This book follows students throughout their senior year of high school while attending Crenshaw High's magnet program. The narrative follows the gifted students as they navigate their AP English course as well as their day to day dramas.
This book was assigned reading for me recently, and I have to say the material opened my eyes. Not in the way you may think. The students are from the 1996-97 senior year, which was the same year I graduated, and I too took AP English.
I'm from Sacramento originally, and the inner city environment of Los Angeles' Crenshaw High was a place I knew about only from movies like "Boyz in the 'Hood". The conversations in the classroom in the book stand in stark contrast to my own experiences in the same class during the same year. In the book, at Crenshaw, the students have animated and lively, and often combative, discussions of the material they're reading. My classes were never like that. We were all far more nervous and privileged.
That was my theory, in fact. I had an idea that when a student's environment is chaotic and they're used to confrontation, something trivial (to them maybe) like a classroom discussion could be a forum for opinions and bating in loud and forceful terms. In my environment, where grades and college plans are important both at home and school from sophomore year on. The pressure is high, which effects the nerves, which in turn effects the desire to really say anything during classroom discussions.
Just a different environment is all. I had to return this book, and it's no longer in my library.
