Description: Author and journalist Miles Corwin spent the entire 1996-97 school year with a remarkable group of individuals: the students in the senior Advanced Placement English class at Crenshaw High School -- young ghetto scholars who have managed to excel despite living in the hostile world of South Central Los Angeles. This book is a moving account of their courage, achievements, strength, and resilient spirit -- their personal crises, setbacks, catastrophes, and triumphs. It is an unforgettable ten-month visit to the dynamic, electrically charged classroom of Toni Little, an inspiring but volatile and wildly unpredictable white educator determined to imbue her minority students with a passion for great literature. Corwin also spent the year with Anita "Mama" Moultrie a flamboyant black teacher whose Afrocentric teaching style was diametrically opposed to Little's traditional approach. These exceptional students -- all classified as gifted -- provide a ground zero perspective on the affirmative action debate and will remain with the readers always.

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