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The New York Times: A Traveler Showing Students a Different Path October 21, 2003, Tuesday By JAN HOFFMAN The bulletin boards at the Bronx Academy of Letters are neither especially cheery nor a quick study. Neither is Joan Sullivan, the principal and a founder of this new, four-room public high school in the South Bronx. But like her, the boards pique curiosity, challenge one to think and lead to the unexpected. One, called "Who's Your Staff?," hangs in the lobby, covered with baby pictures and anonymous clues. Which three captions match Ms. Sullivan? Think hard. Her administrative style is firm, even strict. She addresses everyone in a brisk manner that even she admits can be off-putting. Fashion style? Terse elegance, in a "severe black pantsuit, close-cropped hair, no makeup" kind of way. Got her pegged? Wrong. Here are the three correct answers: 1. "I grew up in a house with parents who didn't believe in rules. I had no bedtime. My parents didn't check my homework. School was optional." 2. "Never in my whole life have I had a soda." 3. "I own two dogs, two cats, three goats, seven peacocks, eight sheep, 12 ducks, 15 chickens and one donkey named Michelob." First lesson at the academy: appearances can be deceiving. Now that school's out for the day, Ms. Sullivan, a jangle of keys at her waist, clatters into the principal's office. She looks so wan and frail — no time to eat today and she's already been up for 12 hours — that this afternoon's strong winds threaten to knock her flat. Wrong again. Ms. Sullivan, who can indeed summon the occasional sunny smile, turns out to be a force of nature herself. "I'm pretty tough," says Ms. Sullivan, who was a goalie on the Yale women's varsity lacrosse team and last year biked most mornings to a job in the Bronx from the home she shares with a lawyer in the West Village. Drawn to a growing movement that addresses the failure of large urban high schools by creating small alternatives, Ms. Sullivan dreamed up a program last fall with a focus on reading and writing. "People have trouble envisioning it as a sexy theme," she says dryly, "but students who can read and write well do so much better." With magnetism and great connections, she compelled friends, family and marquee names from New York's literary circles to help. Then she pitched the idea to educators, deep pockets and student applicants, achieving liftoff just this September. Her criterion for admitting the school's entering class of 79 mostly poor, minority ninth-graders was not academic success — nearly 80 percent read below grade level — but a willingness to commit to a rigorous program. THE SCHOOL'S future seems promising. Last month, New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit group that supports small programs such as hers, received a $29.2 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is remarkable enough to develop such a project in scarcely a year, but meanwhile Ms. Sullivan was also teaching American history at another high school by day, and taking eight courses toward a master's degree by night. A writer herself, she has already published "An American Voter: My Love Affair With Presidential Politics" (Bloomsbury), a pungent memoir about working for former Senator Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign. She wrote it during her first year as a New York City public school teacher, at the end of which she won an award as teacher of the year — and not by being a glad-hander. "Kids have a great sense of what matters," Ms. Sullivan says. "They're interested in who has their interests at heart and how capable they are." Two years later she decided she was ready to run a school. Ms. Sullivan turned 30 last month. All this from a woman who grew up in a family where school was optional? Ms. Sullivan considers her tumultuous upbringing. "It was like I had 12 parents," she says. "I'm an amalgam of lots of people and they all believed I'd be successful." She is the only child of her parents' marriage, but each brought children from previous marriages to their union. Her father had five children and her mother, whose first husband was the writer John McPhee, had four. Ms. Sullivan, the 10th and youngest child by eight years, grew up in a commune-style household on a farm outside Princeton, N.J. Her mother was a photographer and her father, a Gestalt therapist, raspberry farmer and owner of a Haitian art gallery, stayed home. Her father attended just about all her games — and she has been athletic since she was 5. (In her book she describes shooting hoops with Mr. Bradley, a former Knick and a family friend.) Adding to the family chaos, her mother took in three foster children. Ms. Sullivan was thunderstruck at the difference between the public education those children had been offered in Trenton and her opportunities at Princeton High School. At Yale she majored in American studies with a concentration in African-American studies. After graduating, she began her journey to public service, compiling material for a bulletin board now hanging in her office. The Travel Board, as it is called, is covered with snapshots she has taken on her wanderings, none of which are identified. It invites scrutiny. A student will point and ask: "Where is that?" Morocco. Sri Lanka. Laos. Ireland. Greece. Brazil. Nepal. British Columbia. Disbelieving. "Can I go there?" "Sure," Ms. Sullivan replies, briskly offering a passport to the future. "During your junior year in college." |