Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, much has been rebuilt in New Orleans ā including the public schools. But the current education system is radically different from the one that people who grew up in New Orleans remember. Virtually all students in the city now attend charter schools. Many of their teachers are both new to New Orleans and new to teaching.
Jonathan Johnson began teaching social studies to eighth-graders at one of the city's charter schools in 2010. After a rough start, Johnson says he became known as the "warrior teacher" because his classroom was all about "fighting the war on low expectations for African-American youth."
In 2014, Johnson was a finalist for the Fishman Prize, a prestigious and highly selective teaching award. Now Johnson is hoping to create a new education experience through a concept he called Rooted Schools. I reached out to him to learn why he decided to teach in New Orleans and why he is now trying to develop a new charter school.
[For more of this story, written by Michel Martin, go to http://www.npr.org/2015/04/07/...-to-beat-the-streets]
Comments (0)