Still Waters in a Storm
The One-Room School Where Everyone Listens to Everyone
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“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 Archive
The 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 mother’s 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this poignant and politically minded debut, educator and theater director Haff explains the pedagogy behind Still Waters in the Storm, the after-school program he founded in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in 2008, and dramatizes his students' efforts to translate Miguel Cervantes's Don Quixote from 400-year-old Spanish into modern English and stage a bilingual musical adaptation. After resigning his public school teaching job and entering treatment for bipolar depression, Haff started Still Waters as a way to keep in touch with former students. The curriculum evolved from basic homework help to literature discussion groups, Latin instruction, mentoring, and weekly author workshops. "Everything we do," Haff writes, "is based on the same ritual of reading a text, discussing it together, writing a response, and taking turns reading our responses to the group." He interweaves the story of his mental breakdown and recovery with criticisms of the New York City public school system, along with accounts of his students analyzing Cervantes's antiquated language and developing scripts and songs connecting the plot to their own experiences as the children of undocumented immigrants living under the threat of arrest and deportation. Haff eloquently traces the journey one student makes "from shy to brave," and makes a convincing case for the power of "mutual attention and cooperation" in the classroom. Educators, immigration activists, and school reformers will find inspiration in this frequently lyrical account.
