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GIRAFFE OF THE MONTH
High school history teacher Will Fitzhugh took a long, hard look at his life after two friends died when they were barely fifty years old. What did he really want to do with his own life?
He'd been bothered for years by his observation that students' academic achievements went largely ignored, while athletic successes were grandly celebrated. He'd always wanted to bring that kind of appreciation to star scholars.
So he quit teaching and used every cent he had to start The Concord Review, a quarterly journal of history research papers - all written by high school students. Since 1987 he's worked alone out of his house to honor good students. He says he's countering the usual message they get: "If you do good academic work we won't tell anybody so they won't hate you. They won't find you in the hallway . . . Students are under a tremendous amount of pressure to at least pretend not to care about academics."
The Concord Review has the high quality look of adult academic journals like Daedalus. The Review essays are eclectic, well researched and finely crafted, and average 5,000 words. The subjects are as varied as King Arthur, kamikaze pilots, women's suffrage, the Industrial Revolution, and ferris wheels; the young authors are from the US, Norway, Kenya, Indonesia -- anywhere good scholars may be.
Teachers use the Review to show their students what's possible when they go the extra mile. Students who are published in the Review add the honor to their college applications and their resumés. Other kids reference Review articles for their own papers, and in the process learn to respect the effort it takes to produce such first rate work. "I'm not patting students on the head," Fitzhugh says. "I'm using their work to feed back into the system evidence to other students of what they are capable of if they work hard."
But The Concord Review is on the endangered list. Maintaining it has cost Fitzhugh more than $100,000 - so far. He's gotten a few foundation grants, but far more rejections, many of them giving a disturbing reason for saying no: The Concord Review, they've said, is "elitist" for accepting only the best.
Fitzhugh publishes top notch work, regardless of where it comes from. He doesn't care about a young author's race, gender, family background or income; he's concerned only with the quality of the work. Publishing second-rate work in order to be politically correct would be, he feels, akin to awarding varsity letters to every kid who wants to play, even the ones with two left feet.
Will Fitzhugh is dedicated to keeping The Concord Review going as the honor it has always been. There are new generations of scholars to be found and encouraged.
Visit The Concord Review Online
We asked the folks at the Giraffe Project to let us share some of the wonderful stories of personal transformation and public service here at New Horizons for Learning. The people at the Giraffe Project believe in being "free flacks for heroes -- finding, commending and publicizing people who stick their necks out for the common good." Their mission is to get others to look up, notice, and appreciate the quiet leaders in our communities.
Visit the Giraffe website to learn about The Giraffe Program, a K-12 curriculum that teaches kids about real heroes and gets them going on lives of courage, caring and responsibility, and the Giraffe Partners Trunk--everything a business or club needs to help a classroom full of kids to stand tall.
Copyright © 1998 The Giraffe Project, all rights reserved.Posted with permission by New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
E-mail: info@newhorizons.org