The Journey from School to One-Room Schoolhouse

Abstract

A “textbook case” of the major urban transitions underway in the U.S. is how one local principal aptly described Hawthorne Middle School and its surrounding community. Over the past two decades, Hawthorne has shifted from a White dominant population to a Black dominant population to a Hispanic dominant population. Once a golf course community sporting a “Blue Ribbon” high school, the neighborhood surrounding the school is now jam-packed with low-income apartment complexes, several of which are condemned and others, which have blue tarps on their roofs signalling hurricane damage yet to be repaired. Some Hawthorne students, according to the city newspaper, walk on “the most dangerous street in America” to attend classes. But, in spite of this challenging backdrop, the teachers and students at Hawthorne Middle School work hard to “offset the less-than-positive influences of community,” as Doug Mack, the Creative Drama teacher, delicately worded it. The bleak urban milieu outside of Hawthorne’s school walls is not reflective of what is going on in classrooms inside. While it is true that one must pass through a metal detector and have one’s bags inspected upon entering Hawthorne, it is also true that one immediately encounters one of the campus’s two art galleries, a creative space that presents a vibrant, if not dizzying, mix of culture, texture, and sound.