The Sojourner Truth soccer team just won the Spring 2011 Recreational Co-Ed Division in the Crescent City Soccer League.  Lead by Juniors Ali Abdur-Rahman, Nahum Membreno, Terrell Dozier, and Sophomore Michael Graham, the STA soccer team had an incredibly successful season posting a record of 9 wins, 2 ties, and 1 loss.

Comprised of both staff members and students; STA soccer exists to teach scholars the basic fundamentals of
soccer while providing a safe environment for all members of the Sojourner Truth community to bond outside of the classroom. STA soccer has a game every Sunday afternoon and practices once a week on Thursdays.

This past Tuesday, March 29, 13 enthusiastic Sojourner Truth students got a head-start on exploring the college scene.  Each had the privilege of full-day individualized tours around the pristine campus of nearby Loyola University.  Donning the STA black and burgundy, they shadowed members of the Loyola Greek community who gave them an insider’s look at the various patterns of university life.  The STA scholars attended classes, a luncheon, organizational events, and perhaps most importantly, they were able to experience the many informal exchanges that characterize the daily lives of college students.

Students reported back on how fun and exhilarating their days were—they especially emphasized the diversity of classes (Buddhism, Psychology, Architecture) and how welcoming their college guides were.

The experience was on the whole tremendously enriching and indispensable to their educational careers.  Not only did it enhance the lives of these 13 proud STA scholars, but it also helped to build the image of this special charter school as one that is forward-looking and dedicated to the vision of higher education.

This summer, Caitlin Canfield will combine her love of travel with her commitment to service when she takes a group of Sojourner Truth Academy students on a service-learning trip to Panama.  Canfield is a master’s candidate in international health and development at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

A volunteer at the uptown New Orleans charter high school, Canfield saw firsthand how the school’s students, almost all from low-income families, had never had the opportunity to travel and “be a tourist.”

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This summer, a select group of 10 Sojourner Truth Academy Spanish scholars will partner with Fundación ProEd, a grass roots not-for-profit organization, for a 10 day summer service learning trip to Panamá, Central America. In Panamá, scholars will work with local students and children to improve an urban school, provide a rural school with necessary educational supplies, and teach English at a local orphanage. Scholars will also have the chance to tour Panama City, visit the Panama Canal, and experience the Panamanian rainforest.

This trip will provide STA scholars with a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel outside of the United States. Most students at STA have never traveled internationally, and this summer will be the first time that nearly all our students will travel by plane. In Panamá, scholars will be able to practice and improve their Spanish and take part in cross-cultural exchange activities. STA students will return home with a new understanding of their own communities and the world.

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By Kristi Keck

(CNN) — After a nearly decade-long effort, the National Congress of Black Women on Tuesday honored Sojourner Truth by making her the first African-American woman to have a memorial bust in the U.S. Capitol.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and first lady Michelle Obama applaud the unveiling of the Sojourner Truth bust.

Truth, whose given name was Isabella Baumfree, was a slave who became one of the most respected abolitionists and women’s rights activists.

“One could only imagine what Sojourner Truth, an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is kind of woman … what she would have to say about this incredible gathering,” first lady Michelle Obama said at the Celebration of Truth ceremony. “We are all here because, as my husband says time and time again, we stand on the shoulders of giants like Sojourner Truth.”

“And just as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott would be pleased to know that we have a woman serving as the speaker of the House of Representatives, I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as the first lady of the United States of America,” she said.

Dignitaries and congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, House Republican Leader John Boehner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, attended the ceremony marking the unveiling of the statue.

Along with musical performances, actress Cicely Tyson recited “Ain’t I A Woman,” Truth’s famous 1851 speech to a women’s rights convention.

Clinton and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who worked together to draft legislation to commission the bust, were among speakers who paid tribute to the late C. Delores Tucker, former chairwoman of the NCBW, who spearheaded the effort for the Truth memorial.

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“What a wonderful day it is to be here in Emancipation Hall for this great occasion when Sojourner Truth takes her rightful place alongside the heroes who have helped to shape our nation’s history,” Clinton said.

“Today, she takes her place in this Capitol, and we are the better for it,” Clinton said. “She is a sojourner of truth, by truth, and for truth. And her words, her example and her legacy will never perish from this earth, so long as men and women stand up and say loudly and clearly, ‘We hear you echoing down through the years of history. We believe that your journey is not yet over, and we will make the rest of that journey with you.’ ”

The bronze statue, which was crafted by Los Angeles, California, sculptor Artis Lane, will stand in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitor Center.

“All the visitors in the U.S. Capitol will hear the story of brave women who endured the greatest of humanity’s indignities. They’ll hear the story of Sojourner Truth, who didn’t allow those indignities to destroy her spirit, who fought for her own freedom and then used her powers … to help others,” Michelle Obama said.

“The power of this bust will not just be in the metal that delineates Sojourner Truth’s face; it will also be in the message that defines her legacy. Forevermore, in the halls of one of our country’s greatest monuments of liberty and equality, justice and freedom, Sojourner Truth’s story will be told again and again and again and again.”

In 1997, Congress passed a special act that called for relocating the Portrait Monument from the Capitol basement to the rotunda. The 7.5-ton statue depicts three leaders of the suffragette movement — Anthony, Stanton and Mott.

A group called the Sojourner Truth Crusade was upset about the statue’s relocation because it didn’t incorporate Truth. After Congress agreed to go ahead with a move, advocates proposed commissioning a new statue that would include Truth.

In 2006, Congress passed a bill to honor the abolitionist with her own memorial.

By Irene Noguchi, Stanford Magazine

Channa Cook can remember exactly when her life changed.

She was a high school literacy coach in Los Angeles when her former co-worker Kristin Moody called up with her latest idea: join me for spring break in New Orleans, to paint schools and rebuild houses. “I said, ‘Oh, no, I’m sleeping over spring break,’” Cook says, laughing.

But she heeded Moody’s request. They saw schools where teachers were “browbeaten” and students were “unanimated.” One teacher told them that if a student didn’t show potential by age 14, it was “too late.”

“That made us both angry,” Moody says. “Neither of us met a 14-year-old who wasn’t different by 18. If high school does its job, that child should be fundamentally changed.” The two women looked at each other and said, “Someone has to do this.”

So they went home, packed up their lives and moved to New Orleans.

Not two years later, Cook, ’02, MA ’03, is standing in front of her very own school in New Orleans. Buses pull up and students—her students—stream out.

“Ms. Cook!” a smiling boy with dreadlocks calls out. “Look! I’m tucking in my shirt.”

That’s who she is now: Ms. Cook. Principal Channa Cook. A 28-year-old in charge of 110 students, eight teachers and her very own charter school in post-Katrina New Orleans.

“I’ve been dreaming about this for the last year and here it is. Amazing!” Cook exclaims.

She still can’t believe the proposal that she and Moody drafted—about a school that focused on social justice and required students to complete community-oriented projects—was approved. A nonprofit called New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) selected them to start one of six new charter schools, Sojourner Truth Academy. (Moody, now a new mother, works three-fourths time on development and operational support for the school.) These open-enrollment charters are “incubator” programs, Cook says, “a testing ground.”

Before Hurricane Katrina, the city had three main types of schools: public, private and select-enrollment magnets. It also had a problem. In terms of student achievement, New Orleans public schools were among the worst-ranked schools in one of the worst-ranked states. The storm washed away classrooms, but it also created an opportunity.

After the storm, the state formed the Recovery School District, which covers public and charter schools in Orleans Parish. “People are so excited,” says Sojourner Truth’s art teacher, Marti LeBourgeois, who grew up in New Orleans. “One of the blessings of the storm is that had Katrina not happened, none of these schools would have happened. New Orleans would still be pouring out children who don’t know how to read or write.”

The state granted Cook a five-year charter and funding. Now comes the test: can Sojourner Truth Academy succeed?

It’s Tuesday, and the Spanish teacher is out sick. So Cook is teaching Spanish. With such a small staff, she’s the go-to substitute. She’s also superintendent, guidance counselor and disciplinarian. “I’m not letting myself get sick,” she says. “It’s not allowed.”

The bell rings, and students stream out. They’re all ninth graders. (A new grade will be added each year.) All their classes are squeezed into a single hallway, which the school shares with the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court. There’s one stairwell, lined with college pennants. Students and teachers share the men’s and women’s restrooms.

Students hurry to Ms. Wright’s class, where they’ll re-enact an Edgar Allen Poe thriller. To group sessions with Ms. Kindschy, the social worker who mediates everything from fistfights to disputes over whose artwork is better. To Mr. Feiler, who is swirling graduated cylinders and (doubling as the soccer coach) just posted the new roster. Math with Mr. Griggs “is my favorite,” says De’Angelo Adams, 16. He says he hated it at his former school, but “I love it now. I get the concepts.” He smiles widely. Cook says she can imagine him getting away with most things with that smile.

“He is the most pleasant child I’ve ever met,” she says. “But he’s also reading well below grade level.”

Cook says 25 students are at the first- to third-grade reading level; half the school is reading at the sixth-grade level. Sojourner Truth’s percentage of students with social and special-education needs mirrors that of Orleans Parish’s traditional noncharter high schools. Some don’t speak English at all. Cook aims to get all of them to college.

Students like De’Angelo Adams take extra classes in math and reading to supplement the standard curriculum. Basketball is his incentive—and in his case, Cook says, it’s working. “Thank God we have a team,” she says. Practice coincides with study hall and detention, so if students misbehave or aren’t doing their work: no court time.

She hired a coach who wouldn’t produce athletes, she says, but scholar-athletes. Perry McCarty, or “Coach!” as his roster of 16 boys calls him, runs them hard when they don’t behave. He also recites scores: the SAT and ACT numbers they’ll need if they want to get into college. In the gym, the boys crowd around him. They’re excited about their first game. They’ve got a mascot (“the Jaguars!”) and a chant, which they clap aloud. McCarthy gets sports supplies donated and uses his coaching stipend to buy the players’ jerseys.

The typical funding problems of public schools are writ large at Sojourner Truth. There’s no library. Insufficient funding for special education. Headaches over attendance, since it serves as the basis for per-pupil state funding. Staffing challenges. Cook arrived at 6 this morning and will leave after 8 tonight. “I feel like I’m juggling a million balls in the air and I’m trying to keep them all up,” Cook says. “Even if there are other people juggling in the room with me, I’m trying to make sure their balls don’t fall either.”

The state will check in with Sojourner Truth Academy in its third year, making sure the students are meeting testing requirements. Charter schools have more freedom in hiring and budgeting, but with autonomy come expectations. Public schools can “be crappy year after year,” Cook says. “We don’t get to stay open and be crappy—we have to be successful. So that pressure is one of the many things that keep me up at night, knowing that we’ve got to make it.” She looks at De’Angelo Adams. “Everything matters.”

Even before school opened, there was plenty that didn’t go according to plan. The school’s location changed from the Ninth Ward to the Uptown region of New Orleans, meaning some students would ride buses for up to two hours to get there. The laptops the district promised never appeared. Then, nine days into school, Hurricane Gustav hit.

“Kids were terrified,” Cook recalls. “They said, ‘I don’t want to go stay in another shelter, Ms. Cook. If it’s like Katrina, I’m not coming back.’”

The streets filled with tree branches and windows blew out, but all the students returned. Cook and her staff got back to work.

“It’s the hardest job out there,” says Lisa Daggs, ’91, MA ’96, MBA ’96, director of new school development at NSNO. Its charter school principals range in age from mid-20s to early 30s. “You have to be incredibly determined,” she says, “so some of that youthful energy counts.”

Cook acknowledges the possibility of burnout, but she has become invested in her students. Like Nick and Damonika.

Nick Pons, 16, is trying to rewrite his history. His parents are separated and he often comes to school “looking like he hasn’t slept,” says Cook. His last school expelled him for fighting, and he got into two rows at Sojourner Truth. At a parent meeting in Cook’s office, “his mom literally looked like she would beat him up, and we had to separate them.” But he told Cook, “I don’t want to be like this.” In October, he won the school’s Pillar Award, given to the student who best displays one of the school’s core values (in this case, perseverance).

Damonika Stokes is 14. “You gonna interview me?” she demands, her white hoop earrings swaying as she stares up at the journalist. She used to fight at her old school. “I told her I couldn’t imagine her fighting anyone, she’s so tiny,” Cook says, “and she said, ‘I used to fight all the time, that’s what we do.’” But now, when Damonika’s friends get rowdy, she moves to a different table. She is on track to earn straight A’s. “I’m going to be a gynecologist,” she says. Adds her principal: “She knows if she wants to be a doctor, it’s going to take grades and not fighting to change things. That’s one thing a brand-new school offers to children: there’s no history, there’s no reputation, and everything they do at the school is how they form a new reputation.”

You might say the same thing about the new New Orleans schools.

IRENE NOGUCHI, ’02, is a lawyer and journalist in Seattle.

By Erik W. Robelen

New Orleans

On a sunny Saturday here three days before Mardi Gras, educator Kristin L. Moody and lawyer Robert J. Burvant could be found canvassing a stretch of Canal Street, recruiting students for their new charter school. Sporting burgundy T-shirts with the school’s name, the two made their sales pitch to clusters of family and friends gathered for a parade along the broad boulevard in Mid-City. “Do you know of any 8th graders looking for a good high school next year?”

Ms. Moody asked one group. Ms. Moody, who left a teaching job in Los Angeles to co-found the planned Sojourner Truth Academy, and Mr. Burvant, a New Orleans native who chairs the school’s board, got a few nibbles. But they clearly had a lot of work ahead to get the word out about their school and sign up families.

In the new educational landscape of New Orleans—where public school choice is a fundamental element—pounding the pavement to drum up students has…

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