Kid Quixotes: A Group of Students, Their Teacher, and the One-Room School Where Everything Is Possible

ISBN: 0062934066

Author: Haff, Stephen

Condition: New

In my years of experience as a writer and as a college professor, I have never seen anything like this: the love for language, the passion for discussion, clarity of mind, and humility of heart. Stephen Haff invents impossible projects and makes them possible.-Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children ArchiveThe unlikely, inspiring true story of a one-room school where children of undocumented immigrants and their teacher discover their voices and speak truth to power.Still Waters in a Storm is an after-school program held in a small room in Bushwick, Brooklyn; it is a place for kids to practice reading and writing in English, Spanish, and Latin. For the students, many living in constant fear of deportation, Still Waters is a refuge. For Stephen Haff, a former public-school teacher, it is the sanctuary he built following a breakdown caused by bipolar depression. At Still Waters, all agreed that there would only be one rule: Everyone listens to everyone. And this has unlocked spectacular potential.Since 2016, the students have been collectively translating Don Quixote into English, taking the Spanish tale-a story about a dreamer who never gives up-and adapting it into a bilingual musical. Six-year old Sarah tells of her mothers journey across the desert from Mexico riding on the back of a tiger. Alex, a very private teenager, sings her coming out song to standing ovations. As the kids perform their work across NYC, they learn that they belong in this country-their voices amplifying to deliver a message of diversity, love, hope, and resilience essential to us all.