Word: brooklyn
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...Jesus, says Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, religion professor emeritus at Brooklyn College and co-author with his wife of the book Recognizing the Latino Resurgence, is in some ways a familiar export from Puerto Rico, where he was born and lived until age 20. Stevens-Arroyo and some other scholars believe that the island's original colonial inheritance of Spanish Catholicism, combined with subsequent exposure to American Protestantism and its constitutionally mandated religious open market, created a a culture of religious seekers and corresponding "enthusiasms for overnight sensations." "This guy" says Stevens-Arroyo, "is one among Heinz's 57 varieties...
Tanya Garcia, 19, of Brooklyn also went off track at the end of middle school. A fire destroyed her family's apartment and left them homeless for four months. She landed in a large, impersonal high school, and quickly became disengaged. "I started getting into drugs--weed, drinking, cocaine and heroin." After two years of mostly cutting class, she had accumulated a grand total of one credit. When she tried to transfer to another school, "the dean pretty much laughed in my face," she says. At 16, she stopped going to school. "I didn't see myself having any kind...
...easy to spot what's going right at South Brooklyn Community High, the transfer school that Garcia attends. It's obvious the minute the doors open. Waiting in the bright, airy reception area are six advocate-counselors, or ACs. Each counsels 25 or so kids, whom they greet individually, often with elaborate, personalized handshakes or fist pounds. These close relationships are cemented by daily meetings and twice-weekly group sessions. When any of the school's 150 students fail to show up in the morning, the AC makes a phone call to find out why. Freddie Perez, 17, compares this...
...weigh down these students. "We don't have the expertise for these complex challenges," explains schools chancellor Joel Klein, who heads the New York City Department of Education. The academic staff is also enthusiastic about the partnership. "Teachers can focus on the best way to educate students," says South Brooklyn's principal, Vanda Belusic-Vollor. "That's huge...
Classes at South Brooklyn have 18 to 25 students, as opposed to as many as 34 in the city's large high schools. Students call their teachers by their first name. Because the school runs on a trimester system, kids can rack up credits more quickly than they could at an ordinary high school--part of the plan to keep them moving briskly toward graduation day. The teachers favor a hands-on approach; there's very little chalk and talk. Perez says he used to hate U.S. history. "In my old school, they'd just give you a page number...