Posts Tagged ‘Promise Academy’
Geoffrey Canada’s Ancestors
Geoffrey Canada was the subject (along with Barbara Walters!) of Henry Louis Gates’s most recent “Finding Your Roots” program. Some amazing moments, including the will that valued Geoff’s great-great-grandfather, Thomas, a slave, at $250. Plus students at Promise Academy learning how much of their DNA ancestry traces to Africa.
Three Quick Items
1. Here’s a review of “Whatever It Takes” by Jennifer L. Steele, published in the Harvard Educational Review back in the fall of 2009, but only now available online. Steele writes:
Whatever It Takes is that rarest of phenomena—an education book that can be described as a page-turner.
2. Glen Pinder and Chris Finn, the stars of chapter 7 of “Whatever It Takes,” have left the Promise Academy middle school, where they were principal and dean, respectively, and are now working together again at Lady Liberty Academy Charter School in Newark, N.J. According to this article in Local Talk News, “Pinder was recruited by the Newark Charter School Fund and Newark Mayor Cory Booker to help turn around the struggling school.”
3. A recent post on Search Marketing Daily’s SearchBlog profiled Frank Lee, a search engine optimization pro who just took a job as head of sales and marketing at an SEO firm called DataPop. The post included this unexpected tidbit:
When asked which book he is reading to prepare for his new role, Lee responded: “Whatever It Takes” by Paul Tough, a tale about driving change.
New space for Promise Academy
Construction is underway on a $100 million building in the center of the St. Nicholas housing project in central Harlem that will house the Promise Academy charter school as well as a health clinic, a community center, and other programs run by the Harlem Children’s Zone. In an article in the New York Post, Geoffrey Canada described his ambition for the new building:
“It would be wrong to consider it just a school. Our mission is much larger. We’re trying to give all the support our kids are going to need in one place. That’s what makes it unique.”
An article in the Epoch Times goes into more detail about the project’s funding, which includes $60 million from the city’s department of education, $20 million from Goldman Sachs, and $6 million from Google.
Promise Academy Expansion
Gotham Schools reports that the Harlem Children’s Zone is in talks with the New York City Housing Authority to construct a new school building in the St. Nicholas housing project. The Promise Academy would expand into the new building:
HCZ and NYCHA officials are pitching the new building as a continuation of the Zone’s mission to integrate education and social services and connect an isolated housing development to the wider community. Residents of the Saint Nicholas Houses would also receive an admissions preference to the school, and officials said that residents would also receive a preference for an anticipated 100 jobs created by the new school.
There’s more coverage in the New York Post, in the Daily News, and on NY1.