Schooled

We continue following Joshua Martinez and his classmates as they fight to graduate. But a teacher at El Centro raises serious questions about the rigor of the school that leads to bigger questions: For students who are far behind grade level, how much should we really expect? Where’s the line for who deserves a diploma?

Joshua Martinez grew up in poverty in a neighborhood where selling drugs is a way of life. At 16, he quit school, but soon feared he had put himself on a dead-end path. Seeking a better life, he enrolled in an alternative school specifically for high school dropouts. There, a debate arises among faculty at the school: For students who are far behind grade level, how much should we really expect? What’s more important, building confidence and relationships, or academic mastery? Where’s the line for who deserves a diploma? We explore these questions through intimate portraits of students, like Joshua, as they fight to graduate.

What does it really mean to get a good education?

What is educational success?

The third season of WHYY’s Schooled podcast explores these questions and more through stories of different students fighting to escape poverty in Philadelphia. The four episode season will be released weekly starting on August 7.

Listen to the season trailer above.

Joshua Martinez grew up in poverty in a neighborhood where selling drugs is a way of life. At 16, he quit school, but soon feared he had put himself on a dead-end path. Seeking a better life, he enrolled in an alternative school specifically for high school dropouts.

There, a debate arises among faculty: for students who are far below grade level, how much should really be expected? What’s more important, building confidence and relationships, or academic mastery? Where’s the line for who deserves a diploma? We explore these questions through intimate portraits of students, like Joshua, as they fight to graduate.

More than a year after releasing the second season of Schooled, we learn that Jovan Weaver has been carrying a dark secret. In late 2017, Jovan killed a man in a hit-and-run and then allegedly attempted to burn his car to destroy the evidence.  Charges were filed against him in April 2019. They became public in June and Jovan resigned as principal of Wister Elementary. In this special episode we unpack the details of the case and its larger implications. We hear from members of the victim’s family and dig through our interviews with Jovan before and after the incident.

As principal of Wister Elementary, Jovan Weaver knows well the trauma that many of his students experience. He grew up fatherless during Philadelphia’s crack epidemic in the 1980s and 90s, and was abandoned when he was 10 by his mother, a drug dealer. Ultimately, public school was Jovan’s salvation, and — as he still grapples with the scars of his past — he sets out to make Wister a refuge of “love and positivity” for the students of today.

Becoming principal of Wister meant Jovan Weaver would be working under a microscope. The bitter debate that led to Wister’s conversion to a charter school raised questions of politics, access and influence. And it pitted Philadelphia neighbors against one another in an emotional battle that dominated local headlines. Parents were promised transformative change, and Jovan takes on that responsibility as things in his personal life become more difficult.

Jovan tries to find a balance between the high expectations, “no excuses” culture for which Mastery Charter is known and the “love and positivity” mission he envisions based on his own traumatic childhood. Along the way he faces tough decisions, such as in the fifth grade — where the largely black student population has teachers who are worlds apart when it comes to life experience, race and, ultimately, effectiveness.

Wister’s 5th grade students see themselves reflected in a faculty that has adopted a civil rights mission. Bahir Hayes and other teachers grapple with what it means and what it takes to make a successful school. And as the school enters the second year of its conversion, Jovan makes a major life decision.

John Wister Elementary is a tiny school in a Philadelphia neighborhood besieged by poverty.

And it sparked a huge, citywide debate.

After months of bitter acrimony, district leaders pushed out the school’s faculty and gave control of Wister to a charter organization. In Season Two of Schooled, based on years of reporting, we ask three questions: did that change make a difference for kids? Why? At what cost?

Throughout the season, we follow the story of Jovan Weaver, who attended Philly public schools and overcame a traumatic childhood to become Wister’s new principal. His goal: create a school good enough for his own children to attend.

Listen to the trailer above. Subscribe to the podcast today.

This four-episode season, “You Shouldn’t Be Here: The story of Jovan Weaver and Wister Elementary,” will premiere on Wednesday, April 25. 

By seventh grade, Savannah was already in danger of becoming a casualty of the North Philly streets; she’s endured horrific childhood abuse, eventually becoming pregnant by age 14. But Savannah — motivated by her newborn daughter — sets out to escape the cycle of poverty. Listen above or read the story here.