Subject: Staff Development

Profiles in Education Series

Nobody Told Me The Road Would Be Easy

George Foster Peabody Award Winners: Carol Marin and Don Moseley
"Highly Recommended. This absorbing documentary offers a year-long look at the engaging students and driven teachers at Manley Career Academy on the West Side of Chicago and provides hope a real-life counterpoint to the portrait of inner-city education." -Chicago Tribune
"Highly Recommended. Showing this documentary gave a real "voice" to my suburban students, and it showed them that committed individuals like Lila Leff are able to change the world - or at least their corner of it." -Riley Love, Downers Grove High School
"Highly Recommended. An intriguing, well-told storyline on subjects to which my students can easily relate. I know the images and stories will stay with them far beyond the end of our class." -Saya Hillman, Farragut High School
How does an inner-city high school, located in an area beset with gangs, guns and drugs, go from sending less than 10% of its students to college to sending more than 70% in just six years? This is the true and inspirational story of how that happened. Emmy-award winning producers Carol Marin and Don Moseley took an entire year in order to tell how Dr. Katherine Flanagan, principal at the Manley Career Academy High School in Chicago, opened the doors of her school to a native New Yorker named Lila Leff, who, against the toughest of odds, together started the Umoja Student Development Corporation, to provide academic activities for students before, during and after school, as well as college and career development, to help alter the course of the lives of a majority of students who attended Manley. Hosted and reported by Ms. Marin, a member of the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame, here we see the story of struggle and success, not only through the eyes of students, but also through the lives of Dr. Flanagan and Ms. Leff, who each had to overcome personal battles to get to where they are today. Produced by the DePaul Documentary Project. 08DR SCA 45 min.