Program Report: Stuart Albright ? The Power of a Diverse Public ...

Stuart Albright, a much honored teacher at Jordan High School, spoke to the club about his recently published book Bull City.? Stuart graduated from UNC with a degree in English and Creative Writing and from Harvard with a Master of Education.? Besides teaching English and Creative Writing at Jordan High for the last ten years, he also coaches football?undoubtedly a rare combination.? Apparently he teaches well but I suspect it is also his charisma and enthusiasm that inspires student creativity and excellence.? In 2006 he was named the Durham Public Schools Teacher of the Year.? Two years later, he received the National Milken Educator Award which Teacher Magazine calls the ?Oscar? of teaching citations.?? Those are not the accolades earned solely by well-crafted lectures and consistently superior student scores on standardized tests!

Stuart?s first two books were non-fiction, but they serve as prologue to his recently published novel.? Blessed Returns is an account of a summer spent working in the hard scrabble slums of Camden, New Jersey.? Sidelines: A North Carolina Story of Community, Race and High School Football, published in 2009 tells the stories of how high school football eased the transition from segregated school systems in nine North Carolina communities, including Durham and his native Gastonia.

Bull City deals with racial diversity in a high school setting that is a microcosm of our larger society.? It is what might be called a ?literary thriller.?? Much of the plot and many of the characters in this novel are inspired by stories told by students in his creative writing classes at Jordan High.? This novel explores an underlying question?are we living in a ?post-racial America???that Stuart had been pondering for more than a decade.? Stuart suggests there is some evidence?Obama?s election in 2008, for example?that American society has moved significantly beyond racial prejudices. A personal point of reference was a teaching stint in Boston during 9/11 when he saw whites and blacks accosting students wearing Muslim garb and Somali students beaten by gangs because they were ?different.?? Stuart senses that things are much improved now, at least in racially diverse Jordan High where 40 percent of the students are white, 40 percent black and 20 percent ?other? (Asian, Hispanic, Occaneechi Indian, or an admixture of any of these categories).? If you want students to really reveal themselves, he said, just get them to write about their life experiences.? One of the most unexpected revelations?and a story speaking to how diversity provides a hospitable environment for toleration?was the sweet story of a romance between two of his creative writing students, one a black male Muslim and, the other, a female Hindu.? To tell such stories, Stuart founded a press, McKinnon Press, to publish among other things anthologies of writings of his Jordan High students.? No wonder Stuart has earned the praise of students and peers.

If you want to buy Stuart?s book online you can do that in two places, www.stuartalbright.com or www.mckinnonpress.com. I urge you to do it on the McKinnon Press site where you can also get the works published by his students, several for free in downloadable versions.

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Submitted by Allen Cronenberg

Source: http://durhamrotaryclub.org/2012/07/program-report-stuart-albright-the-power-of-a-diverse-public-education/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=program-report-stuart-albright-the-power-of-a-diverse-public-education

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