Cultivating Care, Connection, and Community: Carver High School of Engineering and Science

This book-in-progress challenges the idea that demography is destiny and showcases the possibilities of learning and teaching in an under-resourced, majority-Black, majority-low-income public high school. Educators, families, and youth are tired of deficit-oriented books that argue that public schools are broken beyond repair. While I recognize the structural challenges that exist in our nation’s public schools and society, in this new work, I have deliberately chosen to highlight the possibility that public education holds.  

This book stems from a National Science Foundation-funded research project conducted at Philadelphia's George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science. It documents and analyzes the practices and policies that administrators, educators, and youth have implemented at Carver High School and how these policies and practices have contributed to the cultivation of a public school where teachers and children thrive. This book directly challenges the notion that our public schools are all failing and offers a framework for others--school leaders, classroom educators, and national policymakers--who are thinking about how to best support low-income public schools under-resourced communities across the nation.