Project Description

The award-winning 2013 documentary The New Public chronicles the lives, and daily experiences, of a group of high school teachers and their students in their first and fourth years in an alternative school in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Director Jyllian Gunther’s powerful film illustrates in stark relief the uphill battles facing teens living in poverty, many in situations of racial and economic isolation and many with single parents, as they try to make it to graduation. In particular, the students and their parents, teachers, and school leaders highlight the influence of so-called “non-cognitive” skills on the academic outcomes sought, and on the particular challenges at the high school level.

Please join the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education and the Economic Policy Institute for a screening and a discussion of the film’s research and policy implications. Washington D.C.’s Dunbar High School math teacher David Tansey will join BBA National Coordinator Elaine Weiss in leading the discussion, and offer his insights on surviving “turnarounds,” creative teaching, and more.
3:30 Screening
5:00 Discussion

To Read a Review; EdNews Voices. “the New Public” Reviewed

THE NEW PUBLIC TRAILER from THE NEW PUBLIC on Vimeo.