Media: "You Are So Much More Than The Worst Thing You Have Done"

Check out Doug McGray’s new Fast Company piece about Homeboy Industries, LA’s long-running nonprofit social services program.  Homeboy isn't technically an education program, but "House Of Second Chances" is full of education connections and lessons for those working with or learning about social services agencies.  The program’s executive director, a Jesuit priest named Greg Boyle, frequently tells unemployed ex-convicts “You are so much more than the worst thing that you have done” – then finds them jobs or hires them himself.  In addition to job training and job referrals, Homeboy offers tattoo removal.  The program had to be bailed out in 2010 and one of the folks who helped, Bruce Karatz, was a disgraced executive from KB Industries, Eli Broad’s company. Writer McGray is the guy who wrote the May 2009 profile of Steve Barr and Green Dot.  

Comments

[Sarah]

A teacher I had in high school today was put on administrative leave for stealing copper wire from a supply closet to sell. The media, naturally, has jumped upon him for being a thief and commenters on many local news sites are saying he deserves no less than life in prison and to never hold another job. It matters not, according to the papers and many in the public, that the man taught physics at a high level for years, that the average AP score of students who took said test from his class averaged 3.7 over the past 9 years of his teaching. When school cut funding and told him to find a way to fund the field trip the students were promised months ago, he went through his lab and sold supplies that the class hadn't used to raise the funds for the field trip. The media's leaving that out. All that matters to them is that he stole.