Be the Change tells the remarkable story of an innovative public high school launched by dedicated teachers in East Palo Alto, California, one of a growing number of low-income communities starved of the resources needed to serve its students and schools. Chronicling a rags-to-riches story of how two very different communities came together to change the historical trajectory of educational failure that had robbed so many students of their futures, Be the Change demonstrates how to plant the seeds of new possibilities in its place. The school’s unique design, modeled after successful small schools in New York City, offers authentic and engaging instruction in a personalized setting that has allowed students who start off far behind to graduate and go on to college in record numbers. Each chapter examines one of the critical elements the teachers found essential to enable student success: the creation of an academic culture, the development of high standards with high supports, and the process of learning to teach so that students can learn. “A powerful and compelling tale about how educators, parents, and representatives of one of America's most powerful universities came together to create a school that is now a beacon of pride and hope. Their struggle to overcome the obstacles they encountered along the way will inspire others who seek to find ways to use education as a means to break the cycle of poverty and to expand opportunity and justice.” —Pedro A. Noguera, distinguished professor of education, Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences, UCLA “This is the story of a little school that could. Could get students to college and beyond, that is. It’s filled with evidence, quotes, and anecdotes, but more importantly it demonstrates that will and skill, aligned with vision and values, results in learning environments in which students thrive. While acknowledging the challenges, trials, and tribulations of creating and leading an urban high school, the authors share their success in a passionate and compelling way, inviting others to learn alongside them as they build successful futures for their students.” —Douglas Fisher, professor of educational leadership, San Diego State University “With demanding academics, loving support, and genuine affirmation, the staff, parents, community members, and other supporters of EPAA, as well as Stanford faculty and staff, present an encouraging picture of the kind of high school all young people deserve. This kind of success is not easy, but in describing how it can be done, Linda Darling-Hammond and her co-authors have provided a stirring example for all of those interested in equity and hope for our public schools.” —Sonia Nieto, professor emerita, Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The congregants thanked God that they weren't like all those hopeless people outside the church, bound for hell. So the Westboro Baptist Church's Sunday service began, and Rebecca Barrett-Fox, a curious observer, wondered why anyone would seek spiritual sustenance through other people's damnation. It is a question that piques many a witness to Westboro's more visible activity—the "GOD HATES FAGS" picketing of funerals. In God Hates, sociologist Barrett-Fox takes us behind the scenes of Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church. The first full ethnography of this infamous presence on America's Religious Right, her book situates the church's story in the context of American religious history—and reveals as much about the uneasy state of Christian practice in our day as it does about the workings of the Westboro Church and Fred Phelps, its founder. God Hates traces WBC's theological beliefs to a brand of hyper-Calvinist thought reaching back to the Puritans—an extreme Calvinism, emphasizing predestination, that has proven as off-putting as Westboro's actions, even for other Baptists. And yet, in examining Westboro's role in conservative politics and its contentious relationship with other fundamentalist activist groups, Barrett-Fox reveals how the church's message of national doom in fact reflects beliefs at the core of much of the Religious Right's rhetoric. Westboro's aggressively offensive public activities actually serve to soften the anti-gay theology of more mainstream conservative religious activism. With an eye to the church's protest at military funerals, she also considers why the public has responded so differently to these than to Westboro's anti-LGBT picketing. With its history of Westboro Baptist Church and its founder, and its profiles of defectors, this book offers a complex, close-up view of a phenomenon on the fringes of American Christianity—and a broader, disturbing view of the mainstream theology it at once masks and reflects.
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