to give 'em that.

Things like that are gonna continue to happen,

when things like that continue,

you see what's happening in LA right now.

The reasons it's total chaos there

is because there's no guidance.

There's nobody to hold them.

And that's why people are just getting killed.

I mean, it's terrible what's happening.

And it's not right.

- So how does socialism impend on that?

- Well the way socialism explains it.

- Okay.

- And it tries to make a unity between groups.

They're saying it's not black-on-white thing,

it's social, it's a poor and rich thing.

They're saying that, you see,

there was an Asian

and two Mexicans, or two Latinos on the jury,

and they decided the same way.

It's not because all the groups had a conspiracy against

Rodney King, but it was all middle class.

They moved into a middle-class neighborhood.

That's a big problem.

They say it's political reasons.

They don't wanna do it in LA county.

But that's a huge thing.

It seems like the most problems are really

between the social classes, and it just

hides itself under racism.

- So you think that socialism might give democracy a--

- [Boy] Well, it might give unity

to groups to make democracy.

- [Woman On Right] That's an interesting thought.

- Well because, you see, people, for instance,

they get Jerry Brown because he'll get Jessie Jackson

and Jessie Jackson will get the black votes.

But it's not really,

you need to find somebody's who's gonna,

Bill Clinton got a lot of middle class black votes.

It's not because he said he was gonna get Jessie Jackson,

it's because he had middle class ideas

that these middle class blacks believed in.

So it's not a racial thing.

It's socially what people want.

And that's how you can unite certain people

under, say, the lower class, or the lower-middle class,

or the middle class.

And the lower class is usually the largest,

then you would get democracy.

'Cause then if they're united in their ideas,

with no racism, then they'd all split up

because they'd believe that this white person's

gonna take my job, this Jew's gonna take my job,

this Mexican is gonna take my job.

And if you had everybody united,

then it would be democracy, because the majority of people

would get what they want.

(mumbles) of the government.

(kids chattering)

- Maggot.

- I wanted to ask you.

Before you started, when you first started your internship,

now I know you're excited about it,

but what, if anything, did you feel intimidated by?

What was fearful, if anything?

- Well, I had no idea what the stock market really was,

all I knew was that there was New York Stock Exchange,

and I was downtown by Wall Street,

and they would buy and sell stocks for their clients.

I didn't know how much money was involved,

or how much you can get into it mentally.

And I just, when you watch movies like Wall Street,

it's like a whole different aspect of it.

They really never show the life of a sales assistant,

or the life of a secretary,

which is kind of equivalent to a sales assistant.

And I think that when I went to this office,

I was like, wow, I never knew all this.

And it was just rushing into my head all at once.

And I think that's why I kind of motivated myself

to learn this as quick as I could,

because if I wanted to continue working there,

then I would need to pick everything up.

And I think that when I tell people

I work at Lehman Brothers, it's like, Lehman Brothers?

So it kind of pushed me

to really get a stable position in the firm.

Because if I want to go to college,

or I want to work at another firm or something,

when they look at my resume, they can say Lehman Brothers,

and they can call, and I won't have a bad report on myself.

They'll be like, she's a wonderful worker,

and she really goes, and you don't need to

tell her what to do, she just jumps and does it by herself.

I don't know, I think that I've grown a lot,

mentally and physically within the firm.

- It's a high school that works best

for those people that really wanna be here.

You have mixed feelings about being here on a lot of levels.

Let me take a chance and ask you a question.

Do you think of this as a white school?

As a school run by white people,

and that it would be different

if you were in a school that is,

and is part of your anger at the school

anger that is racial?

Because Debbie and I,

the co-directors to the school, are white.

Richard's white.

More of the staff is white than African-American or Latino.

Do you look at it that way sometimes?

Even though 80-- - A lot of times.

- [Paul] Yeah.

- But what school isn't?

(man mumbles)

Well that's a private school.

I'm talkin' about public school.

- Well other than your school,

other than your school,

I think that your mother's right.

- I'm just, from your point of view,

in terms of a student,

what would be different for you

if more of the teachers were Latino or African-American?

What do you think would be different for your learning?

- I don't wanna sound prejudice,

but if I had a black teacher, I think I would

give him more respect than I would give you,

because he's black.

- [Richard] Okay.

- I totally disagree with that.

- I do.

- But that's what you're feeling.

I mean, that's what your feeling of a young man.

And I disagree with it.

I don't know if I disagree with it.

I think it's real.

- Let's explore a little more.

Bridget, do you respect her?

- [Boy] No.

- Okay, more than you do me or Angelo?

Dave Smith?

Do you interact with him?

- Yeah, a lot of times.

- [Richard] But you give him the same amount of respect?

- Not some of the time.

- Well, I think that's a real feeling,

but you've gotta also be,

it's this issue you gotta take some responsibility

and control for your actions.

But I think it's, that's your feeling.

- I don't feel that all the time,

I don't feel that all the time,

'cause you gotta respect all people,

no matter what race they are.

But it just flashes through my mind sometimes.

I think it's a feeling that every kid gets.

- I think that a lot of kids get that feeling, I do.

Especially at times like this.

And I think that you have more often

than other kids, I suspect.

- What does that feeling lead to?

Does that make it impossible

for you to learn in my classroom?

- I enjoy your class 'cause I like you.

I like you more than I like Bridget,

but it flashes through my mind sometimes.

- And comin' from a person's point of view,

plus a student and school also, myself,

I've told my son over and over,

he's gonna find that it doesn't matter

what color skin a person is

when he walks in a class.

He might have a black professor that can't stand him,

and he will feel it.

So right now, he has to learn to relate to people

just because they are people.

I'm talking from my own point of view.

Sometimes your worst professors

are the same color you are.

Because somewhere in their heads,

there's a problem going on, too.

You have to be responsible for your actions.

I mean, all of us have a little prejudice in us.

And I tell my son that,

but it's how we use it.

That's the most important thing I keep telling him.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have feelings,

but it's how he uses his feelings.

That's what's important.

All of us have some bias toward something.

I'm sittin' in the chair,

I have them also, and I'm not gonna lie.

But it's the way I use it.

- Eight seconds, so what time is it will

be the highest point?

- Eight?

- Well, hold on.

If I'm here and we're gonna throw catch,

we're gonna play catch, just imagine.

We'll shrink your thing,

and it takes eight seconds from me--

- Oh, four, four, four.

- Good; where's four?

The highest point.

- The highest point.

- Good.

So, wait, hold on.

Now we're talking.

At one second, where would the ball be?

If you're gonna throw it to me,

where would it be?

Just finger it in the air, around roughly.

- Around here.

- Two seconds?

- Right there?

- Three seconds?

Four?

What's particular about this four?

- It's the highest point.

- Good, now five'll start coming down lower and lower.

You need to graph that.

But table it.

What I'm saying is now, DY,

do we know the DY formula?

Do we know how to find DY?

- Yes.

- How?

- How many seconds times T squared, plus--

- Plus or minus.

You have to be careful with the positives and negatives.

- Blue, that's the other thing, right?

He swings and misses,

and the ball hits the ground

right before the boundary line.

- There doesn't have to be any blue.

It doesn't have to be any blue,

he just hits it over the thingy,

whatever distance.

You already have the angle.

- [Girl On Right] The ball lands

right before the boundary line.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

And then I can just explain how I got the,

oh wait, no.

So the ball lands in from of the boundary line

in five seconds.

- [Girl On Left] On the other side.

Where's it gonna land in front of him.

Wait, okay.

Fresh hits the ball from inside the boundary line

with a nice serve.

The ball flies over the net.

You heard that, right?

It flies over the net.

- It's the same kind of serve.

You said it was a backhand serve or something.

- [Girl On Right] I thought I had.

(mumbles)

Fred hits the ball from inside

the boundary with a nice backhand.

No, I don't like that.

- Not a nice backhand,

just a backhand serve.

- [Girl On Right] With a backhand serve.

And the ball flies over the net,

at a distance of 15 meters.

The ball hits the ground right before the boundary line

after five seconds.

- [Girl On Left] On the other side?

- Over the net.

- [Girl On Left] Oh, okay.

- Over the net.

- Yeah, why don't you say it to me,

as if we were doing it in the committee?

- All right.

I'll just have it like this.

Okay.

This map shows from 1938 to 1939.

Where the countries that Germany had taken over.

Those are the shaded in, see?

- Okay, now that's--

- Those are the closest ones.

- Right

- So you try to start off.

- With the surrounding countries.

- All the countries expanding.

- Is this the point at which you're starting, then?

At 38?

This is after it's already happened.

'cause you have some over here,

where you're showing Germany attacking.

So maybe this is 42 to 45.

- Those are the Allies.

- I understand, I understand, I understand, okay.

- Now, this shows how many countries

you gotta take over in a period of time.

This is when he's just beginning to take over countries.

So it started off.

I guess these were like the weak ones.

He just probably overpowered them quick,

because you see Poland is a big country.

Czechoslovakia and Austria.

- Mm-hmm.

Wait a minute, is there anything else

you want to say about that?

In terms of an explanation?

I mean, are you gonna talk about the order in which,

or do you know The order in which

Germany attacked those countries?

- No, they don't really say that.

They just say--

- Cause there might be--

- I went through a lot of books.

- It might be a good idea to find out the progression

of how they change.

- Right, like which one he took over first.

- [Woman] Did you speak with Joe

about the situation that you're in in this class?

- What situation am I in?

- [Woman] This do not look good.

It's looks like you're not gonna get a passing grade,

unless you...

- What?

- [Woman] That's what he told me.

- Joe, Joe is...

- [Woman] You need to speak with him

before the end of class today.

- Class is ridiculous.

- You want to be an engineer.

Whether or not you think it's ridiculous,

you have to be successful in it.

I want you to talk with him before the end of class today.

Find out exactly what it is

that you have to do to get a passing grade.

Because supposing we get this mess

with Morris Phil straightened out, right?

They're gonna ask us for a transcript, right?

And on the transcript, they're going to look

to see that you passed every single class

that you were registered for this year, right?

And if you didn't--

- Yes, I did.

- Your acceptance, well you haven't yet.

- I know I'm passing electronics.

I'm passing (mumbles)

I'm taking this class.

My internship was great.

- Yeah, how about your status in this class?

I know your internship was great.

What's your status in this class,

that's what I'm talking to you about.

- Personally, do you wanna know my opinion?

- I wanna know an accurate assessment

of what your status is.

- Well that's not what we're learning in this class,

no accuracy.

Estimate, just.

- Gilbert, stop bullshitting me.

- It's true.

- Just tell me what your grade is gonna be

in this class in June.

- Good.

- What is it gonna be?

S?

- S plus.

- S plus?

- Yes.

- Okay, you know when I talked to Joe today at lunchtime,

what's he gonna tell me that your grade

is gonna be in this class?

- I don't know.

I don't read minds.

I don't know.

- He's gonna be wrong about the grade

he's gonna give you in this class?

- Yes.

- Gilbert.

- He's gonna be wrong,

because he's portably gonna give me a low grade.

But I'm gonna prove to him that I'm not.

- When?

- Well I'm doing it right now.

I'm working.

- Okay, how?

- My work.

- I'm gonna talk to him at the end of today,

and I want to hear that he had a conversation with you.

- What are we gonna talk about?

- About what you have to do

to get a passing grade in this class.

- Okay.

- Okay?

I'll see you in Advisory.

(kids chattering)

- [Paul] With this joke,

who did you think was going to laugh?

Who was the joke for?

- It was for Nathan.

- [Paul] It was for Nathan.

So you thought Nathan would enjoy

you saying, or would think is funny,

that you were saying that somebody

was gonna beat you up after school.

- [Boy] Yeah.

- I don't get it.

- [Boy] He doesn't, he doesn't, and I just say I was--

- I don't get it.

I just really don't understand how you could think

a teacher would think it's funny

that you shout across the room

that you're gonna get beat up after school.

That doesn't make sense to me.

- I was just playing around.

- [Paul] But you said it was a joke.

- Mm-hmm, I was just playing around.

- [Man] And you thought that he would--

- It wasn't like a ha-ha joke, it was just like--

- [Paul] Now--

- And I'd just be like, I'm just kidding, Nathan.

- Now, when you say playing around,

what does that mean to you, Lev?

I'm not sure.

What do you mean by playing around?

- [Lev] I'm just kidding.

I'm just joking around.

It wasn't a ha-ha funny, I was just kidding.

- Jokes and kidding, and playing around.

All, to me, sound like somebody should be having fun.

And is that what you meant to happen?

That Nathan would have fun with this?

Don't you say kidding around, playing, jokes,

all of those things in my mind

make me think of somebody havin' a good time,

or havin' fun, or laughing.

And you thought by telling Nathan

that Tom was threatening you, and he was

gonna get you after school, that that would be

fun for Nathan?

- I was just kidding, it wasn't for real.

- So why were you saying it, if it wasn't for real?

- Cause it was, it was, it was, I was just playing around.

- Well, I don't understand it.

I mean, I really don't.

And I think it's very inappropriate, Lev.

It certainly changes the way things are in his class.

His class is supposed to be, and as far as I'm concerned,

is a serious place for learning.

That's where you're getting

your math and science instruction.

And I think you're tearing that apart

by having these kind of jokes,

and joking about physical violence.

Do you know, Tom, did you ever read

the rules of the school about violence,

and hitting, and hitting back, and that kind of stuff?

- Yes.

- [Man] How about you, Lev, do you know 'em all?

You've read 'em?

- Mm-hmm.

- [Man] And what about jokes?

What about fooling around?

- It says you're not allowed to do that.

- [Man] Why, do you think?

- 'Cause maybe someone will take it seriously.

- That's part of it.

Did you take it seriously a little bit, Tom?

I mean, you have been involved

in a lot of these things before.

And you've been involved in fights,

and threatening people after school, right?

Did you think in any way, that he wanted to fight?

Did a little piece of you think he wanted to fight?

Do you think anyone in the class

could think you wanted to fight?

- No.

- [Lev] See, I don't like fighting people.

- [Paul] Then why do you joke about it, Lev?

- He likes to annoy people.

He likes to annoy people.

- [Paul] He likes to annoy people?

- Yes.

- [Paul] Susan, do you wanna join us?

I would love for you to join us.

I hear you kind of.

(woman mumbling in background)

He likes to annoy people.

- Yes.

- [Man] Did he get you?

- You could even ask Nathan.

- [Man] What?

- You could even ask Nathan.

- [Paul] I could ask Nathan about that?

Well, I can.

Does he like to annoy you?

- Huh?

- [Paul] You?

- Yes.

- [Man] Did he annoy you today?

- Sometimes, yeah.

- [Paul] Did he annoy you today?

- Yeah.

- You know, Lev, I have the feeling that that's true.

What do you think?

You do like to annoy people.

Jokes about violence lead to not so serious things,

not so funny things about violence,

and pretty soon you got a fight.

Somebody thinks you're waitin' for them

outside after school,

they're gonna get some friends to go with them,

to make it safe.

And that's the way we have bad fights here.

- Okay, wing, vestigial wing wild type, right?

- Right.

And it's female.

- Male, okay.

And then you're gonna do.

All right.

The other way, it's called the reciprocal cross.

Okay.

Do you have some sort of assumption

about how many offspring, you know,

like how many eggs she's likely to lay,

and what the hatch rate is supposed to be?

- Do I have it?

- Yeah.

- Not yet.

- Why don't you just throw out a number.

- How many eggs she'd lay?

- Yeah, based on what you've seen

in the vials that you've had.

Like how many pupae cases?

- One female, like 50 maybe?

- Okay, so 50.

I think it's high, but say 50.

All right, she has 50 eggs, right?

Now, suppose that this characteristic is dominant,

and you can actually look it up,

and see if it is or not.

But let's just do the theoretical.

Suppose it's dominant.

How many of those 50 offspring

are going to have vestigial wings?

- F1?

- Yeah.

- All of them.

- Right, so 50.

You're gonna do like data, you know, projected data,

you have predominant 50 offspring.

And assuming 50 offspring, all 50 would have

vestigial wings.

Suppose it's recessive?

- Then none of them will have

the vestigial wing characteristic.

According to F2.

- 100%.

- 100%.

- Right, and then you do an F2,

and you have to do if dominant, if recessive,

and remember that your mating

the brothers and sisters, essentially.

- [Boy] Oh, I understand.

- And you might wanna do a reciprocal cross there, too.

You have to figure it out on paper, if that makes sense.

- All right.

- Okay?

Now, do you know how the sex-linked heredity pattern works?

- Not too well, but, not really.

- Let's just review it.

- I was outside trying to find my apron,

that's why I'm late.

They don't have the program I have.

- You were at Mt. Sinai before nine in the morning?

- Yeah.

(laughs)

- [Woman] I'm impressed.

- Why?

- Well that's very good.

That's very good.

There's hope for us yet.

Be nice if you would be here by nine o'clock.

- [Boy] Well, I had to come here first,

but then I would have to go there anyway.

So I figured I'd--

- All right.

A reasonable judgment.

In the future, if you ever have to do that one thing

that really would make you be on criticism,

is make a phone call and leave a message.

- [Boy On Left] All right.

- A very good thing, communication.

Okay, suppose you have a female, right?

And you're gonna look at the chromosomes.

You have the situation, two Xs.

- Okay.

And for male.

But with the chromosomes.

- Right.

- Now, if you have a sex-linked characteristic,

what that means is, you tell me what it means.

Where is the gene?

- The gene is found in the X.

- Yeah, it's gonna be on the X chromosome.

So let's just make a little circle there to mark it.

All right?

- Okay.

- That's sex-linked.

Now, most of these genes are recessive.

- Recessive?

- Yeah, most mutations are recessive.

There are some exceptions to that.

- The wingless fruit is a dominant trait.

- You think it is?

I thought it was recessive.

Actually it's in the book.

- That's exciting if it's dominant.

Is it sex-linked, do you know?

- No, I'm not sure.

- Okay, you'll find out in July.

What percentage are gonna be vestigial-linked?

- What percent are gonna be vestigial?

75%?

- Right.

Okay and what's the ratio? - But this is confusing me

'cause both the X chromosomes are--

- They're from the gene, right?

- Right.

- So what you're figuring out here

is really, what kind of crosses do you have to make

to tell you whether or not the characteristic is sex-linked.

You have to play around with this

with different possible combinations,

then come to some conclusion

about which crosses you would have to do

to give you the information.

If it were dominant and sex-linked,

if it were recessive and sex-linked.

- Mm-hmm.

- So, and by the time you finish fiddling around

with these different possibilities,

you will truly understand

you know, this whole concept of Mendelian genetics.

And how you can tell just by counting numbers of fruit flies

with different characteristics

something about the genotype.

- Mm-hmm.

- So sit with it a little bit,

wrestle with it a little bit.

We'll speak in another half-hour.

Okay.

And now you want, let's see what else

you've done with this.

So essentially, you've got a lot of good information here.

It just needs to be structured

so that it makes more.

Did you find any information about

how Down's syndrome, and what it is about Down's syndrome

that causes mental retardation?

An explanation of that.

Okay, you talked about amniocentesis, right?

So maybe the last section is how amniocentesis can be used

to detect Down's syndrome.

The conclusion is most satisfying if it relates somehow,

(girl mumbles)

yeah, okay?

Terrific beginning.

Now you have to type, and you have to

just reorganize it a little.

- [Girl] Okay.

- I wouldn't a known what time it was anyways

because the clock in mine won't work.

The batteries are dead, so (mumbles)

- You're behind.

You've got a lot of work today,

it's a double period.

- I know.

- So get to work.

And go and look at what Enrique is telling

in terms of--

- That's what I was doing, that's what I was going do.

That's what I was thinking about

when I was walking to school,

like I should read Enrique paper.

See what he got.

- [Woman] Do you have any live vestigial-wing flies?

- I'd have to go check, damn in.

- Yeah, you have to get some more of those.

Get another culture started, all right?

That's really critical.

- [Boy] Another culture?

- Uh-huh.

You know what I mean by a culture?

Another group of flies breeding.

(sighs)

- One of the ways that we're thought about the school

is that if kids have developed five habits of mind,

and we're gonna suggest a sixth very soon,

if they've developed five habits of mind,

five ways of thinking about things,

they could be able to graduate from here.

Because if they can do these things,

think of perspective, from whose perspective

is something being presented?

Like when you read history, it's always

from someone's perspective.

What's your evidence?

How do you show your evidence for something

that you're presenting?

If you're gonna present your point of view

about something, that's fine, but show me your evidence.

Where did you get those ideas from?

How is the thing that's being presented

connected to other things?

What if things were different?

It's a supposition.

And who cares?

Why does it matter?

Why are we lookin' at this anyway?

If people can think in those three ways,

those five ways,

we think they'll be in pretty good shape

to be able to graduate.

The five work well.

I'll tell you an interesting thing about

the five habits of mind.

We have in the last year had visitors.

One was a lawyer, and he said,

those are interesting habits of mind.

Those are exactly what I learned in law school.

And if you learn a way of thinking like that,

then you'll be a good lawyer.

Another was a journalist,

who wrote a column in a newspaper,

in Maryland, I believe, and he said,

that's what I learned when I was a journalism major.

And the third was a physics teacher,

and he said, that's the scientific method.

I you really think about it, that's

the scientific method.

Habits of mind are what thoughtful people do all the time.

There are other ways of looking at 'em,

and you all could come up with

five different habits of mind.

But they are a respect for evidence,

and a respect for perspective,

and a way of seeing things in their complexity,

not simplistically.

- Well, the reason we wanted a meeting,

to try to increase the possibility

that this is gonna work this spring,

and that we're all gonna have a happy time together.

The other purpose is to say, congratulations,

nice to see you back, welcome back.

So has it been a nice five weeks

with the new baby?

- How old is the baby?

- [Girl] It has.

- Six weeks?

What about for you?

(laughs)

Does the baby sleep?

How often does she sleep at night?

- He.

- [Debbie] He.

(laughs)

'Cause I just had a granddaughter, too.

- He's so happy.

- [Debbie] They must be so happy.

(laughs)

- He sleeps every three hours, but sometimes.

- [Debbie] Do you have to get up a lot?

Are you getting up, or are you getting up?

- She was getting up.

- But now she is.

- And now I'm gonna start getting up.

- [Debbie] He's being bottle-fed?

- I guess yesterday he was being,

he was crying a lot.

He probably knew he was coming to school.

(laughs)

- [Paul] Overheard some conversations or something?

- [Debbie] What role are you playing in it?

- Just spoiling him, that's all.

(laughs)

- [Woman On Right] He babysits, too.

- [Paul] Start teaching him about cars yet?

- Hmm?

- [Paul] Start teaching him about cars yet, John?

- [Girl] He was him about girls.

- I just play with him.

Huh?

- [Debbie] Are you glad he's a boy?

- Mm-hmm.

- [Debbie] How about you?

- [Girl] I wanted a girl.

- [Debbie] How about you?

- It's all right.

(laughs)

- [Debbie] Which did you have first,

a boy or a girl?

(mumbles)

- I wanted a boy.

- [Debbie] You wanted one?

- Yes, for them I did.

- [Debbie] What did you want, Chris?

- Don't ask me.

(laughter)

- I don't, we'll see.

- We'll skip you there.

- I don't remember.

I guess maybe boy, I don't know.

- Girl.

But when I got to the hospital and had a baby girl,

they said, oh well don't feel badly, it's only a girl.

And I said, what do you mean?

I'm delighted.

- [Woman On Right] You know, Madonna wanted a girl.

I had a boy.

Grandbaby I wanted a boy.

(mumbles)

- All right, so now the dilemma is

there's a lot of issues.

It's very hard to go back to school

when you have a little baby, right?

I mean, a lot of complications in your life.

You know, how much sleep are you gonna get?

How are you gonna study on the side?

Your own friends, and all year.

- The part of the baby, he's gonna stay with

me in the room in the bassinet,

so that she could sleep.

That way when she comes out of school,

she'll come home, do her homework,

then she'll be with the baby.

- [Debbie] She is kind of, live two lives, right?

How old are you?

- 15.

- [Debbie] Be a 15-year-old, and to be a mother.

So that's complicated.

- [Paul] And a student.

- [Debbie] And a student.

So she's gonna be a 15-year old,

and the friendships, and she's a daughter,

and she's a sister, and she's a mother.

And you wanna graduate?

Are you determined to do that?

- Yes.

- [Debbie] At the moment, you're hoping to do it here?

- Yes.

- The reason that I say that at all

is that I would love to have it work out that way.

I really would.

- [Girl] Yeah, I wanna be in school.

- Some in schools where it's also possible

to bring your child to school have some advantages.

So just keep that in mind.

It's not a defeat if at some point you decide

you wanna be somewhere where the baby

can come to school with you.

- [Woman On Right] That's no problem,

'cause I'm gonna take care of him.

I don't work, so.

- It's important to know that that option exists.

- There are some nice schools that we know of

where that's possible.

And if at any point you feel like it,

or she just feels like,

if she appreciates your doing it,

but she would like to have her with her, that's possible.

You need to know that's possible.

All right, so that's that one issue.

Then the second issue is

the complicated social dilemma in school

between you and...

- Franky.

- Thank you.

And then that's for you, too.

How is it for you?

Would it be helpful if, I mean, impossible?

Do you ever have a confrontation with him about?

- Once.

- [Debbie] Do you both two just avoid the subject?

What do you do?

- Really, we never talk about it.

- [Paul] You guys are still hangin' out, though right?

- About the baby?

Once a blue moon.

'Cause we work together, so.

(mumbles)

- [Debbie] You were once very close friends.

What do you think you are now?

- You can't blame it on only on him.

- [Debbie] Wait, but you don't?

- You can't really blame it on him.

- [Debbie] But you still feel angry at him?

- Not as before.

- [Woman On Right] Tell her why.

- Things are, you know, slowing down.

He's being good.

He's doing his part, you know.

- [Woman On Right] He's coming over to see the baby.

- Yeah, this is new, this is recent.

- And they're working at it a little better,

since he's been coming over.

- [Debbie] You have a way of thinking about it

in which you can see it as something

that you and Franky both made a mistake about?

I mean, both did?

Both chose?

Do you feel that way about it?

- Not really.

Okay, it was a mistake on both of their part,

but it's here.

What can we do about it?

We gotta keep--

- Just imagine if you're just mad at one,

like it's all his fault.

- No, no, no.

I cannot blame him.

Mostly I blame her,

'cause she should have taken care of herself.

And I feel she should've, the type of mother I am,

she should've come up to me

and talked to me.

The worst would have come, I would have

taken her for birth control.

Then the baby wouldn't be here.

See?

- [Debbie] She should have to work on it, too?

- You know, it's something that you don't wanna think about,

but when you have girls, you have to.

- [Debbie] Okay, so, and you still have to.

- Yeah, I have another one, a 12-year-old.

- [Debbie] Nobody even for her.

It's one thing taking care of one child.

- Oh yeah.

- [Debbie] It's not necessary to have...

Try and have children when you're trying

to get out of school.

- Well he's been coming over to see the baby,

and they've been talking,

and it's not much of arguing now.

- [Debbie] So if you run into each other at school,

what will it be like?

- We did it today.

I walked into the bathroom, and he kept walking.

And he just said hi, and that's it.

- [Debbie] What about the other friends?

The kids around the school, are there people

who are gonna try and make trouble, John, you think?

Some of your girlfriends.

- No.

- [Debbie] What do you think, David?

- [David] I just turned around, what what?

- [Debbie] What do you think?

Are there kids that are gonna try and make trouble?

- From what I've seen today, no.

Everybody's really glad to see you.

You know, in class and in Advisory.

Yeah, I can't tell.

There's no way of telling.

- The first thing that I had problems with before,

and all the trouble, was with his girlfriend.

That's it.

But, so far today I had a nice.

- [Debbie] She's not in this school,

but she's in the neighborhood.

- She comes around, yeah.

- Tuesdays.

- Now if you see trouble coming.

If one of you sees trouble coming.

What would you do about it?

If you see yourself getting very angry.

- The best you can do is try to avoid.

But if they keep on looking for trouble,

and there's nobody around,

you gotta solve it your own way.

We don't know how it's gonna be until it happens.

- [Debbie] Let's think of it inside this school.

Or right out front of the school.

- Well, we're supposed to come inside,

and inform somebody.

Then we don't need to find one of you, the teacher.

- After school is mostly like P.J. or Santiago, Tom,

or Martleski's around.

Just tell them.

- [Debbie] If you do that, even though

it seems in the moment like, uh,

you're so mad.

That's what I'm worried about.

(John mumbles)

- No, we had a talk about that.

We sat and we talked,

and I explained it to her, and I explained it to him.

And that's what we said.

you know, you get one of the teachers

and you Debbie, or you get Susanne.

And they have to do something about it,

the fact that she's not attending school and you are.

- [Susan] Would there ever be a time

when there wasn't someone around, then?

It doesn't sound like there ever would be.

- No, 'cause there was a couple of times

that there was nobody around,

but really, there's never problems during that time.

We can't tell now.

- [Paul] Like John, in front of school.

- Yeah, in front of school.

- Right, but after (mumbles)

- Right.

- [Debbie] When you go home, is that an issue?

Does she go home before you go home?

- Well, I gotta go to work.

Yeah, she does go home before I do.

- [Woman On Right] Before there was a problem

and it was mostly with her,

so I spoke to Franky's mother.

So Franky's mother got her and spoke to her,

and told her, you know, this gotta stop.

You better leave her alone.

So she's been going through where we live,

but she doesn't stop, she keeps walking.

You know?

- [Debbie] The first time,

if you hear there's any trouble,

would you promise to call me right away?

- I think that's what's really critical.

There are quite a number of us around

that you can get in touch with.

And even if you have a worry

that something's happening.

- I even told her if Franky starts bothering her,

come up to Susan, come up to somebody, you know.

- What I don't like about it is,

why from the school she has to take it

all the way to where I live and around here?

- [Susan] This isn't have control over.

- [Debbie] I know, unfortunately we don't have

much control over it.

- I know, but why start it in school then?

That's what I don't understand.

That's all.

- [Debbie] I just wanna make sure

that you have no reason not to come every day.

You feel comfortable when you're here,

and nothing happens that makes you feel

that you're not safe.

(kids chattering)

- I know, I walked by, I couldn't believe it.

- He drew the brain on the computer.

- You did that on the computer?

- He drew a neurotransmitter.

A nerve impulse.

The synapse between two nerve transmitters.

- Usually when you have a false start,

don't throw it away, keep it and say,

right on the top "abandoned".

- Can I go to the bathroom?

Look what I wrote.

- Let's see.

- This, this, this.

- Good, that's good.

You can go to the bathroom and come back,

take a little break and write again.

Matt.

- Yeah?

- There may be a couple sentences,

even though you don't like the whole thing

that you wrote, in your abandoned piece

that you can use when you start it again.

So that's, where'd you throw it?

Unscramble it up and smooth it out,

and just leave it as an abandoned

part of your writing.

'Cause people use that.

- I don't think it's possible.

- No?

Okay.

So next time don't do that.

It's your work, don't throw it away.

So what you need to think of is another way to start.

- That's what I'm doin' now.

- All right.

Is that why your head's down?

- Yes.

- All right, I'll be back in a minute

to see how you're doin'.

How's your start?

- I'm just writin' a little poem now.

I think I'm gonna finish this one anyway.

- I like that one.

We can think of what happened.

I love it.

- Thinkin' about somethin'.

- Did you?

What's gonna happen?

- [Boy In Cap] He was asleep in the stars

havin' a dream about the stars.

- [Teacher] Ah, all right.

William, let me see yours.

Dear, okay.

A thesis statement is like a main point

or a main idea that you wanna direct

the reader to think about.

So let me see what your thesis is.

- I ain't start it yet.

- Okay, looking at the question.

How and why do law and morality

effet changes in each other?

What are the main points

that you know you wanna talk about?

- About morality.

- Mm-hmm, what else, good.

- And how

it changes things.

- Mm-hmm.

So you mention the word morality,

you mention the word laws,

and you mention that they change each other, okay?

So you wanna make an opening sentence

that discusses the point of what you're gonna talk about.

That's called the thesis.

When you write your thesis sentence,

why don't you call me over and show me,

and I'll see how it is?

- Okay.

- [Teacher] Okay.

- [Boy] All right the next one is gonna be like...

- Tell us the change.

I wanna hear the good news.

What's the change?

What happened?

- I got my work done.

- When?

- I got my work done last week.

- Last week?

- Did she get her work done last week, Dave?

- Listen, you get your work done,

but does the amount of work that you get done.

There's a percentage of that time

that you spent avoiding work, doing something else.

- But I got my work done.

- That's greater than the percentage of the time

that you get work done.

- Okay, well let's deal with the good news.

Did Murie get some work done last week?

- Yeah, she's getting more work done, yes.

- Okay.

So.

- I'm not gonna qualify it anymore.

You understand the fact

that I want you to get more work down.

- Yes, I understand that.

- [Teacher] We talk about fiction, right?

Plays and tragedy are part of fiction.

Why do we read this?

Why do we bother with it?

- Sometimes fiction does have bearing

on real life.

It may not be all real, but some of it

can be associated to real life.

- [Teacher] All right, what seems to be

the common recurring themes over time.

- That someone is setting someone up, right deception.

That's what it is.

- [Teacher] Deception and murder.

- And also revenge.

You know, in a sense.

- [Teacher] All those nice, human characteristics.

(laughter)

Yeah.

Well what about, anything else?

You told me only the bad things.

What about the other things?

Is there any good in it?

- I guess love, but I mean.

- [Teacher] Why do you say it with that face?

What do you think, Clarese, love.

- Um.

- [Teacher] What do you think about,

is love exemplified in this way?

- [Boy] Wasn't it with Edgar and Gloucester?

- That's true, with Edgar and Gloucester.

It's shown there.

Where else.

- [Girl In The Middle] With um--

- [Girl With Glasses] At the end with Lear.

- Cordelia and Lear.

- [Teacher] Cordelia and Lear.

A different kind of love.

It's very interesting how many kinds of it.

Where else do we see a very nice instance

of love between man and woman, I mean good and old?

- [Girl In The Middle] France and Cordelia.

- France and Cordelia.

That was a nice kind of love.

The one between Edgar and Gloucester,

despite everything,

and now the one between Lear and Cordelia.

That's three different kinds.

Anything else?

- What about

Goneril love for Edmond?

- That was a selfish love.

- Yeah.

- [Teacher] How would you describe?

I mean, Goneril loved Edmond,

it's not only a selfish love,

there's something troubling about that love.

Because Goneril was already--

- [Girl In Purple] Married.

- [Girl In Glasses] She was already married.

- Taken, so to speak.

You know.

In a sense it was an elicit kind of love.

What else, how then, how do you describe

Regan's love for Edmond?

- [Girl In Blue] That was like--

- Jealous.

She didn't want her sister to have him.

- She just wanted him because her sister wanted him.

- [Teacher] See, you have the examples.

- I don't think any of them loved him.

- Of three very nice kinds of love,

and it's very interesting.

I hadn't thought about it before today,

but Shakespeare really does show a whole range.

You have love between a father and a child,

love between a man and a woman,

and love between, what was the other one?

- [Girl In Glasses] Kent and Lear.

- Kent and Lear, as friends,

people who depend on each other.

So that's three to two.

We can do without the two.

(laughs)

Regan and Edmond, and Goneril and Edmond.

- Then you could say there was a lack of love between,

I don't even know if it was a lack of love,

but just bein' that Edmond was the illegitimate son,

he felt that he had to do something

in order to get attention.

That's kind of like what we see today in society.

- And you talk about,

we have to mention the not-so-good things.

We talk about blindness.

Who failed to act when they could have acted?

- [Girl In Glasses] Gloucester.

- Maybe Gloucester.

And poor Gloucester paid for it, you know.

(laughs)

Why, why?

- I laughing at the way you said it.

- Why?

- 'Cause it's funny.

(laughs)

- You don't think he paid for it?

- It was just funny the way you said it.

- All right.

Okay.

Well, tell me, Aidee, what do you think about it?

(laughter)

What do you think about Shakespeare and this man?

Why would she, you know?

What do you think of the play?

You had the least to say, because of your...

- It was all right.

- [Teacher] It's what?

- It was all right.

- [Teacher] It was all right?

- Yeah.

- [Teacher] In what way?

- It was interesting.

It was just, I don't know.

It's just funny.

I found it to be funny.

- [Teacher] You found it funny?

In what way?

Give me a definition when you say funny.

- It's the way--

- [Teacher] Funny ha-ha?

- It's the way that all the people,

it's the way that all the characters acted.

- [Girl In The Corner] Greedy and selfish.

- It's almost like real life.

- [Teacher] But is that funny?

- It's funny 'cause it ain't happenin' to me.

(mumbles)

- [Teacher] But it's great--

- It's just like, most like real life,

and it's amazing that he could right stuff like that

all the way back then.

- [Teacher] Yeah, which is way back in the,

you did your research.

What, 16th century.

- [Girl In Glasses] 16th century.

- [Teacher] And he was writing about an earlier time.

So it suggests to us that people, perhaps,

don't change so readily?

Maybe people are not, you know we keep--

- People still act like that now.

- [Teacher] Yeah.

- [Girl In The Corner] Like they say, time repeats itself.

- It's almost like, it's almost like a mafia-type thing.

That's what it seemed like.

Everybody's killin' each other

and takin' all the power.

- [Teacher] Well I guess--

- Everybody's all greedy.

- [Teacher] Yes, and I guess if you read Macbeth,

this is even a better, you had,

some of you had read Macbeth.

(mumbles)

- I did.

- [Teacher] In division two,

and certainly the mafia holds up well there.

Yeah.

- [Girl In Corner] It's Romeo and Juliet.

- [Boy In Blue] I liked that one better though.

- You liked Macbeth better?

Why?

- I guess we did part of it as a play.

- [Girl In Glasses] Yeah we did Romeo and Juliet.

- But some reason I keep getting Romeo and Juliet

mixed up with this, like at the beginning of the book,

when they had the fight at the beginning,

Romeo and Juliet.

I keep thinking that that was the beginning of this one.

- [Teacher] But why is that so?

Is that a fair, why is that so?

- Because this one (mumbles) at the beginning of the book.

- [Teacher] Well, it's the same writer, right?

- Yeah, I know, that's why I'm thinking that.

- [Teacher] So you would find similarities.

- And they're both a tragedy, right?

- [Teacher] Yes.

- Yeah.

- Okay, so the end of the play then,

we hope it's sort of like

remnants of things left,

and these people have to think again.

The whole cycle of life.

- The only part that I found confusin'

is when they started with the letters.

Who was writing letters to who?

And about what?

That's the only part of the play that got confusing.

Until we got towards the end, when all of that is

you start findin' out who wrote all the letters.

- But if you come back to what Aidee said earlier on,

about it being like real life,

is real life confusing?

- [Girl In Glasses] Yes.

- Well that's, you know, I think you have to

keep that in mind, because really,

we don't have sort of simple lives

where we sort of have one thing just so,

and another thing happening, so we can all get it, really,

very nice and straight.

We have complicated lives,

and lines cross all the time,

and this is what literature is about.

- We expect, we meaning the teacher, expect,

and I'm sure your father does,

for you to have a sense of

how you're doing in your classes,

but it was also the timing.

You asked me a week before the evaluations were do,

how am I doing?

It's not like in the middle of the term or something.

So that made me nervous, because I thought,

you mean, all this time, you weren't worried about it

until now, or--

- I was kind of worried, but just blurted out,

the point was also the evaluations were coming up,

so most of the time a lot of kids

will ask their teachers, how am I doing?

How am I doing?

- [Susan] Were you asking Bridget,

Bridget, how do you think I'm doing?

- Right.

- [Susan] Or were you asking--

- First I asked, how am I doing?

- [Susan] Right.

- And then I kind of rephrased it

after she explained, you should know how you're doing,

and then said, how do you think I'm doing.

- [Susan] Okay.

- And then she said, how do you think you're doing?

- [Susan] But your first question was

you wanted Bridget to tell you how you're doing.

- How I'm doing.

- And did you have an idea of how you were doing?

- [Boy] Well, kind of.

- [Susan] What was your idea of how you were doing?

- Well kind of bad, kind of good.

In between.

- [Susan] What was the kind of good?

- The kind of good was getting my work in,

and being able to understand it.

And the kind of bad was either

not completing it, being incomplete,

or turning it in late.

- [Susan] Okay.

Okay, do you have any sort of thought about these?

- It may, as you might expect, every evening,

it's how's it going, Franz?

What did you do?

What are you working on?

You try not to press it too much.

It's, I finished it at school,

it's, can I go to the gym?

It's, I have baseball practice,

all the things you'd expect.

Franz has been good about saying the things

that he's done well.

He's utterly silent about the things he hasn't done.

You know, I kind of wanna turn this into a different tact,

because Franz and I have had a lot of conversations

recently about honesty.

First of all, he's responsible to be honest to me,

'cause I'm his father, and his custodian,

and even more important to be honest with himself.

And what's troubling me in all this is,

two questions, number one, does Franz want to do well?

Fundamentally.

I think he does.

I think he does.

I mean, we've had a couple conversations,

and he's left me with the general impression,

he has been in that sort of satisfactory zone,

maybe what we've been known to call a B, B minus zone,

which I told him is unsatisfactory.

You're much too smart, much too talented for that.

But you need to determine for yourself

that you want to be better than that.

So that's one piece.

But the other piece has really been,

I'm not sure that Franz has decided

that he wants to do well.

I know Franz doesn't want to get in trouble.

I know Franz wants to get through school

and be able to do all the things he wants to do.

But Pat Reilly talks about fire in the belly.

It's a nervous energy.

It's when you sit down to a test

and you're prepared for it,

you're jumpy, you're edgy.

It's like when a performer, you know,

he's read his lines, he's worked his lines and--

- [Bridget] He knows.

- He's nervous.

But it's a very different feeling from being unprepared.

Basically it's the will to win.

It's the will to achieve.

It's the desire to get that result.

It's been self-motivating.

What do you think about that?

- Well, I understand what you're saying,

and also it does happen.

I also think that I need to improve mostly,

and really, I need to speak to you guys.

Like Bridget, Dave, and you, also

to see what I can do to have a very consistent plan

that will work consistently.

- I think we need to go back to what do you want?

Certain things are gonna happen no matter what.

- [Susan] Right, can you answer your dad's question?

What is your goal?

- Well, for my job, career, or?

- [Susan] For you as a student.

- Well, I need to be successful in life.

- [Susan] What would that be?

- Well, my dream is to be a architect.

- [Susan] Okay, but as a student here in this school?

- To pass the grades.

- [Susan] To pass?

- To get through, and also be able to,

not just pass by a hair,

but be able to teacher say,

well, I'm very, very proud of you,

'cause I know you gonna pass since day one, or whatever,

because I can tell you are smart.

I know I'm smart.

My father tells me.

My teachers tell me.

But I know that it has to come from myself,

and that's really my goal,

for somebody to come up to my and say, I'm happy for you.

I'm glad you didn't just pass by a hair,

class, but maybe a whole bunch.

- It sounds like maybe your dad's expectations

are somewhat higher than what you have for yourself.

Your dad's are that you could do very, very well

than B, and passing.

B is better than passing.

So, better than passing is not what your dad wants.

He wants something very, he wants you to use your mind

and do very good work here.

- [Franz] I want that too.

- You want that too?

- Yeah.

And I also wanna do better that pass,

like better, better, and also I wanna do very good.

I wanna do the highest I can go.

But I have to do it myself.

I can't have people say, you gotta do this right now.

You gotta try and encourage yourself.

- Be happy to meet with you,

have you fill out an application.

When you come for your tour, for your visit,

you want to bring report cards, standardized test scores,

recommendations from teachers.

Good.

Sent it with the application, great.

If you have report cards, that kind of stuff,

bring it with you, and we'll do the best we can.

- Nori didn't come home last night

and her mother's very, very worried.

She doesn't know where she is.

So we're just trying to talk to anybody

who might have some idea of where she might be,

might be able to help.

Do you have any ideas?

Have you seen her?

You haven't talked to her in a while?

Are you still pretty good friends?

I know you were very close friends when you're here.

Can you think of any place, you know,

that she might be?

She didn't talk to you about, I guess

she didn't talk to you about leaving home?

Do you know any other friends that you think

she might be at?

- Mean, I think that meeting that we had

was a clear example of a dysfunctional person.

Trying to deny reality with their child.

I'm not sure that a meeting is gonna--

- Well that's an interesting perspective,

that's an interesting perspective.

- Because, I don't know, it's almost as if--

- Well then, what would we do with an alcoholic,

or a dysfunctional parent?

We certainly have dealt with that before.

We dealt with it with Susan Boss.

- Yeah.

We ignore the parent and just focus on the child.

- No, not always.

We haven't ignored the parent.

I think we've been rather successful with parents.

(phone rings)

You know, it's a kind of half point.

- Yeah, but what we'd say is to come to common agreement.

We wouldn't deal with her issue

of dysfuctionalism.

We'd deal with the fact that we have some common issues

that the parent and the school can connect on.

We both want the same for her child.

- Well, the other thing is that it's not only

rattling our cages, and it's not only pushing our buttons,

it's also,

is it a real threat to the school?

- Potentially.

I mean, let me put it like this.

An accident can happen, and she can take it

and move it into a political arena.

That could have potential ramifications.

As we well know.

And it's usually, I deal with people out in the front,

you know, chanting and picketing.

It's nothing that we were to gain.

- That's weird.

Gun pointed in your face and you're not gonna (mumbles)

- That happened to you?

- Last week.

- What?

- Last week?

Oh my god.

- What happened?

- You had a gun pointed in your face, like this?

- Not like that, but from a distance--

- Cops?

- No, it's (mumbles)

I was talkin' to my friend on the corner.

- Shit.

- On 119.

And that was, I mean (mumbles) hot.

- It's always hot down there.

(laughter)

- There's always shots in the middle of the night, man.

- The corner from (mumbles) right there.

- This guy's black, he's dangerous.

- I was talkin' to my friend right there

and this car just pulled out on the corner,

like the windows were dark,

and he just pulled it down half-way.

When I looked at the car, he was like this.

- With his hand out right there?

- [Girl] What he was aimin' at?

- [Jose] Like that.

- Probably confused me with somebody.

- [Jose] Boys in the hood?

- My friend.

- I just looked at him like this.

- I would've ducked.

- I just looked at him like...

- [Girl] I'd a been runnin' down the block.

(laughter)

- If you run, they would've said that's him.

Shoot his ass.

(laughs)

They see your close face up,

they'd be like, no it's not him.

- [Boy In White] You can't outrun a bullet.

- [Boy In Blue] I just looked at him like (mumbles)

Would you shoot me?

Make sure I'm dead.

(mumbles)

- [Girl] Damn.

- [Boy In White] That's serious.

- [Girl] That's messed up.

- [Jose] That's the most dangerous thing.

- But imagine being that guy that was in,

that got pulled out of his truck.

- [Girl] Oh man.

- Can you just imagine?

You got all these people, crazy, pissed off,

and not even at you, want even your fault, man.

Just because you got (mumbles)

- He probably doesn't even know what was going on

when they pulled him out of the truck.

- [Girl] But you what was he doing

with his car door open like that?

- I don't know.

- When I'm in a car, I always close the door.

I lock it all the time.

Because, you know, I be afraid

that I'm gonna fall out or something.

- [Boy In White] You go to the store, you leave your keys

in the car with the ignition.

- [Girl] People are crazy all over this country, man.

I don't leave my car door open.

- But it's true.

He was in LA, man.

- I went to Massachusets, you know,

over the Easter vacation, and they leave their cars open

with the keys inside.

I was like, crazy?

I was about to, you know, lock the door and everything.

- (mumbles) lazy.

- Yeah, she was like, no, you can leave the door open.

- I was like, what!

She was like, this ain't New York.

(laughter)

I was down to go with that.

- [Boy In White] Yeah we careful here, man

- No, I'm crazy scared.

- Put a big alarm system and everything

when I go to the store.

- And everybody behind the club now, like.

- And they leave it, man.

They be in the store for like 10 hours.

They come back and their car is still there.

I was like, you do that over here.

Shit.

- [Boy In Blue] You like it over there?

- And Pennsylvania?

- Yeah, it's fun over there, man.

- No, it's too much mob people.

(laughs)

I saw a (mumbles) getting snotty with me.

Check you what's your problem, man?

(mumbles)

- In Pennsylvania, people be parkin' their cars

and like leavin' them in the parking lot,

and they leave their kids in the car

with the car open, they just leave

the baby sleeping or whatever, and then they come back.

I'd never leave my baby in a car.

- Like, remember that lady that went to court

because she left her baby in the trunk?

- In the trunk?

- Yeah.

'Cause she had to go to work, she had to go to work,

she ain't find no babysitter.

- [Boy In White] What?

- I would put no kid in the trunk.

- You ain't hear about that?

She left him in the trunk.

The baby was crying, so they called the cops.

- It wasn't really the trunk.

It was a trunk, but she put the chair,

you know the seats int he back, she pulled them down.

- Oh, so she laid it down?

- So the trunk and the whole thing was, you know--

- [Boy In Blue] One.

- Yeah, one whole thing.

And she left her baby there.

- That's messed up.

No, I didn't hear about that.

- How old was the baby, like one year old, two?

(mumbling)

- How's your kid, Jose?

- My kid?

He's all right.

He was sick for a while.

- Well yeah.

- [Boy In White] How old is he now?

- He had a 105 fever.

- 105?

He almost died?

- [Boy In Blue] What?

106 and he'd be dead.

- He wasn't dead.

You know what I'm saying, he wasn't about to die.

But he was really hot.

- [Boy In Blue] You took him to the hospital?

- But Easter vacation, we went away to

Massachusets to see his grandmother,

and he got real sick.

105 fever.

Took him to the hospital every night.

- [Boy In White] What was wrong with him?

- We were up and down, up and down.

Nothin' just a fever.

And they said he has something in his throat.

- [Boy In White] Like a virus probably.

- God.

How old is he?

- He's one.

How many months?

- [Boy In Blue] One and a half.

- 14 months, something like that.

- [Boy In Blue] 14, that's--

- A month and two, a year and two months.

- A year and two months.

(mumbling)

- [Boy In Blue] I haven't seen that baby.

- My friend's baby--

- [Boy In White] How old are you, Jose?

- I'm 18.

- [Boy In White] Damn.

- I'm 18 and two months, no (laughs)

I'm 18 and, I don't know.

I'm about to be 19 soon.

(mumbling)

That's one thing.

- I remember you.

I remember you.

We used to hang out with Melvin,

at his house, he goes, hell no.

I would never get a girl pregnant.

And boom, you was the first one that got a girl pregnant.

I remember that.

Remember it used to be like, remember you used to say this?

I was like, yeah.

- We used to always talk about people.

- [Boy In White] We stayed in Melvin's house.

Remember Melvin?

- Yeah.

- We stayed in his house until like

one o'clock in the morning.

Talk and talk and talk about baseball,

and then talk about that.

One did it.

I kicked him out, because my mom was coming

at like two o'clock in the morning.

I go, my mom!

They're like, voom, they were out of that house.

- I used to always talk about it.

I used to see young girls having babies,

I used to be like, damn.

What the hell they doin', man?

And then it happened to me.

But I didn't wanna, we didn't wanna keep the baby at first.

But then we had to keep it.

- [Boy In White] Why?

- It was too late to do anything about it.

- How you feel now?

- When we told our parents, she was already six months.

- Six month?

Damn, they didn't notice?

- Nope.

She ain't shown.

- [Boy In White] Girl don't be showin', man.

- [Boy In Blue] Especially these (mumbles)

- Yeah, you got away with that.

- [Jose] Yeah, she got away with it

'til she was like six months.

- How were your parents?

- Everybody was shocked.

- Yeah?

They got mad at y'all?

- My parents didn't get mad.

I mean, they was mad, yeah.

But what could they do about it?

- Yeah, that's true.

- But her parents was like,

they're gonna have to get married.

Not her parents, but her grandmother.

So we did.

- [Boy In Blue] (mumbles) the ring, man.

(laughter)

This is being prepared.

- [Boy In Blue] Yeah right.

- Being made to my size.

- [Boy In Blue] That's what you told me last year,

man, come on.

That's what you told me last year.

- Take that shit off.

- [Boy In White] Take that shit off, man.

You down with OPP.

- Shit.

(laughter)

- I remember last (mumbles) like yo, my girl's pregnant.

I was like, huh?

He told me, I was like.

- Yo, but (mumbles)

I'd flip.

(mumbles)

- [Jose] That's something man.

I still can't believe I'm a parent.

- No, 'cause you're too young, B.

You're 18.

- How you feel about it now?

How do you feel about your baby and everything?

'Cause at first you didn't wanna keep it and all?

- I love my kid.

And I'm proud that we went through with it

and we had the baby.

'Cause, I don't know.

It's hard to just think about not having a baby around.

So that's basically it.

I don't know, but the baby is something.

- [Boy In White] Like if you could've done something,

you would have, but now that he's here, you're.

- Yeah, but a baby is a life, you know?

So that's...

- [Boy In Blue] Yeah, like a dog.

- No.

It ain't like, I don't know, it's weird.

Havin' a kid.

And then bein' there to see her be born,

that shit is--

- [Boy In Blue] You saw it?

- You were there?

- [Boy In White] You saw it come out the mother's womb?

- [Boy In Blue] Yo, that shit must've flipped you out, B.

- Did you want to faint? (laughs)

- [Boy In White] You never seen a baby come out, B?

- Not 'til that day.

- And was you just standing there?

- Yeah.

It shocked me until I saw the baby.

The baby was one ugly little kid.

(laughter)

- Damn.

- That baby looked like a alien.

I was like, what's that?

- An alien?

You're so mean.

- Then the doctor said, you wanna hold him?

I was like, no.

(laughter)

He was like aliens.

He was like, they all look like this when they're born.

But after a while--

- [Boy In Blue] They come out all

like purple and everything?

- No, he was white.

He was white, all wrinkled up.

- [Boy In White] How much did he weigh?

- Eight pounds and three ounces.

- I remember I saw my nephew like a hour

after being born, I was like, ah!

He had like (mumbles) all like wrinkled.

(laughter)

- [Boy In White] Old hand like this (mumbles)

- God!

- [Boy In Blue] Not a bonehead, but he was all wrinkled.

Then I was like, ah!

Now that kid is like--

- [Jose] My son had a big cone head.

I was like, what the hell?

- [Girl] What's his name?

- Nico Joseph.

- [Boy In White] Nico?

- Yeah.

That was one experience I will never forget.

- [Boy In White] What?

- Seein' a baby bein' born.

- [Boy In White] Let alone your baby.

- Your baby, I know.

- Any baby.

- Somebody other's baby, you like ah!

'Cause you see that shit come out,

all that disgusting stuff.

I saw that shit on TV one time.

- [Jose] That's something that you, I don't know.

I think everyone should experience that.

- [Girl] You think so?

- All men should experience it.

They should be there when their wife has the baby,

they should be there.

That's something you never forget.

- [Boy In White] You should record it, man.

- She wanted me to record it.

- Some people do that, they do like.

- She wanted me to record it, like,

her friends had pictures.

- [Boy In Blue] What?

- In there with the flash.

(laughter)

- That's one thing.

But filming it is all right.

- [Boy In White] That shit must have changed your life

completely around, man.

Right?

You still be hangin' out with your friends though?

- Naw, everything's changed.

My whole life has changed.

I won't act like it sometimes, when I'm in school,

but out of school I gotta act like...

- You gotta be more responsible.

- Yeah, responsible and everything.

(mumbling)

Everything changes.

- At least you are responsible about it.

'Cause there's a lot of guys out there that wouldn't care.

- [Boy In White] Where do you work?

- 92nd Street Y.

- Oh you (mumbles) the summer?

- Yeah.

I'm BCIT.

- [Boy In White] BCIT?

- Counselor in training.

- They wanted me to join them.

They don't pay good.

- No, they don't pay good at all.

I'm only doing it for the experience.

- I'm getting a doorman job.

That pays good.

For the summer at least, until I go to college.

- [Boy In White] What college you goin?

- Whenever that is.

(laughs)

I don't know yet.

- [Boy In White] You getting out of this school,

or are you staying another semester?

- I gotta stay another semester.

To go to Hunter again, because--

(Boy In Blue speaking in foreign language)

Last year I never went to school.

- Damn.

- [Boy In Blue] (mumbles) come to school, come to school.

But nope.

- It was too tiring to come to school.

Imagine workin' to all--

- [Boy In Blue] I used to work 'til nine, I be gettin'--

- I used to work 'til at least 12.

- Now they be getting Jose with the beautiful kid. (laughs)

- Let me talk.

Let me finish this.

Let me talk, let me finish this.

I used to work 'til like 12 o'clock in the night, right?

And then you'd come home,

and then you up because the baby, you know,

they cry all hours of the night.

- What?

- And you always up.

And then having to come to school

at eight o'clock in the mornin'.

- [Boy In White] Man, I be dead if I go to sleep at 11, B.

- I'm serious.

I used to go to sleep around

one or two o'clock in the morning every night,

and then wake up in the middle of the night

to feed the baby.

With my wife, we used to share.

- [Boy In Blue] And then it's your turn

like five minutes later.

- Take turns.

But that was, you know, that's too tiring

to come to school then in the morning.

So I stopped coming to school after a while.

I used to be too tired.

And then, I don't know, during the summer

I came to school.

'Cause I wasn't working during the summer.

So I came to school.

And then that was it.

And then I came back during the beginning of this year.

But now it's different because the baby don't get up

during the night.

- [Boy In Blue] He's sleeping the whole night?

- Yeah.

- [Boy In Blue] He giving you a rest, huh?

- He better.

- [Boy In Blue] How long that last?

That you had to be getting up every night?

- I don't know.

- [Boy In White] I think it's like the first eight months.

- Yeah, something like that.

Nine months.

- First eight months?

Damn.

- Well once you started walking on nine months.

I think that used to get him real tired, walking.

So I guess he used to sleep a lot.

- He used to walk around all the time,

he like, come on, we're gonna walk.

(laughs)

(kids chattering)

- [Girl] We havin' a reunion next Friday.

- It's not gonna be like a straight line,

but it's sort of gonna be like a curve.

Sort of showin', and then it's kind of like ozone.

The ozone's thickness is gonna decrease slowly.

- Okay, so you've got some things

about what you think how it changes with time.

In some of the information that I've given you,

is there any evidence to kind of back up

how you think this is gonna change?

Can you get any more information

on the details about how it's changing?

Like, is it kind of linear?

Is it kind of like this?

Does it look kind of like this?

I mean, so you all kind of agree

that it decreases with time, but what about

kind of how it changes with time?

Can you find some evidence in the stuff that you've got,

and kind of give more of an indication

of how it's gonna change?

- But I can relate, I think I can relate it

to the thickness versus the fraction transmission,

because if you have,

if it's gonna increase like this,

I think the time versus thickness will decrease

in the opposite direction, the same pattern though.

- Why?

- Uh, let's see.

(laughs)

- Why?

- Let me see, um...

You know?

- [Teacher] I want some evidence here to back this up, okay?

I want some reasons, some evidence.

So go through some of the materials

and see I you can come up with some more details

about exactly how it's changing with time.

And it might been making some assumptions,

and some approximations.

That's good.

Just make sure that you know

when you're making assumptions,

you know when you're making approximations,

and that you can kind of get a sense

of are they good, are they bad?

You know, how good are they?

You know.

But it doesn't have to be exact.

You don't really have enough information

for it to be exact, but you know,

using what you've got, be reasonable.

- Turn it around like this (mumbles)

(laughs)

- But you have to come up with something.

You have to convince me that that's a reasonable way

for it to change with time.

That how it's changing with time is reasonable.

You know, because I like it

is not gonna convince me and persuade me

to buy what you're doin'.

You gotta back this up with somethin'.

- Time is goin' on, and the thickness is decreasing.

- I buy that, okay, sure.

But how is it?

How it it?

Is it decreasing like this?

Is it decreasing like this?

Is it decreasing like this?

Is it decreasing, you know, like this?

How is it decreasing?

Is it decreasing like this?

you know.

I want more information about what's exactly goin' on here.

You know?

Or is it decreasing like real slow?

Or real fast?

You know.

There's a lot of information here that you can give me

other than just it's decreasing.

I want more information.

Okay?

See if you can find some more information.

Okay?

- DC means direct current, and AC means alternating.

Which one has which?

The battery or the socket has which?

- Direct is the socket.

- Mm?

- [Girl] Is the battery direct?

- Remember the battery is direct current, is DC,

and the (coughs) sorry.

And the socket is AC, it's alternating.

You got two different things.

Do you remember what the difference was between them?

I told you this very early on.

I'll tell you quick.

I'm gonna do a picture.

- [Boy In White] Because one is in a series,

and the other other is (mumbles)

- No.

It's not exactly that.

It means this.

This is zero on your oscilloscope,

and remember when you did the little thing

and you plugged it in?

And then the side will always jump up?

Right, like say the line started in there.

And then you plugged the battery up.

(student answers in the background)

Right.

DC always stays on one side, Rosa.

- [Rosa] Yeah, I know.

- DC stays.

This is positive, this is negative down here.

DC will only stay on one way,

meaning the current only goes in one direction.

So that's when I'd write this,

and I go, it always goes on the negative side?

That's what I mean for DC.

Okay?

Alternating means when we alternating.

Something's alternating.

What does that mean?

- [Girl] Back and forth.

- It goes back and forth.

I mean, think about these words

as regular words that you know in English.

Alternating means that sometimes

the current's goin' this way,

and sometimes the current's goin' this way.

And if you drew on the graph,

if you use this guy in the oscilloscope,

this is always gonna be,

some of it's gonna be positive,

some of it's gonna be negative.

Some of it's gonna be positive,

some of it's gonna be negative.

'Cause remember, positive and negative

had to do with what side's you on.

When you switching' things on the oscilloscope,

when you changed it, it jumped down there

when it was in the negative side.

Alternating does both.

Back and forth.

That was a hard question, Jose, so.

It was, it was.

- [Jose] I know, I know.

- Go ahead.

Since he knows it.

- Name the part of an atom.

Which part is involved in current flow.

Parts of an atom is neutrons, protons and electrons.

- [Teacher] Yeah, yeah.

- And the nucleus.

And the electrons are involved in current flow.

- [Teacher] How?

The electrons do what?

- They flow.

- [Teacher] They do the flowin', they flow.

So the electrons actually do the flowin'.

(sighs)

All right, Steven.

(clapping)

- What is Ohm's Law?

V equals I times R.

- [Teacher] Which means?

- Voltage equals current times resistance.

- I think we all have a sense,

I mean, the senior institute students

that were here a little while ago,

they have their own opinion, and they wanna

go and start fires.

That's there situation.

We're not involved with that.

And we have already stated that this is a positive way

of resolving the conflict.

We are not gonna go to start fires.

We are not gonna go to kick the shit out of people.

'Cause that is not what we're trying to achieve.

The point is, right.

(students chattering)

We're trying to achieve a positive way

of dealing with things.

We're trying to let them,

we are trying to let them know

how we feel about the situation.

That we feel that the situation was unjust.

That Rodney King was beat by police officers,

and he did not get a fair trial.

- [Student In Background] He wasn't on trial.

(students chattering)

- You don't understand.

He was on trial in a sense,

because you see, these police officers,

they were police officers.

They--

- [Student In Background] The law protects them.

- The law protects them,

and the law has said they have to use any means necessary

to control a situation.

They have that right.

But they did not have the right

to control the situation the way they did,

because he was not defending himself.

(students chattering)

You see?

Rodney King, Rodney King was not defending himself

in any way.

That man was beat to who knows what.

He lied on the floor and had cops

beat the shit out of him.

And we have to let people know

that we don't agree with that.

And if police officers are out there to protect us,

why are they beating us up?

That's our point.

And we have to stress that we do not agree with this.

Does it mean that any black person or Hispanic person

that's driving along in their car,

that police officers have the right

to take them out of their car

and start beating the shit out of them?

He was not defending himself.

He didn't even hit back.

They repeatedly took turns and beat him.

At some point or another in our lives,

we are gonna come in contact with racism.

With prejudice.

And we have to know how to conduct ourselves

and how to deal with that

in a positive way.

Because you see, minorities have already been labeled

as savages, as beasts, as people that are uneducated.

What's going on in Los Angeles right now,

you are proving that stereotype right.

And we don't want that.

Because there are intelligent minorities.

And if we show people

that we handle ourselves appropriately,

then we can make a difference.

By killing people and by beating them up,

and by burning people's homes,

that's not a positive method.

And that's what we're tryin' to explain to the system.

And they have to know that we are not violent people.

Not all of us feel the way that those,

yes, we are all upset, and we are hurt.

- [Boy In Background] Outraged.

- And yes we are outraged at the situation.

But we are dealing with it in a positive way.

We are going down to City Hall to make a point.

To make a point that we don't agree with the decision.

But that we are intelligent enough

to know how to deal with it.

And we're not gonna take violent actions against people.

And that's our point.

And if you truly believe in this,

then you will go with us.

And if you have doubts, and if you are afraid

of the situation, don't go.

- I'm sayin', but if you wanna organize

a march that's really gonna have a statement,

that's really gonna say somethin',

and that's really gonna make your point get across,

then y'all need to be more organized

than havin' a meetin' on Friday,

and havin' a march on Monday.

Because that is not gonna really work.

You do not have real organizations.

Just like people are here now talkin' about

emergency meetings, and stuff like that.

That's fine.

You have some organization,

but there's still gonna be chaos.

- [Girl In Front] We understand that but--

- You need more time to think about this.

This is a good thing that y'all wanna do,

and I understand that y'all really feel about this,

and how y'all really feel about this,

but if y'all gonna do it right,

y'all have to have more time.

You gotta think about what you doin'.

You gotta have a main point.

You have to have a reason for bein' down there.

You have to have a position to stand

and keep standin' on it.

You do not go down there one day

and expect that to do somethin'.

You keep doin' it.

This is not gonna go away by one march by one high school.

(applause and cheering) You need more people,

more action, you need a point to stand by.

(cheering)

Y'all wanna do this, this is fine.

Get in contact with other high schools,

high schools that you know feel just the way that we do,

and get them to come down there and have leadership,

have structure so you will have that.

- We understand that, but right now,

our focus was on our school.

Later on, if we do decide to have a second march,

then we will take action that way.

We will inform people, there is a second march,

this is what's gonna happen,

and if you wanna get other schools involved,

that's okay.

We've discussed basically for our school.

(kids chattering and shouting)

- If that's what you're writing about

in this paragraph here,

that he was an individual,

and individualism was strongly encouraged

in the Renaissance.

- Right.

- Then say that.

Then say that that's example.

- What I was trying to get in this paragraph

was not only showing, like,

why they might have though that,

but I was trying to get into the next paragraph

by saying, well, look at some of the stuff he did.

He wasn't really a Renaissance man

because everything he did want based on fact,

it was just on, you know, theories that he had.

And a Renaissance man, like, he doesn't

only explore it, but he has some facts

to back up what he says.

- Well, mm-hmm.

- Which he didn't really.

- Right.

- At least, I don't think he did.

- Right.

Well, see but I think you should be clearer

in each paragraph

about what characteristic of the Renaissance

you're talking about.

And then you can give evidence--

- Well, how can I do that?

- Okay.

One of the ways that I thought

you might be able to do it,

was first brainstorm a list of characteristics

of the Renaissance.

And then maybe you could write each,

this is one way of doing it,

write each paragraph corresponding

with a characteristic of the Renaissance,

and say how Columbus met, or didn't meet

that characteristic.

- Right.

- So, for example,

this is your introduction, okay?

Then your first paragraph deals with

the characteristic of questioning.

'Cause that's curiosity, or questioning.

That's one characteristic of the Renaissance.

So you could describe that as being a characteristic,

and then say how Columbus, give an example

of how Columbus fitting that characteristic.

Then the second paragraph deals with

a second characteristic of the Renaissance,

which is following an individual path.

And then you could talk about how he does that.

Your third paragraph might be that you said

another characteristics of the Renaissance

is that people had to have, as you say,

evidence for things, right?

- Right.

- It couldn't just come from some leaf,

it had to come from evidence.

Now what kind of thinking is that?

- Um, I forget what it's called.

- [Teacher] What subject do we study

and we know uses that kind of thinking?

- I forgot the word.

Um, humanism?

- [Teacher] Well, that's not exactly

what I'm thinking about.

That's the word you were looking for, right?

- Something with an S.

- [Teacher] Well, how about science?

- Science?

- [Teacher] Because--

- That's not what I was thinking, though.

- [Teacher] Oh.

- When you asked me.

- [Teacher] Oh.

- What was that word that you said was--

- [Teacher] Secular?

- That's it.

That's what I was thinking about.

- [Teacher] Oh, so that's a non-religious worldview.

- Right.

- Okay, but I wanna come back to that one.

But if you think about it, in science,

if you believe in science,

you have to see things for yourself.

You have to prove it.

You have to have evidence for it.

You have to experiment.

- [Girl] Right.

You have to have a reason for something,

it's not just because God willed it.

Now what you're saying is that he didn't' really

always have evidence for things.

- [Girl] Right.

- So, you know, and that's it, he might not have been.

- [Girl] Like, in my opinion, he was a Renaissance man.

He had some of the characteristics,

I just don't think he had facts.

- Right, right.

All right.

All right, but I think you have to have evidence for that.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Teacher] And you could talk about some of the

characteristics that he didn't have.

- Right.

- [Teacher] So the one way that I think you could

go about doing it is just, you know,

going through all the characteristics,

and then saying whether he possessed them,

or whether he didn't.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Teacher] And I would talk about secularism.

And I want you to think about that one.

Because is it true that he had a non-religious worldview?

- Mm-hmm, well not totally.

- [Teacher] Right.

Right, why?

- Well, because when he started sailing,

one of the three things that he stated

for his reasons for sailing was God, gold and glory.

- [Teacher] Right.

- So it couldn't have been non-secular.

- [Teacher] That's right.

So that would go, you know, you're ambivalent about

whether he's a Renaissance man or not.

And certainly you should use that--

- In my opinion, I don't think he was,

but you said like European.

- [Teacher] Okay, okay, okay.

- That was the question that you asked.

- [Teacher] The question I asked was,

was he a Renaissance man?

Does he represent the spirit of the Renaissance?

- In Europe.

- [Teacher] Yes, in Europe.

- In Europe, I believe he did.

Right here and now, I don't think so.

- [Teacher] Oh, I see.

- That's why it's hard to for me to like write the paper

with one point of view.

- [Teacher] Well, I think--

- 'Cause I could write in Europe I believe that

he would have been considered a Renaissance man.

He was considered a hero at that time.

- Right.

- I don't think he was a hero.

- Okay, all right, all right, all right.

All right, now I see where the confusion came in.

I think you have to look at it

in terms of the Renaissance at his time.

You have to, in the body of the paper,

you have to say to what extent

he represented the Renaissance at that time.

Then you can go on afterwards and say,

but according to today's characteristics,

today's qualifications of a Ren--

- That could be my conclusion.

- Right.

That's right.

- Okay.

- So what you have to do is you have to

go through the characteristics of the Renaissance.

- Mm-hmm.

- And look at the extent to which he fulfilled them.

- Right.

- And there you need, I guess my criticisms are

you need to break up each paragraph.

- Mm-hmm.

- And you also need evidence, as I said.

You need more evidence drawn from his life

and things that he did to back it up.

- Okay.

- Oh, that's the third shooting this week.

You know Catara's cousin was shot and killed.

What's his name was shot.

- [Debbie] One of our students?

Who came this morning, was that Catara?

- Catara's--

- [Debbie] Came in this morning?

- Yeah.

And now this.

- 23rd precinct also called to find out

if there's anything that were worrying about

about the King (mumbles)

- Yeah.

You know, Debbie, I wonder whether or not,

is there anything we should--

- So he says, they're discussion the pros and cons,

I said, I don't know of any debate of that sort.

(laughs)

There aren't any pros and cons in this school

on that subject.

He said, yes, I understand that.

- Well he should.

I'm sure that there are a lot of policeman

across the country who are outraged.

- All right, let me ask you this.

What is the purpose of this form that you're doing?

- Okay, purpose for the struggle

is that, at all these discussions

about the rally, or other demonstrations

of what's goin' on in LA,

there's only one opinion that's thrown out.

And what I wanna get out of this is that,

okay, we have people in our school

that feel one way, but let's hear the cops,

what they have to say.

And we say that we were harassed,

and you know, beat up, or whatever,

at that rally, and we got hit, and they said

it was because the cops had something against them,

or whatever,

but we want the cops to say their views

and what they were trying to,

so that's what...

And plus, instead of goin' to all these rallies,

we could try to find some solution

for what's going on (mumbles)

I don't know.

- How do we find a solution?

How?

- Well, what they were saying yesterday at those meetings--

- Which meeting?

Oh, our meeting.

- In the library.

That the cops, well actually,

I think it was Vanetta was saying

the cops were just doin' their jobs,

and that you should have a certain type of respect

for the police officers, and you can't

be goin' all up in their face, and things like that.

But how I saw it was that it was the opposite.

The cops were the ones who were instigating the issue,

and they were all up in the people's face,

and they should've knew that it was high school students

and junior high school students there,

and that they weren't supposed to do that.

- Excuse me, there wasn't any provoking by the students?

'Cause I heard there were like girls who were,

you know, running up to police officers

and threatening them, like,

saying that they were gonna hit 'em.

And you know, just saying things against the cops,

pertaining to, you know, beating them up,

and things like that.

- [Steven] Yeah, but cops are--

- I would think that would provoke an officer.

- Yeah, but cops should know better.

You know, even if somebody provokes her,

if you're a police officer,

you have, you know, they're there to serve and protect,

you're not supposed to be hitting 13-year-old girls

in the face and something like that.

And that's what happened.

- [Girl] That's what happened?

- Yeah, they hit a girl.

- [Girl] From our school?

- I don't know, was she from our school?

- They hit a lot of kids.

Some of them were from our school.

- Yeah, they hit a lot of kids

with sticks and stuff, and yeah.

It's bad.

- [Teacher] You might get a pretty big audience, you know.

- Yeah, I know.

- [Teacher] You'll barely have to (mumbles)

- Maybe the whole school.

- [Teacher] Yeah, you might.

- Yeah.

I think it would be good just to plan to have it

in the auditorium.

Because it's something that everybody is interesting in.

(people chattering)

- I want to just say that I think that last year,

'cause I just don't see any way to do it now,

we need some more formally to think through the issue.

We all have a view.

Part of our role as a school

is to make students feel political,

their political citizenship.

We don't have any bones about that.

That's not a question.

That's not using kids for political agendas

and one thing or another, that's part of our responsibility,

to make them powerful political actors.

But there are places in that agenda

which get complicated.

I mean, there are borderlines between

our role as helping kids be political citizens

and using kids.

That's an extreme end, our using kids

for our political agendas.

And there are a lot of gray areas in between,

where it's not easy to know what it is.

We're doing it, who's doing it?

And we're very busy with our agendas,

so we have other things, sometimes we just say yes, yes.

And I don't think we've thought through what's involved.

And Friday's event is an example to me

because we haven't the slightest idea

what's educational about Friday.

And people, we overwhelmingly voted in favor

of that proposal, without having the slightest idea

who the four speakers are, what these workshops are,

what the educational purposes of this.

Essentially, as far as I can see,

it's 'cause there was three, or four kids in the school

who have very strong convictions,

and have a definite ideology coming from

their families and their backgrounds,

much like my home when I was growing up,

and we have one or two faculty members

or, you know, a few other adults

who support them, and on the basis of that,

and we wouldn't do it with anything else, pedagogically.

We would think through anything with a great deal more care.

We were gonna have an educational event lasting two hours

in the school.

We would spend a lot of time organizing it,

as we would with a class.

We would try to think about the essential questions,

so to speak, what we hope to get out of it.

What's the size of the group?

What kind of discission?

What kind of different viewpoints?

What's the argument?

So when this was a Parent's Association

three-til-five event, I didn't have any worries about that.

When it was,

now it's something in between.

So you know, to make life safe for ourselves,

I call this a PA event.

But obviously, it's not exactly

a Parent's Association event.

It's a staff-endorsed event.

I just think this is not terrible.

It's not the end of the world or anything,

but I think that all along whether or not

we handle politics the same way

we handle other education.

If we think our educational approach

is good pedagogically,

in classroom, that is to have various viewpoints,

to have arguments, to get kids

to do some investigation, then it seems to me,

our way of approaching getting kids

politically active should be similar.

And then there are a lot of other things.

Bringing kids to meetings, I don't think

there's anything wrong with that.

Bringing kids to meetings, see what (mumbles)

writing back and writing up different arguments,

coming to see other kinds of meetings.

IN a way, we don't think through the question

of what kind of activities are legitimately

and powerfully appropriate for a school to do

to help kids see themselves as political activists.

And you know, even in terms of community service,

there are ways in which we could use community service

more effectively to make kids

knowledgeable and thoughtful and political activists.

(kids chattering)

(boy shouting)

- Um, I'm Carlos, and this is Mark,

and we're your mediators.

Before we start this, we just want to mention

that's you guys wanna solve this dispute.

You guys wanna solve this?

All right, before we go on, we have to

agree to these seven rules.

One is, you guys already agreed to solve the problem.

Another is, the stuff that happens here is confidential.

It doesn't leave this room.

It stays between us four, we're the only ones that know.

There will be no name-calling during the mediation,

don't interrupt each other,

speak directly to me or Mark.

Be as honest as you can, so we can come to a good solution,

and there will be no physical fighting.

- What are you two names?

Lev and?

- [Ethan] Ethan.

- [Mark] Ethan.

- [Carlos] All right.

That's the man who speaks first?

Okay, let's get started.

Why don't you tell me what happened.

- Um, we were on the stairs,

and he said something stupid, so I gave him a gil.

And then he said, you do that again,

and I'm gonna hit you.

So I did it again.

And then he chased me down the stairs.

And then he ran up to me, and he hit me,

so I punched him in the stomach.

And then I walked through the doors

and then he hit me again,

and then I hit him in the head.

And then he yelled out to Tom,

and Tom didn't do anything.

And then we went outside,

and I was standing on the steps, and he grabbed my coat.

And I said, don't touch me.

He pulled me over,

and then I hit him in the face.

- Mm.

So what you're saying is that this started

inside the school, and then, when was this?

During lunchtime or something?

- [Ethan] When we were going to swimming.

- Oh, okay.

So he called you, he gave, he called you something.

He called you a name.

- [Ethan] No, he said something stupid.

- Oh, he said something stupid.

And you didn't like the way he said it, so you hit him?

- No, I went like this on his neck.

- [Carlos] All right.

And then he hit you?

- Yeah.

- [Carlos] And then from there you two

are just hitting each other back and forth, right?

- Yeah.

- [Carlos] All right (mumbles)

- What happened is he, first, he said something

about my mother, and I said something back to him.

And first of all, I mean, I don't like

people gilling me anyway.

And especially if he's not my friend,

and he's not my friend.

So I told him don't do it again, or I'll hit you.

And he did it again, just to get me provoked.

So when we got to the stairs,

I pushed him, I said, stop.

And Yusef, Yusef my friend,

'cause he did something to him.

And then we were walking,

and because I pushed him, he goes and,

he didn't push me, he punched me.

And so we were walkin' and everyone was like,

oh man, I would hit him.

I can't believe that, man, and they were all like,

you should hit him, and then I said,

when we were getting outside the door,

I pushed him on his head.

And then he comes around, and he hits me in my stomach.

I went back, and I pulled his jacket,

and I ripped it off, I ripped it,

but it was kind of ripped, it was old.

Bobby pins were holding it together,

so it ripped kind of easily.

- So, what you're saying is that,

you didn't like him playin' a game with you, right?

- Even if, I don't like it even if my friends do it.

And if someone's not my friend,

I especially don't like that.

- [Mark] Okay, and then when he did do it to you,

you told him to stop, don't do it again,

or you're gonna hit him?

And he did it again, so you hit him,

and this went on and on.

- Wait, wait, wait, wait.

And then after we stopped, we went to the,

Tom, the teacher pulled us into the gym,

and they called up Mark,

and we had to go upstairs by ourselves to Mark.

So we walk in, you know where the guard's desk is?

Well, I'm walking, and he's like that,

we were going out of the gym, I held the door for him,

and he's like, that's right you hold the door for me,

I said, I don't have to hold the door for you

if I don't want to, Ethan.

So when we were going, I didn't hold the door for him

the second time, I just held it for myself,

and I went by, and then he steps

on the back of my shoe and he kicks me in my back.

And the guard said, get back here,

and he just ran up the stairs,

and he didn't talk to her.

And I didn't do anything back to him

because I didn't want to get in more trouble.

- So, you said that after that problem,

you got pulled into the gym,

Tom had called up Mark for you to go up to the office.

You walked through the door, and you held

the door open for him, and he said,

that's right hold the door for me.

And then you went out to the other door.

You didn't hold the door for him that time,

and he stepped on the back of your sneaker

and kicked you in the back, and the guard called him,

but he ran up the stairs.

- How do you feel about this?

- I told him to stop.

I told him no, and I threatened him.

I said, don't or I'm gonna hit you back.

And he didn't listen to me.

He wanted me to hit him.

I mean, why would he do that twice?

When someone's telling him that they are

gonna do something about it

if you hit them again?

And he did it again.

And I pushed him, and I said stop.

- [Carlos] All right.

- I just wanna ask this question,

you said he said something stupid.

Could you just tell the mediators what he said,

'cause it's sort of important to know what.

- [Ethan] I don't remember what he said.

- Oh, but he said something that annoyed you.

Is that correct?

- It was just like, something stupid.

Something that didn't make sense.

- Right.

But he said that you said something about his mother.

Did you say that after he said something stupid?

- [Carlos] Or before?

- [Ethan] I didn't say that.

- [Teacher] You didn't say anything about his mother?

So you recall what he said about your mother?

- Mm-hmm.

We were in the classroom, right?

And I was talking to the fan, right?

To make my voice, you know how the fan,

if you talk into it it's makes your voice?

- [Carlos] It makes your voice squeaky, yeah.

- Yeah.

So right, and then he goes like this,

and you know that song "you're never gonna get into Heaven,"

you know?

And I was just singing it to myself.

I wasn't singing it to anybody.

He was like, you're never gonna get it, Lev.

I was like,

I was like, oh well.

And he was like, and then he said something

about my mother, and so I said--

- [Teacher] What did he say about your mother?

- I don't know.

He said, and then he said,

so I was just like, at least I have a mother.

And he was like, well so do I.

I said, no you don't.

He said, how did I get born?

And I said, your father had artificial insemination.

He goes, that's stupid.

Then he gave me a gil.

- [Teacher] Gave you a what?

- [Carlos] A gil, that's a thing where you like--

- [Mark] When you walk across the room and...

- What do you think you can do?

What do you think you two guys could agree to

to solve this problem?

- A couple things.

First, you don't,

you don't be with each other,

and you don't have to talk to each other,

unless you absolutely have to.

Unless it's about work or something.

'Cause we're not friends, so.

So we don't have to talk to each other, and also--

- [Teacher] You're in the same advisory though, right?

- And all the same classes.

And so, we're five hours a day

we have to do with each other.

And we don't have to be friends with each other,

and we don't have to talk to each other.

And also, if he says something to me,

or if I say something to him, we ignore it.

And we just walked away.

'Cause that's what we had to do.

'Cause we were trying to figure this out

in my conference this morning.

And my dad said, just ignore it.

And that's it.

And he'll look like a jerk if he's talkin' to nobody.

He's not talkin' to anybody if I'm just ignoring him,

and he keeps talking.

And he'll look like an idiot.

- [Carlos] You agree with him?

- Yeah.

- [Carlos] You agree that you guys should ignore each other?

- And so what did you, did you notice,

what did you choose to talk about?

- [Ethan] Moms?

- Mothers, right?

So you picked something that's kind of

a hot topic, that you know is going to set somebody off,

both of you, correct?

- [Lev] Yeah.

- So I think you have to think about

what are the kinds of things you say to people,

and what kind of reaction

people are going to have.

And I think the two of you need to think about

those kind of things.

- Also, you guys have give hours of class together.

I'm sure you guys are not gonna be enemies

for the rest of your life. - [Teacher] They're not gonna

be able to ignore each other.

- I know.

- [Teacher] It's not realistic.

You're gonna be in the same class.

It's not realistic for you guys to be enemies.

Maybe it's realistic.

- Well, I don't know.

I understand what you're saying,

but many people have this problem with him, I mean.

- [Teacher] But we're not here about many people.

- I know.

I'm saying that it's not hard to avoid him.

It's not.

Unless, I mean, it's not hard to avoid him.

- But we have the other.

What about you, Ethan?

Because he says things that set you off, right?

- Yeah.

- So what might have been a different way

to have handled it?

Let's still go back to what happened,

and let's see what might have been a different way

to have handled it?

- Just to have left him alone.

- [Teacher] Do you think you would have been able

to do something like that?

- Yeah.

- [Teacher] And what might have been a different way

to have handled it

if he said something to you?

- I'd ignore it.

Or when he gave me the gil, I could have

just went upstairs and told Judy or something,

because she told me to tell.

But when I tell Judy, or something,

or when I tell Paul, they're like, I get in trouble.

I mean, that happens.

I'll go up, I'll tell Paul,

and then it'll be like, not so much Judy, but Paul.

And I tell him, and I told him before,

'cause Ruben, remember the thing with Ruben?

- [Teacher] Yeah.

- He was just like, Paul was fine,

and then Debbie came over, and Debbie was like,

well I think it's your fault.

I see you in here a lot, and I think it's your fault.

And I got in trouble, and I couldn't go to recess that day.

Because I told that someone was threatening me.

- That doesn't make sense

for them to have done that to him.

- So why am I going to tell people?

Why am I going to tell an adult then?

When I just get in trouble for telling.

And then Paul said today that it was gonna be,

that it's like, adults sometimes feel that

when I tell too much, or like, if I'm always crying,

never cry wolf.

I'm always crying wolf, that adults see that,

but how do I know if it's not real or real?

Ruben was just kidding, but I didn't know.

- [Teacher] Right, I remember that one.

But that worked out.

That's been fine with Ruben.

- I don't think it's wrong for you

to go to other teachers, because they

encourage you in school not to use violence,

then I don't see what's wrong with you telling the teacher.

If Paul or Debbie doesn't wanna listen to you,

then I think that you should come to one of us or something.

And maybe we, between us, could probably come back

in a group, if it ever happens again.

And solve the problem.

'Cause I don't see how Debbie and Paul come off

saying that it's your fault,

that doesn't make any sense.

- I think that they do that because

when I tell Judy, right,

she says, did you do something to provoke it?

And then I end up getting in trouble for saying something.

- So it must be very hard then, because on one hand

you don't want to hit the other person,

or get into some kind of fight.

But then if you go and tell, you're--

- [Ethan] Gonna get in trouble.

- You're going to get in trouble.

- [Carlos] You're right.

- So we need to kind of figure out a way,

probably maybe the teachers and students

to talk about a way of dealing with

those kind of things, right?

- And if you tell, kids are like,

you're always telling people,

you're always telling grownups.

Why can't you deal with it yourself?

You always tell on other people.

I'm not even gonna say anything to you,

'cause you always tell.

Or, like the time when he,

a couple months ago, he said something about my mother,

and I stepped on the back of his shoe,

and he turned around and hit me.

- [Teacher] I remember that.

- Well, when I went and told Judy,

everybody was like,

or when I didn't do anything back, I said stop,

'cause I don't wanna get in trouble.

Everybody, my friends, they were just like,

that's stupid, I can't believe you did that.

If I were you, I would've hit him.

I would have beat him up.

- Well in that case, you should step ahead.

Like, I'm not telling you what to do,

but it's sort of like a suggestion.

You should just step ahead of them

and think for yourself, because when you're in trouble,

your friends are not gonna be around

to tell you all these things.

And you're gonna be the one in trouble, not then.

So if they're telling you, they're provoking you

to hit someone, it's just because they wanna see a fight.

They wanna see you be, if you're gonna win the fight.

They wanna see you win a fight,

and be like, yeah, you won, you beat that guy's butt.

That is not worth it.

You make your own judgment and, you know.

- Well, maybe we can start to think about ways

that we can avoid certain things.

Because both of you know exactly

what provokes the other, right?

You both know, as I say, how to

press each other's nutty button.

Right?

- [Ethan] Yeah.

- So the idea, maybe instead of thinking

what do I do if the other person does something,

do we tell?

Do we go to mediation?

Do we go to a teacher?

Do we fight it out?

Maybe what we need to do is step back

and start a little bit earlier.

What can the two of you do to stop provoking each other?

- I think they already answered that.

They said they wanna avoid each other.

Well not--

- Well, they're together.

The thing is this, they're together

five hours a day.

- [Carlos] Every day.

- So let's, we have to come up with a solution

that's realistic.

If you weren't on the same floor, you know,

you weren't in the same house,

and you weren't in the same classes,

and you said you were gonna avoid each other, I think--

- Maybe that'd be possible.

But I think you guys see each other like every day

for five hours.

During the whole school day, you guys are with each other.

So I don't think you're gonna go on

for the rest of your life not

talkin' to each other, and avoidin' each other.

- [Teacher] Mark, you wanna say something?

- Since you're in the room together

for like five hours, could y'all come up

with some kind of agreement between the two of you

that could like, if anything like this

was to happen again,

could you change the outcome of it?

- Mm-hmm.

Just ignore him.

- Would you be able not to say things

about his mother and father?

Would that be hard for either of you to do?

- [Lev] No.

- So do you think you could agree to that?

- [Ethan] Yeah, but it's that

he's talking about my clothes.

- Wait, wait, wait.

Okay, now.

Would you be able to agree not to

talk about his clothes?

- [Lev] Mm-hmm.

- Is there anything else that you talk about to him

besides his mother?

Can you each think of the things that you do?

- [Lev] It's not.

- [Teacher] Okay, is that it?

- I mean, I won't talk about his clothes or anything,

but it's not gonna stop.

- [Teacher] Well, we'll see, right?

- [Carlos] Let's just give it a try.

- Try.

- So neither of you are going to talk about

mothers or fathers to each other, correct?

Right?

- [Ethan] Right.

- You're not gonna speak about his clothes.

Ethan is there anything else that he speaks to you about

that upsets you?

Is there anything else that he speaks to you about

that upsets you?

- Nobody in my family, and don't talk about me

behind my back, because I'll be absent,

and I'll come in the next day,

and he'll have said something about me.

- How do you know?

- Because people tell me.

- How do you know that he said it?

We've done this before.

How do we know that some, you know,

when somebody else comes and tells you--

- I ask him, I ask him.

- And he says he did?

- Yeah.

- Okay, I'll extend it to both of you.

Both of you won't talk about family members,

brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, right?

Fathers.

- [Carlos] And not behind each other's backs.

- Would it be possible if you had something to say

about Lev that you could say it to him?

I don't mean about teasing, but I mean,

if something he does displeases you,

or it makes you angry, you don't like it,

would you be able to say it to him?

- Yeah.

- It's a hard thing to do.

And the same with you, Lev.

If Ethan does something that displeases you,

would you be able to go up to him?

- Cool.

But don't you think it would turn into

just being like, stop making fun of me,

do you think it would turn into something like that?

I mean, if you say, Ethan, it really annoys me

the way you,

you do that.

Stop making fun of me, Lev.

Do you think that it could happen like that?

- Is that a bad thing to say?

Is it bad to say, look, you know, it really bothers me

when you talk about me.

And I feel, you know, it makes me feel uncomfortable

to be at school.

It doesn't make me feel particularly good,

and I really don't like people talking about me.

If I said that to you, do you think that would be

a horrible thing that I said to you?

- [Lev] I mean something else.

Like, you were saying if you have a problem with somebody,

or they do something or something.

- [Teacher] Yeah.

- [Lev] I think it would turn into an insult

if you said that to them.

Don't you?

- [Teacher] Do you think I insulted you

when I just said that?

- [Lev] No, but I'm talking about other things.

I mean, if you like--

- Give an example, Lev.

- I don't like the way you're always bothering people

and you're always doing, you're always,

you're always trying to get people in trouble.

- [Teacher] Well what's the different between what you said

and what I said?

- Mine was talking about other people?

- [Teacher] That's right.

Do you notice I said "I"?

I don't like it when you talk about me that way.

I don't like the way it makes me feel.

I'm not talking about you, am I?

Who am I talking about?

- [Lev] You.

- Right.

It's the difference, right?

- [Ethan] Yeah.

- So I'm not attacking you.

It's saying about how I feel, and what,

you know.

I'm not accusing you, right?

I'm not saying you started this, right?

Either of you, right?

So...

- So we came to an agreement.

You guys agree not to call each other names

or talk about each other's mother,

and all the other stuff that you guys agreed to--

- [Teacher] What does that say?

All the other stuff, what is it?

You have to be specific.

- Well, not talking about his clothes,

and not his haircut, or whatever.

And he's not supposed to talk about your mother

or your family, or bother you.

You two guys agreed to that, right?

- [Ethan] Yeah.

- And that's how it's gonna be?

All right.

- [Teacher] Mark, I think Mark wanted to say something.

- Oh and if y'all do have any other problems,

you can come to one of us,

and help straighten the problem out.

Possibly have another mediation or sort.

And congratulations.

- When you see your friends, you know,

you tell them that whatever conflict you two had was solved,

so that prevents rumors, you know?

People goin' around sayin' that you two guys

don't like each other and stuff like that.

- [Teacher] How you feeling?

- [Ethan] Fine.

- [Teacher] And you?

- I'm okay.

- The other thing is,

it might be that something comes up,

and it might not be that you necessarily need mediation,

but you're not really sure about how to handle something,

or you know, how something might go,

and you could find Carlos and Mark,

and run it by either of them, you know?

- [Ethan] Yeah.

- And, you know, they've--

- [Carlos] We'd me more than glad to help.

- Right.

And it won't be about, you know, fault

or tattling or whatever.

They'll just be happy to talk to you about the situation.

Would you feel comfortable with that?

- [Lev] Mm-hmm.

- [Ethan] Yeah.

- That feels all right about that?

So congratulate them.

- [Carlos] Yeah, you guys did a good job.

- [Lev] Thank you.

(kids chattering)

- [Teacher] Get to class.

Whoa, whoa.

(kids shouting)

Sorry, Jessica.

Go!

- She should be reading a book a week.

Aside from her school's work.

She should be doing that, three hours.

She should be doing, as we say,

two hours work a night, of school-related work.

10 hours a week.

And that's why we stay open,

we're open three to five every day,

and we're open all Saturday morning,

so that a student who wanted to

could put in 10 hours of work under our supervision.

If that's more, if that's better

than what they could going home and doing it.

The getting into the habit,

and that's the difference between depending on Sonya.

I want her to have the habit.

That's why we keep saying, habits of work,

habits of mind.

So you're just stuck with it.

It's like some people are in the habit

of getting up in the morning and brushing their teeth.

If they didn't do it, they'd feel awful all day, right?

That's what a habit is like.

You just can't stop yourself.

It's just part of you.

That's what we want her to be.

When she's studying this year

about what's an American, I want her to have a habit

of every time she reads a newspaper,

talks to you, does anything,

she's got a habit of asking certain kinds of questions,

of not feeling right 'til she's answered them.

Of having the habit of always having a book in her hand,

so when she gets on the bus or the subway,

or she's waiting for the doctor.

When she's going Friday to the doctor's appointment,

she should be getting a lot of work done.

She should be.

And it's not even work.

She should always be having a book with her,

so it's just the habit of always saying,

oh I have 20 minutes on my hands.

Whipping out a book to read.

(phone ringing)

She hasn't got the habit of writing in school,

and she does the journalist.

Not serious.

Not in her mind?

- You asked about the post-graduation plan.

The crucial part of that is

Tyrell said he wants to work as a detective,

or he wants--

- CIA, something like that.

- Which means that my projection for him

is to probably, realistically, apply to a school like John J

if he's staying in the city to do Criminology.

And this is, I'm just thinking in terms

of the courses that he needs.

Given that, then, he needs a certain kind

of a transcript to get into that school.

And it has to be a fairly strong transcript.

We should see nothing less than satisfactory.

We should really push from there on.

Okay.

The internship, then, he will be

up for an internship next fall,

and what we will try to do, is to try

to get him something in an area that's related

to criminology in some way, shape or form.

- Do they have anything like within the school,

or the institute, that can more or less

go over what his future goals are,

focusing on what his weaknesses and his strengths are?

you know, in other words, I'm not trying

to take the full judgment from him,

but just like having someone to work on it,

besides myself.

Because he gives mom a very hard time.

(laughs)

- Sure, sure.

But that comes in part of the--

- [Mom] Advising center?

- College advising, yes.

And the good thing for you is you sort of know

what you want to do.

So the other part then, it's up to you

to try to work towards that.

- [Mom] Because it takes a lot of reading.

- I don't think that was what she was saying.

- In other words, form what I'm reading,

the reports that I'm getting, that you're getting,

from what I'm reading it says, reads more,

needs reading, needs more reading, needs more reading.

I don't know, I do know, but I'm not gonna say,

if you're strong, if you like to read, all right?

And this area that you wanna go to,

it takes a lot of reading.

- [Teacher] Yes.

- Criminology takes lots of reading.

- But, well you see, he is very capable.

Anything he needs to do now,

it's up to--

- [Mom] Him.

- Him.

So he has to have the will, and then he'll be fine.

- So you have to do a lot of research

on what this work entails.

So this way you can be sure

that this is what you wanna do,

before your internship.

- Now, let me ask you a question.

He has always said to you that he would like to

do detective work, so you are comfortable with that?

- [Boy] No.

- [Mom] Not really.

It's his decision, and I'll respect it.

- All right.

Now, are you thinking of his staying in the city

for school, or are you thinking you'd like him

away from home?

- Well, of course I really don't want him to leave,

but I think it would be a good experience.

I think it would give him a sense of responsibility.

And I think it would be good if he could

explore going up to a campus away from home.

- So you wouldn't mind, then,

if he had the opportunity to go to another,

maybe a state university, part of the state university

that's outside of New York.

- No, I wouldn't

There's a person or two that we associate ourselves with,

and they help the junior high school students

within our mosque.

- High school.

- That we go to.

The high school students that graduate.

And generally it's like Plattsburgh College.

- Plattsburgh, yeah.

- Plattsburgh.

- And Albany.

- Albany.

- [Teacher] YOu're gonna stay?

- They have, and this individual

has been very, very, very good.

- Also, we have one student this year at Albany.

Did you know Francine?

- [Boy] Yeah.

- Yeah, she's at Albany, and rather liking it,

and doing very well.

And they have a very excellent support system.

- Yeah, because this was the same individual

that I had asked to set a meeting up with you

because we were gonna ask what was his,

he's a social worker, and he does a lot of tutoring.

And he was gonna set Tyrell up to where

he can start focusing on what he needs

to get into this college.

- It's good to know hat he would be interested in

Albany and Plattsburgh.

- [Mom] John J is perfect, too.

I agree with John J.

- Yeah, I thought of it only for the subject matter.

- [Mom] But I think--

- But we would also look at Albany and Plattsburgh.

- Yeah, because I'm also focusing on the fact

that he's very comfortable

in this area here.

- [Teacher] Yes, yes.

- You know, in the city.

And that can be dangerous to a certain degree.

So you know, it's a new environment,

it might not take as much from him

entertaining himself with the other things.

- Okay, I hear you.

In other words, it would be nice

if we had a vacation from you.

(laughs)

- Well he's been, you know he left me for a year.

- [Teacher] Yes, I know.

- Because of his education.

- [Teacher] And he did well with it.

- He went to Africa.

He did perfect.

- [Teacher] You liked it, right?

- Yeah, I didn't want to come back.

- But it was time.

- [Boy] It wasn't time for me.

It was time for her.

(kids chattering)

- I'm leavin'.

(laughter)

- I propose that we accept the idea

of a literature piece, as part of the exit portfolios

for eighth and tenth, and that each division

now go back and work out, decide for themselves,

what that means.

And then we bring it back to the full group

before the discussion.

- I like that proposal very much.

I have a feeling it may be problematic,

because I think the hardest problem

we're gonna have is agreeing across divisions.

So my fear is that if we decide,

if we become invested in something

that we decide separately from the other divisions,

then that could lead to, sort of, harder positions.

- Okay.

To respond to that, John.

I think that the process of us finding pieces

that kids have already worked on,

and if we as a division can come to the full group

after much discussion, and say this is what we say

is a distinguished literature piece.

This is what we see as a satisfactory one,

and this is what we see as an unsatisfactory one,

however we decide to do it.

When we bring that concrete work, that's when

the three divisions will get together

and discuss what that means.

But until we do that process, how can we

have the discussion here?

- I would say that they're two different subjects.

You can mix 'em, but I I don't think,

I think that the skill that we're trying to build here

in terms of looking at literature

is looking at, let's say, a novel,

and being able to pull out symbolism,

or being able to

trace the development of a character,

or something like that.

- [Woman In Background] John's next.

- My feeling is a bit different.

I think I'm more in favor of sort of looser categories.

Like a literature paper would be something

where a kid's project is to start writing, perhaps,

about something which we would call literature.

You know, like literary texts,

something that we classify as fiction or poetry,

as opposed to what we would classify as

a history or social studies text.

And one of the reasons I sort of feel this way

is because it relates to the discussion we've had

in division two about sort of empowerment of students,

and students becoming engaged with their work.

And to a certain extent, I think that

many of these categories are really arbitrary.

You know, in graduate schools they're increasingly

being broken down, and I think

that we want to sort of allow students

more freedom to respond to things

and develop their own ideas.

And I, for one, would like to keep it look

so that I don't have to get into the position

of applying certain straitjackets to kids.

This is not this, this is something else.

You have to be thinking more along these lines.

I'm fuzzy on this, but you know,

history would be something that's about events passed,

and literature is perhaps something that is

about text which are usually classified

as fiction or poetry, something like that.

How can kids go about writing about those things?

And what, in fact, the content of their thought is,

we keep pretty loose, so that they're free

to really sort of engage and empower themselves

as much as possible.

- [Woman In Background] Okay, Dave's next,

then Shirley, then Richard.

- Okay.

Two things, maybe three, I'm not sure.

One, I think that the difference between

what John wanted to say and what Lorraine said

is not as far as we might think,

as I initially thought we might have.

Because what I heard was

a connection to a literary text.

A looking at literary piece of poetry, prose,

and doing some investigation.

And what I heard John say was

he wants students to feel free to explore

the avenues in their own particular ways.

And a part of me resounds to that,

but another part of me has another reaction.

I have a student right now who simply says

who doesn't yet have the self-whatever

to think he can do the work.

And his response is, I can't do it.

And it was a major moment of education

when I said, you mean you can't do it yet,

and he picked up and he said, okay I can't do this yet.

So what I'm saying is, in my mind,

we're creating broad categories,

we're creating categories,

and I agree, they're arbitrary.

But they're there to say

this is one field of endeavor,

this is another field of endeavor,

this is another one.

Later on, or maybe at some point

when you feel strong in each of those three,

you won't wanna keep 'em distinct.

You may be able to put them together

in some sort of sophisticated fashion

that you see Toni Morrison doing,

or that you'll see in a graduate program.

Anyway, but they don't know what the categories are.

They don't know what their choices are.

They don't know what it is they can play with.

And I think, I mean I really feel

that as long as we keep it fuzzy

so that they are free to roam,

they sometimes get lost.

I think there will be students

who will appreciate these categories,

and there'll be some students that say

basically fuck you, I'm not gonna stick to these categories,

I'm gonna do it my own way.

I think those people should be supported,

and strengthened, but I think the majority of the students

want to do it, but don't know where to go.

And that's why I think these categories need to be in place,

and then individual teachers will say,

you know, this is really arbitrary.

We don't need to do it this way,

when we see those students coming up against a brick wall.

- [Woman In Background] Okay, next comes Shirley.

- Ironically, I think that in the literature

it seems to me that I don't want

as strict of lines as I thought I did,

because while it's true that you want,

in a literature class, kids to understand

all the forms of all kids of symbolism,

and what goes into a work,

the different kinds of styles of literature.

Ultimately, because of the way our school is organized,

and even the way our grid, that rubric we use,

dictates that we need to make certain kinds of connections

so that if you're teaching the Adventures of Huck,

if you're teaching Huck, you need to

connect it with some history, so that it's very difficult

to sort of stop and say, well we're only dealing

with the river as a symbol, or the boys,

or the raft or whatever.

You ultimately have to come to history.

So I see, then, this is why I was arguing

for kinds of what go into each of these categories

because we have to move from,

we end that way as a continuum,

where there are different kinds of things,

and we finally approach the ending,

and ironically, the end that we approach

is not the pure literature.

It really is the fusion, or the fuzzy line thing.

So we need then, I think,

that we need to describe the literature expectation

across divisions

to reflect this long line

of things that we need to do.

- [Woman In Background] Okay, next is Richard.

- Well, I was thinking about it along the same lines.

I was thinking of examples of a piece of literature

that you use in different divisions

that clearly are crossed this division,

this boundary that we've set up, like Inherit the Wind.

So if we have a kid who's gonna analyze Inherit the Wind,

they do all the work of understanding drama

as a form of literature, and what that means,

but they happen to be really interested in

the rise of fundamentalism in the 1920s.

And in your class, you've talked about that

and they bring in more of that to help understand.

They wanna look at the, whatever it is.

They wanna look at the character, what's his name?

The newspaper journalist, and compare him

to H.L. Mencken.

I mean, is that not?

(laughter)

I'm just saying there are ways,

well I'm just saying,

but so therefore you got a kid

who's interested in journalism

who then goes back and looks all at H.L. Mencken.

Which is different from someone who decides

to write a paper about the 1920s for

their history or social studies portfolio

who starts with a different series of issues

that are really related much more history.

And then they happen to bring in the play Inherit the Wind

to show their point.

Or in division one, when we do Of Mice and Men,

you have a kid who starts with the book

and really analyzes the book and looks at it,

but then decides they wanna look at

the migration of either workers from Oklahoma

to the west, or the migration of African-Americans

from the south to the north

during this time period, which issues come up.

And conversely, someone looks at the issue

of the great migrations of the early 20th century

in the United States, and then they use

Of Mice and Men as an example to use in their

social studies paper.

Now I think if we get to that point,

we have really strong students.

And so it's just a question of saying,

you have to start one, going back to what John was saying,

one paper has to start with one set of texts or assumptions

for social studies, and the other has to start over here

with literature, but they may end up being very,

they won't be similar, but they'll have

a lot of similar information in them.

I don't think that's the problem.

- [Shirley] That's the distinction you're making.

Okay.

- But the student has to have a grasp

of those basic concepts.

Which is why I would encourage us

to get back to what we said we were going to do,

which is to talk about what should go into

a literature paper, and I think to do that

is not to say that we are making rigid distinctions

between this is a literature paper

and this is a history paper.

We understand that the end result, as someone said,

is to have them be able to integrate

those to categories.

What they don't know, as Dave said, what goes into

each one anyway.

Then once you get this almost kind of mish-mosh

fusion papers where the kids

have an idea that they wanna do that,

but don't know what categories

they should be working with.

And let me just, and I'm just gonna throw in

on more thing, Shirley and I went to this

AP English conference back in the fall.

And you know, so what they do is they give you

the questions that they give on the AP English test.

Which to my way of thinking, our students

should be able to do.

But actually the difficulty most of them would have

is that there are categories in there,

there are, what would you call them?

Things that our students have not been taught to deal with,

just basic literary terms and issues

that they have individually not had to deal with,

and most of them could not ever any of the,

really they could never do this exam.

They could not do it.

- This is what I was thinking when I was saying,

initially, going to the divisions and just talking out

the kinds of things,

the kinds of outcomes that had to be considered

within the literature, which is really involving English.

As I'm talking, I realize, they're all English skills here.

But you can't divorce it.

Because that has to happen

beginning with division one to make

those nice high-fallootin' things we want

to have occur at the end possible.

So that was where, precisely what Pat was saying.

How the kid, they gave us a piece of writing.

It was about Dickens, and they looking

at this beautiful baby.

It was chock full of symbolism,

and if you had had all of that background,

you could just light right into it

and just have a ball.

Our kids couldn't because they didn't have that.

And that's what we want to be sure to have happen

in these divisions now.

- A lot of the things have to do with

finding the distinctions in language.

Like Shirley said, things like irony, satire.

You have to have some familiarity with analyzing, you know,

before you can do it on the larger work.

You have to do it on the small level

before you can do it on the larger level.

- When you talk about that irony,

I immediately thought to myself,

well, how do we get kids to that point?

And there are several steps

that we can make sure happen,

so that that's what we need to brainstorm

across the divisions to make sure.

We teach limericks, they can have lots of fun with it,

they learn to read between the lines,

and that's something that you have at different stages,

bringing in, until you get to irony and sarcasm,

and the whole works.

- I just wanna say that I think the senior institute

has a difficult time,

a much more difficult project than we in division one,

division two does, because in some ways,

it was added afterwards,

and the school sort of grew, and then all of a sudden

we reach the senior institute,

and the senior institute is this key position,

because they're the ones that deal with reality

in a certain sense.

They're the ones that deal with the outside world,

much more than we do in division one, division two.

So division one, division two, we're able

to create this nice world, you know,

that we're sort of comfortable with,

and we relate to each other and we teach,

and we sort of interact,

and then it goes up to the senior institute,

and all of a sudden you have these questions

like what does an S mean in terms of the transcript,

where are kids gonna go to college?

What are kids gonna do with the rest of their lives.

You know, how are kids gonna face

on the AP exam?

So I think those are serious issues that need

to be confronted, sort of,

how the school relates to the reality, per se.

But part of our school is also

about changing what reality is.

So I think we have to keep, just because

the AP says something, I don't think that we have to

sort of say, okay, we have to do that.

Because that would make us what I would call

a traditional school.

So I think we have to be reflective of that process

and not be, you know, because I think

we're on to something here, I don't think

we need to necessarily give it up.

- Well, actually a couple things.

First of all, I'm really sorry you picked up,

you know, you keep propping up on this kind of AP thing.

- [John] I just don't wanna make the reason why

we do something is so that some external body

says we have to do it.

- No, no.

And actually, I'll explain actually

the reason I brought it up.

And Shirley probably has a different take on this

than I did.

When we went there, there were, I don't know,

maybe 70 people.

Maybe 50 take in.

There were two New York public high schools represented.

We were one, and I think the High School for the Humanities

was the other one.

All the other schools were private schools,

they were suburban schools,

they were schools in New Jersey, you know.

Westchester County was there, all them, you know,

shi-shi suburbs where these kids go to school.

So they get

college credit for taking the AP test.

Now I mean, I have no great love of AP test,

but I wanna make sure that our children

can at least go to college

and not have to take remedial courses,

reading or writing courses

and can compete on the same level

with kids from private schools and suburban schools.

So that's the only reason that I brought that up.

I mean, what we see in the senior institute.

I hate this like lower divisions,

and there's a senior institute,

who deals with reality.

Seems to me all of us should be dealing with reality.

From a time a kid goes to school,

we need to be preparing them

for living outside of school.

You know?

In whatever manner we are able to do that.

So what we are faced in the senior institute

is kids who go to college.

My friend says, I had in Advisory,

who I thought was a very good writer.

She's having a difficult writing in college now.

Because she's having a difficult time analyzing, writing.

She writes very clearly,

but her writing tends to be very narrative,

narrative style.

She can tell a story very well,

but she cannot analyze the meaning beneath it.

And I feel very badly when I hear people say that.

Because I feel that it's something that I didn't do.

So she's having a hard time.

I feel like I'm responsible for that.

What I was saying is that I think that we need to

be more conscious of the world

our kids are going into, who they are going to be

competing with, we want them to be successful.

They go to college and they spend the first two years

taking remedial reading and writing courses,

and feel inadequate, then they're not

going to stay in college.

They're going to drop out,

and then where will they be?

So I just think as we think about,

you don't want to get technical and rigid and narrow,

but on the other hand,

we wanna change the world, but we also

have to prepare kids to live in the world

at the same time.

- We're here today to talk about condoms,

and part of The training that you've been going to

to help prepare you for the condom availability programs

in each of your schools

includes this particular evening,

which just, one, instruct us about proper use of condoms,

possible misusage, things like that,

as well as let us try out

the lingo, and talking about it ourselves.

Because as I say a lot, if we're not clear

about how we feel about saying condoms,

showing condoms, talking about condoms,

or perhaps how we feel about

talking to young people about it,

we're probably not gonna serve the program well.

So that's what today is about, okay?

I brought this for our talk today.

We have a number of these.

(giggling)

The most important thing about using condoms

is knowing how to use them as well,

as well as feeling comfortable with them

and being able to talk about them.

So we just wanna make sure

that we know how to use a condom.

And one of the things is that we want to

check an expiration date on the condom package.

And why don't I hand some of these out,

just so you can look at--

- [Lorraine] Now I was told that the condoms

didn't have an expiration date on them.

That they were on the box, yeah.

- Well the box.

I'm sorry.

If you wanna just pass these down.

These all came in a box, but they also

have an expiration date on them.

You should check that.

There are, evidently, two kinds of condoms

that have been donated for the board of ed.

One that is lubricated, and one that is not.

You will wanna ask, because

if they don't have the stamped date on it,

you'll want to talk to whoever's donating them.

It's not helpful.

But people need to be made aware

that they should check the expiration date,

because if they're using a condom past the expiration date,

they're using something that's bound to be more risky.

- Is that a standard thing?

It could be four years old and still be good?

- [Presenter] Well it depends on where you keep them.

The condom must be latex,

but if latex is worn, and we say this to guys a lot,

in the back pocket in a pair of tight jeans,

although today they don't have to worry about that

because they wear the real baggy jeans.

- Yeah.

- But if it's constantly rubbing up

on some part of the body where it's really warm,

you're gonna wear away the material,

and the odds are

you're gonna weaken the condom as well.

They're sitting in a box somewhere

that's not on top of the engine of the car,

they're okay.

And that's what that is.

You can have a lubricated or a non-lubricated condom.

This happens to be a non-lubricated condom,

which is recommended for oral sex.

And we'll use it for purposes so we don't

have to get all greasy.

But the lubricants need to be with Nanoxinal-9,

although there are pros and cons to that.

There are lots of females who, and probably some males,

but a lot of women claim that they get

increased vaginal infections

from the chemicals in the spermicide in Nanoxinal-9.

So people need to know that.

Okay, so you've checked the date,

and you know whether or not it's lubricated.

And we open the package, and we wanna open the package,

you can do these a little bit later,

you don't have to do it right now.

You wanna open the package gently

so that you don't rip the condom, right?

The condom unfolds only in one direction.

And that is often difficulty, believe it or not.

I know I still sometimes get confused.

But you wanna look at the condom

to know which way it's going to roll down.

Because otherwise you end up

rolling it backwards, and it's prone to

get a nail in it, to rip, it's harder, more uncomfortable,

therefore less likely--

- [Woman In Gray] It almost looks like--

- Huh?

- [Woman In Gray] It almost looks like

it wouldn't unroll very easily.

- Well it would, very easily,

but it's not easy.

- It has to roll against the skin in a sense,

and that's very--

- And it's doable, and if you don't' know

that that's the wrong way,

and you think that this is the way,

then why bother, it's too much trouble.

- [Lorraine] And then you might turn it around

and put it the other way, and you've already got some...

- [Presenter] Right.

There's some precum on it, and it could

have HIV in it.

This is a non-lubricated condom,

and if we were going to use it for sexual intercourse,

I would recommend that we

have a lubricant, if possible.

One with Nanoxinal-9 in it, but most definitely

a water-based lubricant, not a petroleum-based

like Vaseline or baby oil,

or Jericho oil or Crisco,

which are things that are very readily available to people

and we don't think that it's something,

just make is slippery,

we don't think about what it's gonna do to the latex.

Water-based.

You might put a little dab

of this lubricant inside the tip of the condom,

then pinch it, because you don't want

air in the tip of the condom.

So we put it on, we're gonna roll it down.

We're holding this, and we're pinching out the air.

We're rolling the condom down, okay?

And we wanna get out all of the air bubbles, if any,

on the side as well.

Because if there's a air bubble on the side,

or if there's air in the tip,

when the man ejaculates, it can burst the condom,

which is what a lot of people complain about.

It breaks.

And that's one of the main reasons

why a condom might break.

And using a petroleum-based lubricant

will weaken the rubber and make it break.

After ejaculation occurs.

Well, let's just stop for a second.

Before ejaculation occurs.

Before we even put our condom on,

we wanna help the people be aware

that you wanna be aware of your partner's readiness.

You don't just wanna,

I mean, we talk about it can enhance

this issue of communication.

We don't wanna just rip it up,

put it on, and stick it in,

because we're not necessarily thinking about our partner.

If our partner is very uncomfortable with it,

that is gonna increase the likelihood

that we will not use the condom.

So partner readiness is very important.

Partner readiness includes a couple things.

It includes how do they feel about it emotionally?

Do they think that you think

they're a ho?

Or do they think that you think something bad about them

because you're using it?

Or are they not ready physically

so that they're not sufficiently lubricated

when you insert the penis with the condom,

it's gonna be even more uncomfortable physically.

So partner readiness is an issue we wanna discuss.

Once the guy has ejaculated, we wanna let them know

that you can't kinda lounge around,

because two primary possible problems with the condom

is slippage or leakage.

And if a guy is inside a person's body

with a condom on, and become flacid,

it is likely that the condom is going to leak,

because the penis is so often not holding itself

in the condom, and/or when he pulls out,

will remain inside the person's body,

which defeats the purpose of having a condom.

So we want them to know that they want to pull out

before they become soft.

And when they pull out,

either he or his partner should hold

the base of the condom to prevent

the condom from falling off and staying inside his partner.

Okay?

Any questions or comments about that?

- You mentioned something that was very important there.

During the whole time that this process is occurring,

I would think that there's constant communication.

You mentioned about the fact that communicating partner,

knowing when the partner's ready.

Asking the partner how does the partner feel

about having the condom on, et cetera, et cetera.

Case in point, what happens if the young man

is in a situation

and the young lady does not feel comfortable

with the condom?

- [Presenter] What do you mean, happens?

- For example, I know when I've talked

with a young lady in one situation,

she said that she allowed her partner to use a condom,

but she didn't necessarily feel comfortable doing it.

And I asked, well if you're in that situation again,

what would you do?

Would you once again allow your partner

to use a condom?

She says, I don't really think so.

- [Presenter] Well, we could discuss that now,

and we will also get into it later.

- Yeah.

- [Presenter] But the question is,

what would you tell someone like that?

What do you think you'd say?

Or what did you say?

- Well, I told her, I said that

maybe what you need to do is to talk with your partner

prior to you getting in that situation.

So that way, you can express your feelings before that,

and maybe you need to get more information

on the need of why you need to wear a condom

to deal with the types of communicative diseases,

and that may help you understand

why it necessitates your partner using a condom.

- [Presenter] Did she talk about

what made her uncomfortable?

Was it physically uncomfortable?

Was it emotionally uncomfortable?

Did she specify, or did you ask?

- She said that she thought physically uncomfortable.

- Okay, so maybe your partner also needs to

learn some things about when to insert the penis.

Maybe you weren't ready.

Maybe she doesn't even know it.

People, when they start having sex,

may not know these things, and just do it,

but they're not familiar with what makes them comfortable.

I mean, girls in particular, who are built

very differently than boys,

often have sex for years without ever having an orgasm

because they don't know what it's about.

What makes it happen, and neither do boys.

I don't know what kind of relationships

you guys are gonna have with the kids

that come in, but if you're in the situation

where you can get into that kind of discussion,

it would probably be helpful to be

as concrete in the questions that you ask as possible.

Otherwise we might provide an answer

that is totally missing the boat.

'Cause maybe it's not that she doesn't understand

the importance, because of communicable diseases,

or sexually transmitted diseases,

it may be because she is embarrassed and shy,

and she doesn't know how to say, this doesn't feel good.

Is this the way it's supposed to be?

- [Woman In Gray] Am I doing something wrong?

- Right.

Am I dong something wrong?

That kind of thing.

And the guy might be in the same situation.

One thing that I didn't mention that I have

to remember to mention, is that if a guy

is not circumcised, it's very important for him

or his partner to know

that the foreskin must be pulled back

before you roll the condom down.

If you don't do that,

I think that it leads to more discomfort for the guy,

and possible damage to the condom, okay?

Let's just talk about the positives

of why you want to put the condom on

as soon as the guy is erect.

And distinguish between putting the condom on

from having intercourse.

- [Woman In Gray] Right.

- You put the condom on, one, because then

you can play as long as you want,

and you don't have to stop in the middle of playing.

That's one reason.

What's another reason?

Think of any other reason?

What's happening, even before the guy cums?

- [Lorraine] Precum.

- There's always precum.

And you don't want precum near you,

because precum can infect you.

It can also make you pregnant.

But if we're talking about not transmitting HIV

and we don't know who's infected and who isn't,

it's dangerous.

So if you have a condom on, the precum

is not gonna be a problem for anybody.

I'm supposed to restate to you, as a group,

that what you're supposed to do,

when a student asks you for a condom,

they are to receive three things from you.

One is a manufacturer's instruction sheet

and a card listing the risks of use and misuse of condoms.

Actually that's two things, but that's what it says there.

Now, this is the card.

- [Man On Right] And a condom, I suppose.

- And a condom.

(laughter)

Have you all seen this card yet?

- [Lorraine] Isn't' there another card?

The one with all the diagrams on it?

- No, that's not the card.

That may be the instruction sheet

that they're giving out.

This is a card that discuss that risks and benefits

of the use and misuse of condoms.

I only happen to have one.

They didn't come with the packet.

I'm gonna read this out loud, okay?

"The only 100% effective way to prevent

"the sexual spread of HIV

"and other sexually transmitted diseases

"is not to have sexual intercourse."

Abstinence.

"If you do have sexual intercourse of any kind,

"the only way to help protect yourself

"is to use a condom.

"The main reason a condom may not provide protection

"is because it is not used correctly.

"If you use condoms, you can help protect yourself

"by reading and learning how to use them properly.

"The person making condoms available in your school

"can answer questions, or can refer you

"to other people who can give you

"additional info on condom usage."

The other side of the card says:

"There are two reasons a condom may not protect you.

"One is it may break, two is it may slip and leak.

"Knowing how to use a condom properly

"can reduce these risks.

"If you have additional questions,

"you can ask the person who's making

"the condoms available in your school."

Now, I'm bringing up these issues,

and I'm sure that they could create

a lot of anxiety and panic.

There are resources out there.

And in each of those rooms, wherever

it may happen to be in the school,

you should have resource lists

for where kids can get medical attention,

emotional attention, physical or psychological attention.

- This has been a long and hard week,

and a particularly long and hard 24 hours.

And we're all stirring with lots of emotions today.

And we have a chance for half and hour to, in a way,

settle in and welcome

the Hasla High School Choir from Michigan.

Some of you may know that this is the high school

that one of our faculty members, Jennifer,

where's Jennifer?

Went to, and she was a member of this chorus.

(applause and cheering)

(kids chattering)

I shouldn't have said that, because you got noisy again.

They come to town because

they're one of a very distinguished choruses, choirs,

in the United States, and they travel

to many parts around the world.

And they're in New York this weekend

to sing at a music festival at the Penta Hotel

where many high school choruses come,

and there's a kind of judgements made

about different aspects about their singing

and musical work.

So they're nervous.

They're nervous doubly.

They're nervous because they're coming to New York

to sing for an event, they're nervous 'cause

they've come to sing to you,

and they're probably nervous to be coming to New York

at this difficult time.

And I want to welcome them, and thank you

for joining us today.

And let's get them a round of applause.

(applause)

- Hey yo!

Y'all can hear me?

Well, I chose upon myself to come here

and stand in front of the stage

and talk to all y'all Central Park East Secondary students

to talk about a little bit of what we've

been going through today.

And I know from the senior institute

that a lot of students are upset

about what's been happening in Los Angeles,

and it bothers them a lot,

and what's happening.

I just wanted to tell them that

nobody here is our enemy, and that

same way that newspapers say,

and all these people that come visit us say

that we have to stick together.

And these people from Michigan, right?

(murmuring yes)

(laughter)

Uh-huh.

From Michigan, not California!

They're from Michigan.

(laughter)

What they're doing here, they're doing here for us.

They're not here to make us feel better.

They're here because they like to sing

and they want to show what they got.

And they're not our enemies either.

Nobody in this room that are our enemies,

and doin' anything drastic

would just put us in a bad position

and just make us like any other high school

in New York City, which we're not.

(clapping)

And if we just stick together and just sty with each other

and not become enemies, and show these people

that we're not falling apart like other high schools

in other states and other parts of the United States.

(applause)

I know the senior institute is real upset

and they're real smart also that they know

violence isn't the answer, and they know.

I know what you got on your mind, we know.

But we gotta do things the peaceful way,

because we're not hiding anything from anybody.

Showing your anger to these people and these people in here

isn't gonna do nothin' for none of us.

And that's it.

(applause)

- We'd like to thank you for the opportunity

to come and perform for you today.

We're really honored to do that.

We have read several articles in our newspapers

from out of Detroit and Lansing

about this school.

So it was great for us to come here

and look around, and see what it's all about.

We're looking forward to talking with all of you

after the concert, about all sort of things

including current issues.

I think you'll find that we all share

a common philosophy about what's going on in our world.

But first, we'd like to entertain you if we can.

Our first choir in front of you,

this is a combined women's ensemble

made up of mostly freshmen.

Some sophomore, juniors, seniors,

ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth grade women.

And they're gonna sing two songs about love

for you today.

The first one is called "You Stole My Love"

by Walter Macfarren.

♪ You stole my love ♪

♪ Fy, upon you, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, fy ♪

♪ Guessed you but what a pain it is to prove ♪

♪ You for your love would die ♪

♪ And henceforth never longer ♪

♪ Be such a crafty wronger ♪

♪ But when deceit takes such a fall ♪

♪ Then farewell, sly device and all ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, upon you, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, fy ♪

♪ Fy, fy, fy, fy, fy, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love ♪

♪ Fy, fy upon you ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, upon you, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, fy, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, fy ♪

♪ Guessed you what a pain it is to prove ♪

♪ You for your love would die, a ♪

♪ And henceforth never longer ♪

♪ Be such a crafty wronger ♪

♪ But when deceit takes such a fall ♪

♪ Then farewell, sly device and all ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, upon you, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, fy ♪

♪ Fy, fy, fy, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love, you stole me love ♪

♪ Fy upon you, fy, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love ♪

♪ Fy, fy, upon you ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy, upon you, fy ♪

♪ You stole my love, fy on you, fy on you ♪

♪ You stole my love, you stole my love ♪

♪ Fy upon you ♪

(applause)

(kids chattering)

- First think that you're doin'

is simply presenting your policy.

The policy that you have spent

the last week or so developing.

You're just going to present that, okay?

The second thing you're gonna do,

and here's where the fun begins,

is you're gonna challenge your opposition's policy,

and try to figure out how to prove to us over there

that your policy is better than your policy.

Your goal is to prove that yours is better than theirs.

Okay?

All right?

I made this suggestion to everyone.

I'm gonna make it again.

While this group is presenting its policy,

you take notes on things that you think

are weaknesses in their policy.

Same thing is true for you.

And there's gonna be very few rules,

except that you should try

to speak one at a time so that I can

get clear notes.

You should try to speak one at a time

simply so that you're all heard,

but unlike when we had the censorship debate,

there's no specific order.

There's no particular back and forth.

You're just going at it, and you're just gonna

try to prove that your policy is better than theirs.

And may the better policy win.

Okay?

Oh, we should decide on which group goes first.

- We did a coin and they got that.

I got heads, and they got tails.

- [Teacher] Okay.

Then I guess that means that you're gonna go first?

- Yeah.

- [Teacher] You may fire when ready.

- No sick people

that doesn't have a cure like a disease-infected person,

because they can spread it to other people.

- Okay, and another one is

no communists, because they're against the government

and overthrow our country.

Also, no anarchists.

It's almost the same thing.

And 10% of people coming to America must work for two years.

- And no handicap people without

someone to watch after them, which includes

retarded and mentally ill people.

- Quota is that no more than 500,000 people

can come in one year.

And no more than 35,000 can come from each country.

- Our policy is the SAM Act of 1992.

Just in case you're wondering,

the SAM stands for Sarah, Adrian and Marlene.

Our policy states that 15,000 people from every nation

should be allowed to enter the United States a year,

but the people that come after will be notified.

All the people must pass a literacy test,

they must prove that they don't have a criminal record,

and they have to pass a medical exam.

- Okay, people that don't pass the literacy test

will get another chance at a mental ability test.

This is to see if they have enough mental ability

to learn how to read if they don't know how,

and to support themselves and their family economically.

- Any undocumented immigrant or illegal alien

that comes into the country by false ID

will be sent back to their country,

unless they're married, have unadopted children,

or show that they can support themselves

during the time that

they came in to the time they got caught,

or a year after they came in the country.

Refugees will not be sent back to their country.

(applause)

- Okay, now in any order you choose,

you may go at each other.

Be sure to include members of the congress.

Go for yours.

- Why can't handicap people be--

- [Girl In Background] Why aren't they allowed?

- Yeah, why aren't they allowed?

- Well, see, this is not for all handicap people.

This is for the handicap people that, you know,

they have no family, they have nobody

to take care of them.

Then they would be hopeless, you know.

- How are you gonna determine whether or not

this handicap person can take care of themselves?

- [Boy In Green] What?

- How are you gonna determine

whether or not this handicap person

needs someone to take care of them?

- Well it depends, like--

- [Boy In Background] Are people allowed

to bring their children to the country?

- [Girl In Red] Yeah.

- So what if your child is handicapped?

- [Girl In Red] Then they have someone to take care of them.

- Their parents will take care of them.

- [Marlene] What happens if their parents die?

- Not to take care of them, to watch after them.

Like to be able to like, some people,

they can't cook their own food,

they can't get their own food,

they can't work, so someone to take care of them.

- What kind of handicap?

If, if, if--

- [Boy In Green] If they had no arms or...

- If their parents or whatever, if they die,

what happens to them after?

Are you just gonna send them back to their country?

Or are they still allowed to stay?

- [Boy In Green] They're allowed to stay.

- [Marlene] But you said that--

- Well when you first come in,

you need someone to care of you.

- But if they have no arms or anything

and they can't cook for themselves,

they're gonna have problems with that.

And before you had said that they couldn't.

- They have to find someone to take care of them.

- I think we're makin' some assumptions here

that I'm not so sure, as a member of Congress

I'm just gonna stand by and accept.

We're makin' assumptions that simple because

someone has no arms that they can't care for themselves.

There was an incident involving childcare

in which a woman with no arms in the court

changed the diaper of her infant child

to win custody of the child.

So we're making some assumptions here

that I'm not so sure we can buy into

in this sweeping way.

I understand why you wanna restrict

physically handicapped people,

but I'm not so sure that I'm ready to do that.

Sell me on the idea.

- They're people, too.

- We're not saying that they're not people.

We're just saying that--

- [Teacher] You're just saying they're not

the kind of people we want in our country.

- So y'all don't want no immigrant

handicap people.

- We said that they should have someone to take care of

because they said before that they wouldn't

let handicap people in, because they didn't

have someone to take care of them.

Because they couldn't' be able to have a job or

someone wouldn't be able to have a job.

It depends on what kind of condition they're in.

- What if you know how to read and write,

I mean not write, but what if they know how to read

and speak the language, but they have no arms.

- Are you gonna just let that stop them?

I mean, is that gonna be the only reason why?

- And what if they're smart enough to succeed in their job?

- Then they can come in.

I'm saying people that are like, I mean,

that are in a wheelchair

and a whole part of their body is not working or something,

they need someone to take care of them.

- This question of a literacy test and mental ability.

It seems to me that that has the same exact effect

that their straightforward discussion of handicap does.

They're willing to say outright,

we don't want handicap people.

Meanwhile, you're trying to pull

the same thing on the sly.

Well, you know, if you can read and write, well,

you know, do you have the mental ability to,

who decides whether or not

they have the mental ability to be able

to learn to read or write?

- [Girl In Background] Doctors.

- What doctors?

- The doctors that are where they enter.

- And they have to pass the literacy exam.

That's how you--

- [Boy In Blue] But how about

if they're not good test-takers?

- [Girl In Blue] What do you mean?

- Like they're not--

- If they can't take the test,

then that proves that they're not smart enough.

- Wait can I say something?

- Yes, yes if they--

- [Boy In Background] Tell Congress.

- [Boy In Background] People get nervous on tests.

- [Boy In Blue] Yeah.

- People get nervous on tests because

they know that if they mess up, then they're messed up.

So they get nervous on tests

- We're trying to make it easier for them.

We don't want them to come here and when they find out

they can't read and write, and they can't get a job,

we're trying to let them know that

before they come in and start tryin' to get jobs.

- And if they come to America to succeed,

if they can't succeed, then why are they gonna come?

- What's the point?

What's the point of just fakin' them

and coming in, and then just having them find out

that they can't get jobs?

- All right, hold on a second,

I got something for you.

It's got two parts.

You are the ones who said

you weren't taking refugees back, right?

- Right.

- Okay.

Let's say that if in their country

they had a democracy, right?

But they supported an anarchy.

Would you send them back, then?

If they were fleeing to your country

and they got persecuted for that?

- [Boy In White] 'Cause they were anarchist?

- Yeah.

- [Boy In White] No, we wouldn't.

They're they ones against anarchists.

- Yeah, but you said that refugees

would face no restrictions.

And these people would qualify as refugees.

She's right.

These people would qualify as refugees.

And now you're saying that, you know,

you'd let anarchists come in?

You want anarchists coming in here

disrupting our government?

Overthrowing our government?

What kind of sense does that make?

(kids chattering)

- I don't know how many people would vote

for anarchists here.

- But how do you know the anarchists?

If they just play like a refugee.

- They have to prove that they haven't committed

any, what was it?

It was crime, that they were able to support themselves

and that they were living like normal people.

- You just said that you ain't sending

no refugees back.

- [Marlene] Right.

- You didn't say that they had to take the test.

- [Boy In Grey] What if it was a murderer?

- [Girl In Blue] What if one third of a country--

- He can murder everybody.

- I'm just saying, what if one third of a country

was anarchist, in a country that has a democracy.

You mean, if one third of that country came

and you wouldn't send them back at all?

- What if he was a murderer in his country.

What he believes in killing?

(kids chattering)

- So if they came to your country,

you would send them to another country?

- [Marlene] If they were gonna face persecution

if we sent them back to their country,

we wouldn't do that, okay?

- But what if--

- [Sarah] We would send them to a place

that they would be safe.

- Wait a second.

Then what if they get power,

and they take over the American government?

And your facing persecution?

- What if he was a murderer in his country?

Would you let them go like that?

Then they would think it's all right to kill people

in the United States also.

- No because we said.

We said that they would have to prove

that they have not committed a crime

once they've gotten here

- I got a problem with this.

You're saying they won't be sent back,

let's say they're facing persecution in their country,

but you bring them here just to lock 'em up?

(kids shouting)

Then you spend the tax dollars on these people

that were facing persecution

come to mess your country up and you're putting

them in your jail, and I'm spending money

for an anarchist.

I don't think so, no.

(kids shouting)

- [Teacher] Defend yourself!

- It's their fault.

It's their fault.

It's not our fault that they have committed a crime,

and they will be sent to jail.

- Okay, the question is this.

Hold on, hold on.

Manny, Manny, Manny.

The question is this.

If they're criminals, why bring 'em in

just to put 'em in jail.?

Why not leave 'em in their own country?

Hold on, hold on, let me finish.

Why not just leave these criminals in Czechoslovakia?

(kids shouting)

But we let them in.

- It's better if we let them in, Ricky,

because then if we just leave them going around

then they'll kill people in other countries.

- What do we care about whether or not

people are getting murdered in Czechoslovakia?

(laughter)

What do we care?

Why should I care about whether or not

there are murderers in Czechoslovakia?

The United States is not the world police.

No, we're not the world police.

- [Girl In Background] They act like it.

- We don't run around the globe

arresting every criminal on the planet.

If the Czechoslovakians can't handle their own criminals,

that's their problem.

(kids chattering)

- Get off of me!

- Girls does all the work.

- Anyways they're gonna lose to Chicago.

- How do you know that?

- Because I know!

- That's a good sentence.

A lot of innocent people died.

Okay, read this one.

- Also, I think some south people

will set fire and rob the store

and (mumbles)

They just wanted to take advantage of the violence.

- So I wold take out the word "of".

Also, I think some people will set fire and rob the--

- Stores.

- Stores.

And what do you mean "they were not very serious"?

- Some of them just take advantage.

- Okay.

You might wanna be specific

about why do you think they were not serious?

- Okay.

- That they really weren't unhappy about the verdict,

they were just violent.

They wanted to steal things.

And your sentence there?

And start a new sentence.

They.

- Oh.

- They just wanted to take advantage of the verdict.

Okay, next sentence.

- They didn't think to themselves what would get

after the affair.

That would increase the hatred between whites and blacks.

- Okay, try and tell me what you're saying there,

'cause it's a little confusing.

- Just doing what they want,

they didn't think what would happen

after they doing these things.

- Okay, when you say "they didn't think the result,"

what result?

- The result of the robbing the stores.

- [Teacher] Okay, so they thought

that they would get away with?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Because of this, again,

you've got a very long sentence there.

It makes it a little confusing where you're starting

and where you end up.

Okay, what is it that increases the hatred

between whites and blacks?

Is it the beating of Rodney King?

- Yeah.

- Is it the white cops getting off?

- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

- The violence?

Burning and looting?

Okay, so perhaps you need to break this sentence up

again into smaller pieces, and be specific

about what it is that you're talking about, okay?

- Okay.

- That was good effort.

I liked that.

- It was really interesting because it was about teenagers,

and I was the only teenager there.

So everybody was like asking me questions.

Like, what do you think about this

when we were reading the papers.

I was like, I mean, it was kind of dumb.

The sheet that we read at first, the boy's story

was kinda, I don't know,

because it spoke about his father a lot

and what I see now in communities

is that fathers aren't really involved

with their kids anymore.

Either they're not there,

they just don't feel like it.

And they were asking me questions like,

do you have friends like this?

Or has this every happened to you?

'Cause the girl, her boyfriend left her.

She thought she was pregnant.

I was like, yeah, I know kids like that.

And then they started talking about how

girls sometimes, how a lot of teenage girls

get into abusive relationships and stuff.

- Can you explain that?

What do you mean?

- Well, all right.

What do you mean, can I explain?

- [Teacher] What's an abusive relationship?

- Maybe like a relationship where the boy,

well, he can abuse you verbally, or physically,

or sexually or whatever.

And they started off first talking about,

well, a to of teenage girls seem to think

that you can, when you have a boyfriend

and he goes, well no, you can't do this,

because I said so, that that's good.

Because it's like, oh, he's taking care of me,

and he's doing it because he loves me.

But in fact, that's not the case.

He's taking control of your life,

and you're giving permission to take over

a certain amount of your life

because, yo know, just because it's a way

of looking for affection.

They were talking about how it shouldn't be that way

because a woman should have control of her own life.

Because if she wants to go here, she can go here,

and if she wants to do this, she can do that.

Because a boyfriend is a boyfriend.

He's not a husband, or you know,

he doesn't have the right to have that much

control over your life.

And then they started talkin' about--

- [Teacher] But a husband does?

- Huh?

- [Teacher] But a husband does?

- No, no, no, that was a mistake.

(laughs)

But when you're in a marriage,

when you're in a marriage,

it's a different thing.

You have to come together and talk about things.

But anyway, so then they were talkin' about

how a lot of girls get into abusive relationships,

and after a while they just don't know what to do

because they think they have to accept things like that

because that's the way that things are.

Because either they see their mothers

being beaten by their fathers when they're younger,

or you know, things like that.

They were talking about how you can talk to kids

and you can show 'em that that's not how

their life has to end up, or be, or whatever.

You don't need to take that stuff from a guy.

- [Teacher] Any comments from anybody else?

That was a pretty heavy day.

So just in terms of what you were thinkin' about

in terms of your future?

Or whatever field you want to go in.

Does this help you at all with some direction forward?

Some kind of ideas?

- Well, sort of.

Because, see,

before I went to the agency,

I didn't really know much about...

(mumbles)

well now I know that I wanna do something

which I can benefit Latino people and stuff.

See I don't know exactly what that's gonna be,

but I know that I need to be more educated.

Like on issues concerning Latinos and stuff like that.

Because otherwise,

I can't help myself if I don't know what's going on

with my people.

So I might even want to go into something like this,

like maybe a social worker,

or maybe something like Ade Morales does.

She does training programs.

That's what she does.

She does training programs.

Like things like this.

I wanna go into this kind of field because

it's interesting.

I think it's necessary.

- If you don't understand that,

then we need to have a conference

with your advisor and your parents.

Because I don't want you doing that anymore here.

I don't think that's unreasonable.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

You don't decide to get out and get your hat.

That's very rude, and I don't treat you that way.

You understand what I'm saying?

If you don't, then we have a really big problem.

So, what are you gonna do.

Are you gonna come back and sit down and do your work?

Or are you gonna fool around?

You decide.

You decide.

You think you're being fair?

You can go to Debbie and say I'm being very unfair with you.

I'm not being unfair with you.

- Okay, Joanie is a volunteer.

We have felt that we don't know

the whole story about what's going on upstairs.

And we now hear--

- Joanie, did you write this?

- Yes, she wrote it.

- You just wrote this, okay.

Yeah?

- That we felt that on Thursday on the trip

there was gossip going on that had some,

and that note I showed you this morning?

Was from the trip on Thursday.

And we just felt that we didn't have the whole story.

So we've just asked some people,

and this and that, and here we find that

there still is more.

The child has left the school

and there's still more that's back-forth, he said-she said--

- Which student has left the school?

- Joanne.

- Joanne.

Okay, you called Joanne on Wednesday.

We talked about school and everything.

She told me that Ali and some other kid on the third floor

called her and told her that Safoi and another girl

was talking about her. - Talking about her.

And she told her cousins,

and they said the cousins of the girl who left school

were gonna come and jump Safoi.

Okay, so now Safoi knew this Wednesday.

First of all, nobody came to me

to say that they had heard any of these rumors.

Secondly, Safoi has not been in school Friday or today.

She's not in school.

So I think that somebody has to

call Safoi's mother

and see if she's heard these rumors,

and if there's any problem from her point of view.

- Okay, I'll call.

- 'Cause that's a point they brought up before.

If she ever felt threatened, she had to tell us.

So I don't know if she's told her family.

I don't know why she's out of school Friday and today--

- But Joanie, but Joanie.

Tell me, you just called Joanne to say goodbye to her?

- Just called her because we're friends and everything.

- [Paul] Yeah, right.

- Just wanted to call her.

- [Woman] To see how she was.

- [Paul] Then she said...

So Ali might know something about this, right?

- [Woman] Yes, so might want to call him up.

- Let me talk to Ali first.

And see if I can get any information.

Then I'll call Safoi's mom.

- Good.

I think you need to talk to him.

- I will.

- Okay, come back to class.

Thank you.

- [Paul] Thanks Joanie.

- [Joanie] No problem.

- Can you think of anything in the play

that supports a deeper connection

the two of them have?

- I just wanted to say that you talking about

the issue of respect and everything, and material items,

I think that everybody, like a lot of people

in this world lost all their moral values and everything

searching for this American dream.

Like, drug dealers, and even big corporations.

They don't care who they hurt.

They're just messing up the environment

in all so that they can live comfortably.

And people need to think about that.

- But I don't think it's gonna get any better.

I don't think it's gonna get any better.

- So in the search for the American dream,

with Lorraine Hansberry, part of what her story is about,

you're saying that we've taken it much further.

Huh?

- [Girl In White] It's destroying everything.

- The search for the American dream

is destroying everything.

Do you think that's part of her statement,

or what we're saying?

This play takes place in the 50s,

and she dies in 1965.

Right?

That's what this article just said?

Now he's, what?

- In the sense that it almost destroyed their family,

and it destroyed Walter's dignity.

Almost did.

When he was gonna take that money

instead of standing up for himself.

- Okay, now it's 27 years later.

And a couple of you are saying that the search

for the American dream has had some

negative stuff happen.

- It is negative.

I mean, the American dream, what is that?

What people think of the American dream is,

oh with the white family

with the white picket fence and a dog.

That's not how it is.

- I think the American dream has changed.

When America has started, the American dream,

when it started, it used to be freedom of religion

and freedom to practice what you want,

and freedom from persecution.

And then the American dream was

to have money, and to have the life that you want

starting with money.

So to get a white picket fence, and a nice house,

and a dog, you need money.

To get land, yo need money.

To you get your freedom, at one time,

it was money, if you were a slave.

- [Teacher] And today?

- Today it's pretty much money.

- Well I've heard two things.

I've heard money is power, and greed

come out of a couple people.

- [Girl In White] And evil.

- And evil.

So which is it?

- If you have a lot of money, you have a lot of power.

That's like the same.

- Okay, and how does it influence the dream them?

The dream was to get money.

- 'Cause you need money to have the dream.

You have to have a mansion.

- [Girl In Blue] Without money, you ain't nobody.

- Send your kids to a nice school.

- Nowadays it's without money you're not nobody.

You have nothing.

- [Teacher] So how does that fit with

what you've been saying

that the search for the American dream

has now also had some negative effects on us?

- That's why it's evil.

Because everybody thinks that without money

you have nothing.

And it's not really money, it's just

what money represents that makes it evil.

- Money is like the door to your dreams.

And then more that you have, the more of your dreams--

- [Girl In Blue] The more you dreams come to you.

(students chattering)

- I think people think it's more important

than other people's lives.

That's why there's a lot of killing going on.

'Cause, like, drug dealers, they want money,

so they just sell drugs and have people killed

for their drugs, that's why.

So they can get their money and everything.

- [Teacher] So where does the dignity come in then?

That we talked about with Raisin in the Sun

and Lorraine Hansberry?

Where does it come in?

- You can walk around and be like,

oh I have this much money,

and I did this for it, and I killed this person.

No one cares now.

It's all for the money.

- [Teacher] There is no dignity with all that money.

- [Girl In Background] That's what I always say.

- [Teacher] Are we saying that?

- No, 'cause when you have money,

it's like, everyone looks at you.

- [Girl In Background] They worship you.

- Yeah, they worship you because you have money.

- [Boy In Background] Money's life.

You have no money, you have no life.

- Pursuing the American dream is never finished.

- [Girl In White] There's always gonna be

something that you're not having.

- I think that you're happy, then that's your dream.

(hums of agreement)

Your dreams come true.

(kids chattering)

I don't think that there is an American dream.

I think that there is--

- The American dream is to live comfortably

with a nice family and don't have to worry.

- [Girl In White] That's not the American dream anymore.

- The American dream today,

the American dream today is not to have a family.

The American dream today is what you want!

Your dream--

- Choose both.

To have a career and have what you want as your dream,

and also have a family.

- Right, but, 'cause you don't have a family,

just because you don't have a family

doesn't mean that you're not fulfilled

like inside yourself.

It doesn't mean that you don't have peace with yourself.

- [Girl In White] Some people; not everybody.

- I think the American is too individualized

just to have one dream.

Anything you want.

- If there's a standard that everybody

pretty much has in their head,

but we don't really go by it, and the American dream

isn't a unified dream.

That's why

our culture's all mixed up.

Our culture where you can have your own thing.

There is no culture.

It's our society.

Our society is all mixed up.

Where you can have your own say,

and you have the right to disagree.

Well, you also have the right to think differently.

And you also have the right to have a different dream

than your neighbor.

Your neighbor might want money,

but you might want peace and quiet.

So in that respect, I change my mind.

I don't think that there is an American dream anymore.

I think that it's just what you want,

and that's your American dream.

- Any way that you wanna live your life,

live your life.

That's your American dream right there.

- Now today, because, you know,

our ideas are so different.

Everybody has their own idea.

We tend to be selfish and think only about ourselves.

- [Boy In Background] That's the way the world is.

- That's why the hairspray analogy fits into that.

About if you buy hairspray, you don't think

about the ozone, you just think about your hair.

Well, if you want a job, you don't care about

all the other people that apply for that job.

You want that job.

And you're particularly determined person,

you will do pretty much anything to get that job.

- [Teacher] Oh, okay.

(kids chattering)

- [Paul] Do we have anybody going to Wesleyan?

- [Debbie] We have possibly Earl.

- No, Earl, no, because he's--

- [Debbie] Because you think he's gonna choose Vassar.

- I think he's gonna choose Vassar, yeah.

That was the last time I talked to him.

- [Paul] Well wd do have some kids going to Bart this year.

- [Debbie] Which is something new.

- [Paul] We did not have--

- No, we had no applications last year to Bart even.

- [Paul] We have a couple this year.

- [Debbie] Couple to Bart.

- [Paul] And Hampshire.

- We have one for Clark, which is new.

And possibly Hampshire, which is new.

- [Debbie] And one possible Hampshire, which is new.

We didn't apply before.

School for Visual Arts, we have two this year.

- Right.

That's new.

- [Debbie] Howard.

- We didn't have anybody there last year.

- [Debbie] I don't even think we had five.

Maybe we made some applications.

- We probably made some applications.

We probably did, but I don't think that anybody chose.

I mean, I know nobody chose.

- [Debbie] Morehouse is new.

- Right.

- [Debbie] Where did Angela go last year?

- Angela is in Spellman.

- [Debbie] Spellman.

- As is Tanya.

- [Debbie] NYU, we didn't have anybody last year, did we?

- No.

- [Debbie] I didn't think so.

- Nor applications, I don't believe.

- [Paul] Ian's going to NYU.

- We had a couple of applications,

because Amelcar was accepted there.

So he might choose that.

- [Paul] Last year we had one in Columbia.

Who is doing well, we hear.

- [Debbie] If that's true.

(laughs)

Bizarrest start in America.

- That's right.

I tell you, some of our starts--

- [Debbie] So much for professional.

- We only have what, our small group.

I'm tellin' you, I'm getting complaints

from the ones who got ours last year

are getting it this year.

Not at all happy up at Hobart Williams Smith,

because they got four of our students last year.

They hosted Pat up there for, you know,

she had a wonderful advisory trip up there

and they paid for everything.

I mean, they were really great.

- [Debbie] (mumbles) to keep remembering.

I mean, we should write her a profuse letter.

- Oh, I talk to her on the phone

and I tell her how thankful we are.

And Pat has written back, right.

She knows that.

She's been very intimately connected with it.

- [Debbie] All the things we can do,

is we can have more high schools in New York.

- Yes.

We can really connect them.

Of course, this meeting that I had, I really did,

I put forth Hobart Williams Smith as a good school for them.

- [Debbie] They don't see us.

- It's just, it's one isolated school, right.

- [Woman] So they know that they're gonna get all the kids,

they don't get us one year, they get somebody else.

- That's true.

- [Debbie] And it might be interesting to pool

the coalition school data.

- Yes.

- [Debbie] You know, that'd be a nice thing,

when this is all over and you have a few days to relax

to try to get from them.

- The same thing, we pool it all together

and see where people are going.

- See where people are going,

and even publicize something about it

what we did.

Looks good.

It's nice.

One two three four five six seven eight nine

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22.

It's like 60% of the kids are going to

four-year private colleges.

It's nice.

- That's just slow.

So just open.

- Y equals zero, wait.

- Point zero.

- [Woman] Hey, it's time for advisory!

Let's go!

- Killis, I get real confused over this.

I can't tell whether or not

some of this you're holding back

and not telling us the whole story on,

or some of this you're completely innocent about

and just don't understand what your assignments are.

I really get, I don't know if you have that feeling, too.

Or you do, too, Courtney.

I just don't understand what's going on exactly.

- Well I have a feeling.

My feeling is that you know what's going on,

but you're just not doing the work.

Now I could be wrong.

But I think you--

- [Paul] Is there something to that Killis?

- No.

- Okay, so we need to hear from you.

- I said that

I do the work and I get it in.

- Do you do all the work completely?

And you get the complete work in?

- [Killis] Yes.

- Okay, now you're saying yes, right?

You have a draft of your male and female reproduction

that you only turned in a draft.

That you did not turn in a final.

- No, I never got that back.

- [Courtney] You never got what back?

- The male and female.

- [Courtney] You never got that back?

- No.

- [Courtney] Okay, what about the--

- [Paul] Yeast.

- [Courtney] Yeast?

- Yeah, I have the draft.

- [Courtney] And you never did a final

from the draft?

- Right.

- [Courtney] Right?

- Right.

- [Courtney] Okay.

If you never did a final from the draft,

how can you say Bridget did not credit you

for the final for the draft.

She may have, well your name has nothin' written by it.

So therefore I hate to say nothin', but this is the way

that they're seeing it.

This is how it affects me.

So this is really nothin'.

Me?

I would take it and throw it in the garbage somewhere.

Okay?

You know me better than anyone else.

And anyone listening to me should be able to understand

because I'm not biding my tongue.

I'm not speaking in a language

that no one doesn't understand.

This is highly intolerable.

How can I sit here and defend you in school

and you're gonna play little games yourself?

But feeling that you had done so well for this period,

that you would not have had any unsatisfactories.

I went out and I paid $80 for our first basement

catcher's mitt.

Do you think these papers warrant that?

- [Killis] No.

- [Courtney] This is my last time

sitting here before people having to talk to you this way.

Okay?

Do you understand me clearly?

- Yes.

- [Courtney] Paul has the greatest respect for you.

He has the utmost respect for your mind.

Bridget has the greatest respect for you.

They respect your mind.

You're only 12 years of age.

If you choose to cry, you may go ahead and cry.

Because yes, you should feel sad inside.

Because you are letting, you know who you really

are letting down?

You are letting Killis down.

I am 48 years of age, I don't know how old they are.

But we will be somewhere dead,

and you know who's gonna have to be here

to look after Killis?

Killis is.

Okay?

And we are trying to prepare you for today.

So that tomorrow Killis can move on, and Killis can advance.

You can't ask for anything better.

You can fool people, yes.

But it will always show.

Just like you learn, you see children

having a good time, throwing rocks,

throwing sticks and bricks,

but in the long run, you would suffer.

Well it's the same difference here.

Okay?

Okay?

- You know, Courtney, today, for example,

today he worked in class, he modeled

the type of behavior I need to see

all my students do.

He was working on an assignment.

This was maybe the first time in a long time

I've seen you work on an assignment for two hours straight.

Every 10 minutes--

- [Courtney] That's hard for him.

I realize that's hard for him.

- It's hard for anybody.

But he did.

- [Courtney] And this is what I was asking Paul.

What is it that this mind can't focus

on something that long?

Yes, he'll read it and everything,

but to actually sit there and work on it.

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay?

Maybe, I don't know for Killis,

and I'm not trying to give you an out, either.

If that is a problem for him, okay?

And maybe this is something, what,

like the example you just finished giving is what

I was speaking to Paul as trying to questions him about,

I was using terms that he says just label terms,

more or less, but this is what I actually mean.

If this is a problem for Killis.

- [Paul] So Killis really spent two hours today?

- Yeah, I saw him enough times today to know

exactly what he worked on.

It's still vivid in my mind, the pieces

that you worked on.

I have students who give me work every day

but cannot show me as much knowledge as you do.

But they got Ss on their work,

because they're always trying.

I need to see from you that you're trying, okay?

- [Courtney] Now do you understand a little bit more

what she needs?

- You give me these two.

Completion of work and meets deadline,

and you will always pass my class.

All right?

Those are my expectations.

That's all.

You complete your work and meet your deadlines,

and you will always pass my class.

The quality part, you know I'm gonna challenge

you on that anyway, because that's what I do, okay?

But you will always pass when you do your work.

Even when you get a job,

you will always get credit for work you do.

- [Paul] Do you think what's been said so far is true?

Or has some reality to it, Killis?

Yeah?

- I don't know.

- [Bridget] What don't you agree with here?

- The grade.

- [Bridget] What do you think you should have gotten?

- A satisfactory.

- [Bridget] Okay.

Do you agree with the marks that I gave you?

How would you have changed this report?

- The participation.

- [Bridget] Class discussion?

- [Paul] The participation, all is well.

- And understanding concepts.

- [Paul] Mm-hmm.

- And the class activities.

- How would you change those?

What kind of grades would you give it?

- Maybe area of strength.

- Which one?

Participation in class activities?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- And class discussions, and understanding concepts

and respect for others.

- So you're saying a lot of these three

that I gave you all is well

should be made to areas of strength?

- And meeting deadlines should be,

incompletion of work should be needs improvement.

- Instead of a serious problem?

Okay.

The participation in class discussions and activities

and respectful cooperation with others.

I'll give you as a major area of strength.

'Cause if I can pair you with another kid,

then that would be, okay?

But when I fill out this report

and I think in my mind, and I see

Killis Forester in my mind,

I'll say participation in class discussions,

yeah, all is well.

He participates in discussions.

He's a verbal child.

He's very articulate.

This is what he likes to do, that's fine.

So maybe I should give you a major area of strength

for that though.

But do you understand how I can give you an all is well?

Meaning, maybe there's something wrong with this report

But when I say all is well, I mean,

you're doing A-okay.

Okay?

If you want me to give you a major area of strength,

I have no problem with that.

I will give you that, okay?

This report is an interim report.

In other words, if you continue to give work in late

or not give in work at all, I will have to

give you a U for the semester.

This is like a kick in the butt for you now.

This is saying, wake up Killis.

Bridget is not gonna accept incomplete work

or late work, okay?

This is what this is saying.

This does not mean you're a U individual.

This is me, in other words,

I don't wanna give you any breaks.

I don't know if Richard was giving you a break.

- [Killis] No.

- I'm not giving you a break for this report.

Because this report is for me to tell you

whether or not you're in trouble,

and I'm tellin' you you're in trouble.

Okay?

- [Courtney] Did you also understand her and hear her well

when she said if she were comparing you

with another child,

your grading here in not on comparison

with what any other child does in class.

This is grading saying to Killis only

that Killis needs, yes, he does part of his homework,

but maybe you just turn in the draft, okay?

But you can do better.

We respect you more.

We love you more.

That we don't want to see you sell yourself short

By just doing part enough just to get by.

Because we know that our little Killis

is capable of completing it to the max, to the fullest.

You understand what she's saying to you?

Okay?

- [Bridget] That's right.

That's exactly it.

- Do you understand?

She's not comparing you with no one else in your class.

No one in your advisory class.

This is how she feels that you need to work for Killis.

No one else but for Killis.

- [Bridget] And it's gonna pay off.

- [Courtney] Okay?

- All this

busting your chops,

which is what I'm going to look at it now,

it's gonna pay off.

Maybe you don't feel that now, but when June comes,

when you start completing your work

and meeting your deadlines, you're gonna

see the difference.

Today, you're--

- [Courtney] Show your comparison.

How does Michael hit the ball to you and Mikey?

- [Killis] Hard?

- [Courtney] Hard.

Harder than the other children, right?

Well that's the same thing Bridget is doing to you.

- And it's not right.

(laughter)

- [Bridget] Well then.

Wait a minute, when you were working today, Killis,

did I give you a hard time during that process?

- No.

- [Bridget] Did I complain about the quality of work

you were giving me?

- No.

- [Bridget] Because I believe that the quality of work

you were giving me was good.

Okay?

Is that fair?

Do you think that the way I was working with you today

was in a fair manner?

- Yes.

- [Bridget] Because I expected more than you could give me?

- No.

- [Bridget] So that's how I would envision

it being every day for me and you.

- No, but y'all expecting more than what I'm tryin' to do.

- [Bridget] Yo mean, all I expect you to do

is give in your work.

And when you start giving in your work,

and you feel that what I say to you about your work

is unfair, then we talk about that.

Okay?

And you let your mother know.

And then your mother has some leverage, also.

You say to your mother, look, Ma,

this is the work I did, and Bridget says

it's not good enough, and I'm getting frustrated with that.

Then we will talk about it.

I'm gonna be very fair with you.

Then we have something to work with, Killis.

But if I have nothing to work with form you,

we have nothing to work with.

- Killis, when we think about teaching

and what teachers do, we often use the metaphor

of the teacher as a coach.

Bridget wants your personal best.

She's pushing you very hard.

We're not gonna accept less than your best.

We're not going to push you.

We're going to try very hard not to push you

or make demands on you that are impossible for you.

But we're gonna push you very hard

so that you can give us, and give yourself

your personal best.

That's what coaches do.

And that's what they demand of people,

and they push them very hard.

Actually, Bridget's talk was a lot like a basketball coach

at halftime, or a football coach at halftime.

And she's pushing very hard.

And I think a lot of people resent that,

and I think that you're feelin'

you're getting pushed real hard now, don't you?

You are.

We expect an awful lot of you, Killis.

And we're gonna push you real hard.

Killis, you and I have had a lot of conversations together

about what you're gonna do when you finish

high school and college.

You and I have thought about it.

You've told me about some of your plans.

You have very high expectations for yourself.

You have to work very hard for them,

to make them true.

- What are your plans?

- I'm gonna play ball,

and if not, I wanna be a lawyer.

- [Paul] And you expect that of yourself, don't you?

- Yeah.

- [Paul] So do we.

Hard, hard work.

Both the ball--

- But I don't push myself.

- [Paul] What?

- [Bridget] You don't push yourself?

- [Courtney] You have ample time--

- [Paul] I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.

You don't push yourself, you said?

- I don't push myself to the limit, no.

- [Paul] Okay.

- Can I ask you what book you're reading right now?

- I'm reading,

I haven't started on a book.

I'm just reading Sports Illustrated.

- Hm?

- I'm reading through Sports Illustrated.

- You go downstairs to the library right now

and get me a book, and I'll give you these

when you come back up with the book you're gonna read.

- [Boy] I was gonna go to the public library today.

- Go to this one.

I can't be sure you'll do the other one.

- Everybody had a migration.

- Let me put it like this.

That land was empty.

The land was empty.

And the only way that land could be filled

is if people came here.

So people migrated.

- Suppose the focus of the family conference on Thursday

is the school.

As it is a part of the family.

He's acting out the family stuff in school.

His school is crumbling.

His schoolwork in crumbling,

because of the acting out in the family.

- [Girl] That'll be 12 times 12 whatever.

33 degrees--

- What?

- Wait, wait, wait, wait hello.

- This is the way it's laid out.

Okay.

It's cosine

33 degrees.

Now this is hypotenuse and adjacent,

so adjacent goes on top.

And hypotenuse goes on the bottom.

Right, we'll divide.

- Now I wanted to just, I was thinking about

just telling a little bit about why

we organize the school this way,

which I'm sure you've already heard,

but I was thinking last night,

which I sometimes write about,

which I'm hesitant to say with two students present,

that in some ways we organize this school

on the basis of what I new as an early childhood educator.

'Cause actually I'm a kindergarten teacher,

and that's the only substantial teaching experience

I had was as a kindergarten and pre-kindergarten teacher.

I had some other visions in my mind,

of the kind of schooling I went to, myself.

Just sign out afterwards, it's not an insult.

(laughter)

You can leave.

- I have to go to the bathroom.

- Just thinking, you were so annoyed to hear that

you had to leave.

I had two other images in mind,

and often that are interesting to think about

in early childhood.

One of the most powerful was the stories I'd hearing about

what Oxford and Cambridge were like.

Two famous English universities.

And in some ways, they both, to me,

seem like the same image.

My image, I don't know.

I never went to Oxford or Cambridge.

I don't know whether it's really true or not.

But my image of that and my image of kindergarten

are very much alike.

And I thin it's the years in between that worry me.

That is, it's a little bit like a doctoral program.

And many ways, many habits and practices of this school

are sort of like doctoral program.

Even the way you graduate form this school.

We have 14 little doctoral dissertations.

We're trying to cut it back,

because its a bit too many doctoral

graduation committee meanings.

But many of our ideas are borrowed

form the two extreme ends of the education spectrum.

The two places where we concern ourselves

with what the individual's own interest,

learning style, how to engage them,

in which we respect their independence

and their capacity to take on serious responsibilities.

It always seemed to me eerie

that the kids who had been in my kindergarten,

the first grade teacher would say,

I can't get 'em interested in anything.

And I thought, well they were very interested

when they were in my kindergarten.

She wasn't necessarily a worse teacher than I,

it was that we accepted the idea in kindergarten

that we had to create an environment

that would capture and engage students' interests.

And that we had to, as a teacher, learn about them,

not by the tests we gave 'em on Friday,

but our observation of what they were doing at work.

And the developing certain attitudes and curiosity

and passion for work, which we call play in kindergarten

is at the heart of our job.

And the same thing,

I have the same vision of Cambridge or Oxford.

That you have this one tutor, our advisor here,

whose job it is to figure out with you

together, what you need to do to end up

being a well-educated person.

And who can lay out the parameters of the kinds of things

that'll be expected of you in order to graduate

from Cambridge or Oxford,

and what lectures you might attend,

what papers you oughta write, who meets with you

on a regular basis, and a few of her other students

to talk about those paper, to suggest revisions

that they could be made, a lecture that might fill it out,

some books you might read in connection with it.

But it's at those two ends that we take seriously

what we know about how human beings learn.

And in between, we engage in a series of practices

that absolutely conflict with everything we know

about the most powerful and effective way

in which human beings learned.

So, you know, way, when we organize

Central Park East Elementary School,

we tried to keep the spirit of a good kindergarten

going all the way through six years.

We did that for 10 years,

and then though, with the help of Ted Seizer,

why shouldn't' it be going all the way through high school?

And personally, my opinion, that's what

a good college is like also.

And that's what a good life is like.

It's finding people to have interesting and important

and powerful conversations with

and then seeing what else you could do

to extend that conversation

and carrying it on the net time you do

with more facts, with more information,

and it's a more powerful position to think through

those issues.

And it's, in a way, the power of a good life

is to be everlastingly involved.

Ether it's internally or externally,

what a terrific conversation

for which you need to know more and more

in order to make that conversation go somewhere.

It's certainly at the heart of what a powerful citizenry

and a powerful democracy would be,

and that is citizens who are in a position

to carry on that public dialogue

about the nature of their society,

it's purposes, and ways in which it can be improved.

And in that sense, we have tried to design a school

that would encourage that kind of habit of mind.

So it's habitual.

It's just a way, you can't help but think

that every time you're in a situation,

you say to yourself, I got a theory about that.

I wonder if this is true.

Or, I wonder what the connection between this is and that is

and I wonder why and how can I find it out

and isn't it a marvelous feeling

to understand it better and be able to

persuade other people or be persuaded.

So it's to create in this school

from kindergarten through high school

a conversation that might engage and capture students

and that leads them to be more widely powerful

in the larger world.

Now, do we succeed?

Yes and no.

Just having a conversation with a seventh grader

this morning, and her family,

who had been through our elementary school,

and she had a lovely time,

and she enjoyed it very much,

but actually, (laughs) she didn't pick up that idea.

(laughter)

She did pick up the idea that school

is a nice place to be,

but not that this conversation has not yet engaged her.

But I do think that in talking

to the graduates of our schools,

and in talking to our own students,

that they have begun to get that idea.

It's like I was thinking about my own education.

That the best part of my education

may well have taken place sitting around the dinner table

overhearing a conversation that was carried on

above my head, but which intrigued me.

And in many ways, the inter-age grouping,

the kinds of relationships we try to

establish between students and faculty,

they're also efforts for kids to be able to

listen into a conversation that is sometimes

being carried out above their heads.

But which might intrigue them and interest them.

So that's the idea that we're struggling with.

How to create a school that's powerful enough

to turn kids onto the possible power of ideas

in their lives.

(kids chattering)