Searching for Hope: Life at a Failing School in the Heart of America

10. You Have to Crawl First

+ + + 10 YOU HAVE TO CRAWL FIRST. Every Sunday my latest column on Manual would run on the front page of the newspaper. That was an unusually high-profile location for columns. For four years most of my work had appeared on pages deeper inside the paper—the traditional home for opinion columns. But Manual was so full of amazing tales, interesting people, and wonderfully mind-boggling issues that the bosses had given these columns more valuable real estate. The depressing state of newspapers had no doubt contributed to their decision, as we simply had fewer reporters than ever to produce the copy needed to fill seven newspapers each week. My column had become a reliable filler of space every Sunday. Either way, I wasn’t complaining. The front-page placement had given the series a profile it never would have enjoyed on a less-prominent page. Everywhere I went, people brought up the series, the students, and teachers I was writing about. They asked about Allison and Kelly. They told me to say hi to Sarge. The attention the columns received made the decision to keep going back to Manual an easy one. You have to crawl first. 101 The thing that kept me coming back the most, however, was the constant intrigue and the knowledge that with each visit I would meet a compelling person, or hear about a new vexing problem, or watch a dramatic scene play out. I was having more fun than I’d ever had as a journalist. There was humor in the hallway dialogue, drama in the office, and every day I was learning a tremendous amount, even though I would routinely note that I was a trained observer and not an education expert. I hated to skip even a day. So much so that on the many days when I had to report and write columns on completely unrelated issues—such as upcoming elections or political scandals—I would find a way to slip away from the newspaper for an hour or two and head over to Manual. Even on those days I wanted to at least check in, to stop in the dean’s office or observe a class. I wanted to get the latest on students I was planning to write about. Fortunately the school was a straight three-mile drive from my office. It was a drive I made hundreds of times during the school year. One morning I walked in at about 9:00 am and found the main office largely empty. With nothing going on there, I began to head down to Spencer Lloyd’s choir class to see how he and his students were doing. But along the way I noticed a buzz of activity coming from one of the school’s auditoriums. Curious, I stepped in and saw more than a hundred students in the auditorium’s seats and aisles. Vice Principal Liz Owens was talking on the stage. “This is a point in life where you make a pledge,” she told the students, “and a promise to graduate so that you’ll have the opportunities you deserve later on.” The idea for the meeting stemmed from research Owens had done into the school’s long history. She had discovered a long-forgotten tradition that stretched back more than one hundred years, to a time when Manual Training High School was based out of another building even closer to downtown. In its earliest days, Manual seniors would come to school at the beginning of the year carrying carnations. Then, in an annual ceremony, the senior class would present the carnations to Charles Emmerich, the school’s legendary first principal, along with a promise to stick with school and graduate. A century later Owens knew the school needed to find ways to persuade more students to graduate. So she conceived a plan to bring back the tradition, which hadfadedawaydecadesearlier.Switchingitupforanerainwhichstudentswere unlikely to come to school bearing flowers, the updated ceremony would have administrators handing the carnations to the seniors. The pledge, the promise to graduate, would remain the same. That, after all, was the more important part of this tradition. 102 searching for hope For all of Manual’s problems, most of the students who actually made it to their senior year would graduate. (The school’s low graduation rate was due largelytothemanyfreshmenandsophomoreswhodroppedouteachyear.)Still, Owens knew that many of...