New Orleans schools promoted college as the primary route to success through banners and recurring chants encouraging students to pursue higher education. Geraldlynn Stewart enrolled at Dillard University in 2014 but struggled with ongoing costs despite a state scholarship and a small loan. Working nearly full time at Waffle House to avoid burdening her mother, Stewart allowed work to eclipse her studies and left college. Having some college but no degree is common among her peers. After Hurricane Katrina, many new charter schools embraced a "college for all" mission, exemplified by KIPP's founding ambition.
All through middle and high school in New Orleans, Geraldlynn Stewart heard the message every day: College was the key to a successful future. It was there on the banners that coated the doors and hallways, advertising far-flung schools, like Princeton University and Grinnell College. And she could hear it in the chants students recited over and over again. This is the way! We start the day! We get the knowledge to go to college!
Yet even after enrolling in 2014 at Dillard University, a private historically black college in the heart of New Orleans, Stewart never felt at ease in that prescribed path. Like most of her classmates, Stewart came from a working class family. She didn't have close relatives who had graduated from college. Even with her tuition covered by a state scholarship, and a small loan, it was an ongoing challenge to pay for books, gas, a lab coat for biology class, food and many other expenses.
Having some college experience but no degree is a common narrative among New Orleanians around Stewart's age. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the city 20 years ago, schoolchildren returned to a flurry of new charter schools opening up, many of them united in a mission that was starting to crest across the country: college for all. It was a founding ambition of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) national charter school network, which Stewart attended in New Orleans starting in
Collection
[
|
...
]