Posts Tagged ‘Geoffrey Canada’
Sunday, October 31st, 2010
On Oct. 22, Geoffrey Canada gave a keynote speech in Milwaukee at the conference of the Alliance for Children and Families. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that “Canada addressed some of the questions he’s faced about the practicality of applying his Harlem Children’s Zone model to the rest of the nation.”
“There is a double standard in this country,” Canada said, adding that when people ask about non-educational services at Harlem Children’s Zone and how they affect kids’ scores, he admits they don’t. But he asks why they want their kids to see the dentist and play tennis.
“We know these things are important; we shouldn’t have to justify it,” Canada said.
By building communities around children, especially those in the most challenging circumstances, Canada said you can foster a sense of optimism in children. Educational success will follow.
“In saving kids, you got to be prepared to save families,” Canada said.
Accompanying the article was a column by Alan J. Borsuk, who took issue with some of Canada’s strategies, but concluded,
[T]here is something to what Canada says. The schools in Milwaukee that are most in line with what he advocates really are different from your general run of struggling public schools. The energy and dedication put into the pursuit of getting the students to succeed is at the core of the difference.
Maybe the people running and teaching in the large number of schools in Milwaukee with weak results should rest less easily, should be pushing harder to find better ways to do things, and should expect more of themselves. There are efforts under way to overhaul some of those schools, but I’m quite sure they are not as ambitious as Canada would want.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, newspapers, speeches, Wisconsin
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Friday, September 24th, 2010
Geoffrey Canada is one of the central characters in the documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” which opens today in selected theaters. Earlier this week, the Daily News published a long profile of Canada tied to the movie. In the review in the New York Times today, Stephen Holden writes:
If Mr. Canada, who was born in the South Bronx and grew up to be one of the country’s most charismatic and inspiring educators, is not Superman, he must be a close relative. Those who have read Paul Tough’s book, “Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America,” will know that the 97-block Harlem Children’s Zone, which he founded and runs, is no miracle. The zone is astoundingly successful at getting children through high school and into college. But that success, largely dependent on private money, is a costly product of laborious trial and error.
Tags: "Superman", Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, New York City, newspapers, NYT
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Saturday, August 28th, 2010
Last week, Geoffrey Canada visited Cleveland, where he gave a speech at the Palace Theater to an audience of 1,400. The city is the site of the Cleveland Promise Neighborhood, an ambitious attempt to replicate the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone. (The local public radio station, WCPN, reported on the Cleveland initiative in June.) This week, inspired by Canada’s visit, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reposted a review of Whatever It Takes. And in the Cleveland Leader, columnist Mansfield Frazier gave a glowing account of Canada’s speech, but confessed to feeling pessimistic about the chances for a Zone replication in Cleveland:
I’ve been dancing around this issue for a couple of months now, but, feeling empowered by Geoffrey Canada’s inspiring and brave speech, let me just give voice to my concern, just lay it on the table, as we attempt to move forward with his model here in Cleveland: We’ll figure out a way to do it wrong.
Left to our own devices and old ways of doing things, we’ll take a program that works well in Harlem and make a mess of it here in Cleveland … we’re experts at screwing things up. And then the power structure will be able to step back and say, “Oh well, we tried, but you know how hard it is to try to help those people.”
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, newspapers, Ohio, Promise Neighborhoods, radio, reviews, speeches
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Sunday, May 16th, 2010
In this morning’s Durham News, a column by Wanda Boone, co-chair of the East Durham Children’s Initiative, on my talk this afternoon:
In his candid book about Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, Paul Tough follows several families through the first years of school, inviting us to take a hard and honest look at the work, the hope and the possibility of change for at-risk youth and families.
It was this book, “Whatever It Takes,” that inspired Durham County Commissioner Ellen Reckhow to pull together groups of community stakeholders, agencies and advocates to do whatever it takes in East Durham, through the East Durham Children’s Initiative (EDCI).
And in the Herald-Sun, an editorial on the same topic:
The members of the steering committee, including county Commissioner Ellen Reckhow and Durham Public Schools Chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown, talk about the Harlem Children’s Zone’s success with missionary zeal — which they credit in part to “Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America,” by Paul Tough.
Tough, a New York Times Magazine editor, drew a fine, nuanced portrait of Canada and the families that the HCZ serves, illuminating the effects of poverty and the challenges of extracting an entire city district from its grasp.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, newspapers, North Carolina, Promise Neighborhoods, speeches
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Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Geoffrey Canada was interviewed by West Virginia Public Broadcasting about the Harlem Children’s Zone and the possibility of replicating his model in West Virginia. You can listen to the audio here.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, interviews, Promise Neighborhoods, radio, West Virginia
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Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
In the current issue of Good Magazine, there’s an article about the Promise Neighborhood initiative, including this point/counterpoint on the importance of leadership:
Taking something that works in one place and transplanting it to another is made more complicated when the original has a charismatic, strong leader, with raging success at bringing in philanthropic and corporate donations, and a board of trustees representing some of the most influential businessmen and financiers in the country. “One of the real challenges for Promise Neighborhoods is that we can’t clone Geoffrey Canada,” said Michael Rebell, a professor of law and education at Teachers College.
But Paul Tough, the author of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, who has written about Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone since 2004, has a different perspective. “It does not require a cult of personality,” he says. “It does not require a charismatic leader.” Tough envisions the model looking “different in different cities. In some it might be based mostly in the local government; in others it might be built around a non-profit or a church.”
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, magazines, Promise Neighborhoods
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Sunday, April 4th, 2010
In Charlotte, N.C., last month, Geoffrey Canada spoke to “hundreds of Charlotte leaders,” according to a story in the Charlotte Observer, including “educators, agency heads and civic leaders [who] have been talking about whether Charlotte could follow” the Harlem Children’s Zone model.
And in Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to a story in the Tulsa World, Canada visited schools and spoke to a symposium on education about many topics, including the prospects for something like a Zone in Tulsa:
“There are a lot of reasons for the city of Tulsa to be excited about the future. A lot of fundamentals exist in very high-quality levels here in Tulsa,” Canada said. “There has to be a clear plan drawn up about where we go from here.”
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, newspapers, North Carolina, Oklahoma, photographs, speeches
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Sunday, April 4th, 2010
From two very different publications, articles about the Harlem Children’s Zone and the prospect of Promise Neighborhoods. In Real Change News, a weekly paper sold by the homeless in Seattle, an interview with Geoffrey Canada, in which he recounts the advice he has given the Obama Administration about Promise Neighborhoods:
We felt like they had to go with the right leadership. They had to get communities that were already down the road on figuring out their area and working out the collaboration issues. There had to be some structure for management in place, and there had to be resources so that it wouldn’t be under resourced, and a real commitment of local leadership — for the vision of the community and not for the individual schools. We thought those were some of the must-haves in the first few of these that have come up. So we’ve had those kinds of conversations with the administration.
And in Forbes, Nicole Perlroth cautions:
Any school rescue program that relies less on donations and more on taxpayer money is at risk of becoming a captive of the education establishment. A two-year project to replicate the Zone in Jacksonville, Fla. saw its largest private donor, the Chartrand Foundation, back out when it appeared that the program would be run by government officials and lack the Zone’s accountability.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, HCZ, interviews, magazines, newspapers, Obama, Promise Neighborhoods, Seattle
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Monday, February 8th, 2010
Geoffrey Canada will be giving a speech next month in Charlotte, N.C. According to this article in the Charlotte Observer,
He’ll find a well-versed audience. Dozens of leaders from Charlotte-area agencies, charities, schools, advocacy groups and businesses have attended “book club” discussions focusing on a book about Canada. His creation, the Harlem Children’s Zone, provides education for expectant parents, preschool, health care, charter schools and tutoring for families in a 100-block poverty-stricken area of New York City.
Foundation for the Carolinas President Michael Marsicano was among the first group to read “Whatever It Takes” and talk about how the ideas might translate to Charlotte.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, newspapers, North Carolina, speeches
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Monday, January 18th, 2010
After Geoffrey Canada’s speech in Madison, Wisconsin, last week, some new coverage by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, including this report on a task force to create a Harlem’s Children Zone-like project in Milwaukee:
Gov. Jim Doyle has said that the state’s application for Race to the Top, a pool of federal grants worth $4.35 billion, will include a proposal to create a Milwaukee Children’s Zone with part of the money. In addition, a Milwaukee Public Schools task force – formed in the summer of 2009 by Doyle, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers – has called for the creation of “Milwaukee Children’s Zones.” Also, state lawmakers pushing for Milwaukee’s mayor to take over MPS have included a proposal for a local Harlem Children’s Zone-like experiment as part of their governance bill pending in the state Legislature.
But in yesterday’s paper, Alan J. Borsuk, the education columnist, interviewed Canada and struck a more skeptical note:
Then came what I would suggest is the big one, when it comes to Milwaukee: Canada said, “Then there’s the leadership issue.” You need, he said, “a leadership group that’s prepared to take on the mission. . . . There has to be a leadership strategy where someone is held accountable.” Canada’s definitions of mission and leadership leave an awful lot of Milwaukee leaders in the dust.
Tags: Geoffrey Canada, newspapers, Promise Neighborhoods, speeches, Wisconsin
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