The Bridge to Brilliance
How One Woman and One Community Are Inspiring the World
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Be inspired by the magnetic young principal who “stands on the front line of the fight to educate America's children." (Brandon Stanton, author of Humans of New York ) and the book that Essence calls "Essential reading."
In 2010, Nadia Lopez started her middle-grade public school, Mott Hall Bridges Academy, in one of America’s poorest communities, in a record heat wave—and crime wave. Everything was an uphill battle—to get the school approved, to recruit faculty and students, to solve a million new problems every day, from violent crime to vanishing supplies—but Lopez was determined to break the downward spiral that had trapped too many inner-city children. The lessons came fast: unengaged teachers, wayward students, and the educational system itself, rarely in tune with the already disadvantaged and underprepared.
Things were at a low ebb for everyone when one of her students told a photographer that his principal, “Ms. Lopez,” was the person who most influenced his life. The posting on Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York site was the pebble that started a lucky landslide for Lopez and her team. Lopez found herself in the national spotlight and headed for a meeting with President Obama, as well as the beneficiary of a million-dollar campaign for the school, to fund her next dream: a field trip for her students to visit another school—Harvard.
The Bridge to Brilliance is a book filled with common sense and caring that will carry her message to communities and classrooms far from Brooklyn. As she says, modestly, “There are hundreds of Ms. Lopezes around this country doing good work for kids. This honors all of them.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lopez details her struggles and triumphs as the principal of Mott Hall Bridges Academy, the middle school she founded in the poverty-ridden Brownsville section of Brooklyn. In her role of principal, Lopez faces challenging students, exhausted parents, overwhelmed teachers, and low test scores, and the stress of her job takes a toll on her physical and mental health. But when one of her students is interviewed on the popular blog Humans of New York and describes Lopez as the person who has most influenced him, Lopez is flooded with opportunities: she arranges for her students to take trips to Harvard, meets President Obama, and raises over a million dollars for her school. Despite these accomplishments, Lopez makes it clear that the lives of low-income students are still marked by violence. She uses the tragic story of a former student, Newshawn Plummer, who was shot and killed in 2015, as a reminder of these ongoing challenges. Lopez offers many strategies for improving education (mentorship programs, greater parental involvement, strong guidance counseling, and field trips that provide exposure to different cultures and ideas), each of which merits its own book. Lopez's clear-eyed approach to education is the book's most valuable lesson: educators should listen to the students, parents, and teachers who live and work in these communities; they understand their needs best.