Teacher, Revised

by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY

The most striking image from Heart of Stone, the recent documentary about Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ, a school devastated by gang violence, is of principal, Ron Stone, in his office, strapping on a bullet proof vest.

As a teacher who has worked in schools with metal detectors and strict “no gang colors” rules, I couldn’t help but think, “Really? A bullet proof vest?” But the message was clear: it’s a war zone out there.

Later in the film, a charismatic W.H.S. student and Bloods member, gives credence to Principal Stone’s startling safety precaution: “There’s a chance that you could be shot at while talking to me outside,” he relates. “Stone has stood on corners with me, he’s walked these corners with me, broken up fights, walked through my hood.” Adds another student, with unmistakable respect in his voice, “And the baddest thing about that, [Stone] stood on the corner and told us to get off our corner.”

Well, alright then—bullet proof vest it is.

There’s a lot to like about Principal Stone, and there’s a lot to like about this movie. But before I get to the approbations, I feel obligated to at least mention the relative suckiness of the first forty minutes or so (yeah—that’s a lot of minutes). Basically, what you have to sit through in order to get to the very worthwhile and skillfully executed second half is a rambling and mostly irrelevant history of W.H.S. set within the larger context of Newark’s history. There’s a compelling story in there somewhere, but this movie doesn’t do a very good job of elucidating it.

The whole first half can be summed up thusly: W.H.S. used to be a model high school largely attended by working-class Jews (including Philip Roth). Then came the 1967 race riots after which most of the Jews left. As Newark became a majority African-American city, so too did W.H.S. At this point, the story fast-forwards to the new millenium where we find the school in crisis mode. Academic performance is approaching subterranean depths, and gang violence is on the rise. In 2001, Mr. Stone—he of the bullet proof vest and balls of steel (stone?)—is hired to restore W.H.S. to its glory days.

Which, not coincidentally, is exactly when the story takes off and I stopped regretting the ten-dollar admission price. This is Principal Stone’s story, you see. His hands-on leadership style and pragmatic approach to gang intervention provide a compelling model for any urban school. Problem is, you need a Ron Stone, and as any teacher will tell you, visionary-type principals are about as hard to find in public education these days as a gum-free desk.

(Hell, at this point, I would take a principal who acknowledged my existence in any normal human way. My own socially-challenged principal, upon learning that one of my colleagues was three months pregnant, cut right to the chase: “So you’re going to miss testing?” she inquired. This in a school that preaches ‘Relationships’ as one of its school values. Ouch.)

Aside from being a wise and compassionate dude, Principal Stone’s major innovation as a principal is a willingness to work with gang members instead of simply expunging them. The truth is most schools have an out of sight, out of mind policy with regards to gangs. In other words, suspend the hell out of those kids until they can be legally expelled or they’re so behind in school, they stop coming. The problem with that is, what happens to those kids, and what happens to their respective communities?

Sure, of course, ideally there would be no gangs. But, guess what, we got ‘em. And no amount of muscle-flexing by school officials is going to change that. What sets Principal Stone apart, I think, is his understanding that young people join gangs for complex and legitimate reasons, and that these reasons—not the gangs—are complex and legitimate enough to deserve our respect. Telling a kid, “If you even say the word ‘gang,’ we’ll suspend you,” is all tooth and no heart. Nor does it acknowledge how hard it is to actually get out of a gang.

In this spirit, Principal Stone facilitates a series of mediation workshops for gang members. The implied argument is that before these workshops, rival gang members saw each other in shades of red and blue. Now they see each other as human beings. And isn’t it harder to pull the trigger on a human being?

The more controversial (and, I think, brilliant) piece of Principal Stone’s strategy is that he manipulates (‘benefits from’ would be the softer term) the built-in hierarchy of gangs. He identifies those gang members who are higher up in the chain-of-command—typically, it seems, the kid with the most charisma and/or poise—and gets them to buy in to the idea of school. (Not that this will be a radical concept for teachers—we all know the most efficient way to win over a class is to get the most powerful kid on our side.) There’s a great scene in which a gang leader berates a younger gang member for messing up in school. “I wanna see you walk that stage,” he says.

Thankfully, Heart of Stone steers clear of the current education zeitgeist. For me, it was a welcome furlough from all of the soulless school accountability talk that dominates the airwaves these days. There is talk of ‘graduation’ and ‘college,’—concepts, by the way, which seem woefully out of fashion now—but the focus is on Principal Stone and the very real difference he makes in his students’ lives. We never learn if test scores go up under his principalship, and, quite frankly, I don’t care.

Here’s to Principal Stone and to principals like him. And here’s to hoping my own principal’s heart is clay-like enough to mold into Stone’s image (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Though I doubt it.