Housing Projects, Mansions & Schools: An Educator's Odyssey

This is the story of a boy who grew up with an alcoholic father in Cabrini-Green, one of the poorest communities in the country, and then became the superintendent of Bannockburn School in one of the wealthiest communities in the country.

Housing Projects, Mansions, and Schools: An Educator’s Odyssey, is a luminously written memoir that shows how a boy moved from living in the worst public housing project in the country, Cabrini-Green in Chicago, to becoming the superintendent of a school in one of the wealthiest communities in the country, Bannockburn School. It looks at issues he faced growing up as a poor kid in a bad neighborhood and how as an educator he worked with children facing some of the same issues he had faced. The book looks at what he learned in the process about the power of friendship to annul racial divisions, the importance of family in fostering—or harming —children’s ability to thrive, the role of education in helping kids transcend poverty and also, sometimes, in keeping kids in their place. He’s been asked many times what it was like growing up in Cabrini-Green in the 1960s, when his family was one of the only white families there, this memoir answers that question. It illustrates the inequities in schools, but at its heart it’s a book about race, poverty, resilience, education, and the power of fitting in, and how these things are all woven together in life in general and one person’s life.