Changing Lives: Voices from a School that Works - Softcover

These stories...will provide encouragement to those who are engaged in the daily struggle of supporting high-risk youth and challenge those who maintain that no intervention from outside the family can help. -- Lisbeth B. Schorr, Harvard University The experiences of these students...demonstrate again and again that what young people want and need is relatively simple...a community to belong to, something worthwhile to think about and to do, responsibility and acceptance, someone to love them, and others to care about. -- William Ayers, educational theorist, author, and distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago I urge educators and parents to read this unique and intimate book which provides a multidimensional look at a successful school and the students who benefitted from its work. -- Herb Kohl, writer and teacher This book is an absolute must, and reads like a delicious meal!...Buy it! Read it and smile!> -- Herb Kohl, writer and teacher * The Journal Of Alternative Education * The common sense and the uncommon compassion of the Community School has improved hundreds of young lives and enriched the surrounding neighborhoods. -- George Mitchell, U.S. Senate Majority Leader The common sense and the uncommon compassion of the Community School has improved hundreds of young lives and enriched the surrounding neighborhoods. -- George Mitchell, U.S. Senate Majority Leader These stories...will provide encouragement to those who are engaged in the daily struggle of supporting high-risk youth and challenge those who maintain that no intervention from outside the family can help. -- Lisbeth B. Schorr, Harvard University The experiences of these students...demonstrate again and again that what young people want and need is relatively simple...a community to belong to, something worthwhile to think about and to do, responsibility and acceptance, someone to love them, and others to care about. -- William Ayers, educational theorist, author, and distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago I urge educators and parents to read this unique and intimate book which provides a multidimensional look at a successful school and the students who benefitted from its work. -- Herb Kohl, writer and teacher This book is an absolute must, and reads like a delicious meal!...Buy it! Read it and smile! -- Herb Kohl, writer and teacher * The Journal Of Alternative Education *

This book tells the story of 40 high-school drop-outs over a period of twenty years who have attended the Community School, a small alternative school in Camden, Maine. The students' stories indirectly reveal the history of the school itself, its fragile beginning and growth pangs as staff learned from students.