Urban Education - an NJ LEEP Blog

From, The Decree, Volume I, Issue 2  

Craig Livermore

Executive Director, NJ LEEP, Inc.

Perhaps it is a good thing to be perpetually dissatisfied. Perhaps it is of benefit to be as Neo in The Matrix—living with a constant thorn in one’s heart because one knows that the world that we see–is not the world that should be. And one knows as Neo did that there was never really any choice. One is impelled to take the red pill to unveil the falsity, and to allow for the creation of a new reality.

And so as NJ LEEP has made a successful start, it somehow does not feel sufficient. As we have interviewed 130 eighth grade students from Newark, East Orange and Jersey City for our Summer Law Institute and After-School program, it gnaws at us that we can only take thirty students as our first freshman class this year. And so we must find a way to raise money to double the size of our in-coming class in 2008. And in spite of the very positive response we have received from students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators, we have also met myriads of students who have already given up on the dream by the eighth and ninth grades when we first meet them. And so we will be speaking with other educational organizations, brainstorming and planning, to see if we in some manner can extend our services back to the seventh and eighth grade so we can reach a much greater number of students at an earlier level of adolescent development.

Because I am kept up at night with thoughts of the depression and angst faced by my former students in Brooklyn, which we are also seeing in the faces of students here in urban New Jersey as the tears well up in the eyes of the 13-year-olds we are interviewing. As I make a futile quest to grasp an ever-elusive peace because of the internal demons such students are facing arising from external circumstance, I somehow know that such restlessness is really a blessing. For the mission of urban education is not only about who will have access to money, power and privilege in 20 years—it is at a much deeper level of reality about the deep psychological pain born of dreams deferred, dreams confused, dreams unstructured, and dreams un-nurtured.

Yet, we must at the same time honor the blessings. For example, NJ LEEP has trained nine wonderful Seton Hall Law students who are teaching “An Introduction to Constitutional Rights” in public high schools and middle schools. These law students are manifesting deft and powerful teaching technique after only twelve hours of training and have jumped with whole-hearted commitment into the fray. We also have met and are working with numerous passionate and committed teachers and administrators in the public schools with which we are partnering. And our work truly cannot be done without them.

So perhaps the answer is to recognize the blessings, but to never become complacent. NJ LEEP has on its office wall a print by Romare Beardon. The print is of a painting created in 1984 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. The painting features a black girl and a black boy, both reading a book. The caption reads in large letters: “The Politics of Excellence.” I ask all of you to meditate upon this caption with NJ LEEP. For if complacency and fear are the enemies inside all of us, then it is the politics of excellence which will overcome these enemies.

 From The Decree, Volume I, Issue I

Craig Livermore

Executive Director, NJ LEEP, Inc.

There is much to be done. The NJ LEEP mission has received a great deal of support thus far from the legal, academic, educational and political arenas in New Jersey. We are extremely grateful for this. Students, families and educational leaders in East Orange, Jersey City and Newark have also exhibited a great deal of enthusiasm for our programming. This reveals the desire of all these constituents for empowering educational opportunity. The response we have so far received has been very encouraging.

We are training ten committed law students to teach a law-related curriculum in five schools in Newark and East Orange beginning in February, and there are many more schools who wish to partner with us. By mid-February the NJ LEEP staff will have guest-taught a legal lesson to 1000 students in twenty different schools to recruit for our Summer Law Institute 2007. We will receive 500 pre-applications and 200 written applications for the thirty positions in our first Summer Law Institute class.

Yes—we have indeed been blessed by the communal show of support. But we also know that initial enthusiasm does not necessarily translate into the long-term objectively verifiable results that are the core of our mission. We must thus now commit ourselves to the every-day work which is the basis for all transformative education.

We believe there is a moral imperative for our society to face the glaring inequalities in educational outcomes between urban youth and those in private and suburban public schools. We are emboldened in this belief by the fact that many of you have voiced as similar commitment. NJ LEEP believes itself to be a part of a much larger movement of high quality urban educational outcomes based upon a multi-dimensional pedagogical model and a commitment to help student build the skills, habits and character they need to succeed.

I recently attended a constitutional law debate at Brooklyn Law School in which my former high school students at Legal Outreach made appellate-style arguments in front of practicing attorneys based upon the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The chills were palpable throughout my body as 15 and 16 year old kids from the “hood” made perspicacious and quick-reasoned arguments in a very complicated area of law which had all of us attorneys present working hard to keep up. That is power!. . .That is the ability to change one’s life and to change the world. Analytical ability, persuasive writing and persuasive speech will grant these students access to the channels of leadership which will bring new voices to the our nation’s pipeline of leadership.

This is the challenge and possibility ahead of us. We ask you all–we need you all–to join us in this mission. There is a great deal of power lying dormant in the urban youth of New Jersey. With your help, we can teach students in Newark, East Orange, Jersey City, and beyond how to access the transformative power that has always been within them.