Canada’s Candidates: Educating the Entire Child

This Job Is Not For Everyone

At his Teacher Recruitment Event last night, (18 March 2015) Geoffrey Canada, 63, paced across the stage and demanded the audience’s attention. His voice has the passionate pitch of a mad man, and he made it clear that a pinch of insanity was required in all candidates, “What would make a person want to work as hard as we are going to work you if you come here. I think you have to be a little crazy. Some of you look a little crazy, that’s a good sign!”

As president of Harlem Children’s Zone, Canada is the most influential Black man in American education. In the gymnasium of his West Harlem charter school, he told the proudest moment of his life, the time he took HCZ honor students to meet President Obama at the White House. At the 8:30 mark he says, “When [Obama] came to see me, he said ‘Yo Geoff!’ and I wanted to say, ‘Yo Prez!’ But you can’t do that, that ain’t cool. I was with my kids, so it was ‘Yes Mr. President.’”

HCZ Promise Academy Charter Schools are in the top ten percent of American college graduates. Currently there are 890 HCZ graduates enrolled in college. “We changed the dynamic so that going to college is a normal, everyday thing.” Canada’s comprehensive strategy to save education in the inner city has made him a modern day Superman, but he says, “We are not close to where we want to be.”

Canada isn’t turning a blind eye to the problems that children of his school face, yet he refuses to listen to any excuses. “I know we are in Harlem, I understand that there are gangs and people are poor and kids have single mothers. Still, every one of my kids are going to get through college. That’s the deal.”

From the South Bronx to Harvard, Canada’s efforts, combined with President’s Obama’s proposal for free community college, are changing the future of Black and Brown America. The invisible cloak of classism in the education system is being pulled back by a team of Harlem educators. Lean on them.