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Home > Schooled > S. 02 Ep. 01: You Shouldn’t Be Here


	Podcast:		Schooled
	Episode:		S. 02 Ep. 01: You Shouldn’t Be Here
	Category:		Education
	Duration:		00:37:45
	Publish Date:		2018-04-25 04:04:45
	Description:		Jovan Weaver has a story to tell. It’s August 2016, and two young children have just been hit by stray bullets during different gunfights in Philadelphia in less than a week. “About a week ago, there was a six-year-old girl shot. There was also a six-year-old boy shot,” said Jovan. Jovan had just become the first-time principal of John Wister Elementary, a school serving a mostly poor student body in East Germantown — the neighborhood where the second shooting took place. This hammered home one of the big reasons he has dedicated his life to education. “The importance to instill sound values into our children, conflict resolution, things that this community is struggling with at this point,” he said. This was about a week before Wister Elementary was set to re-open after the summer break. And Jovan stood in an empty classroom thinking of how he’d address his faculty as a principal for the first time. As he contemplated what to say, he couldn’t help but think of those two children — how vulnerable they were, and how much of himself he saw reflected in not just them, but all the kids who would soon fill the school. “I am these students,” he said. “And I need them to see me inside of every single student that walks through this door — that hope, that possibility, that option of success.” Jovan’s 34 and African American, and as he began to speak to the faculty, he paced the room nervously, with dozens of teachers and support staffers listening intently. Principal Jovan Weaver addressing Wister’s new faculty for the first time in August 2016. (Bastiaan Slabbers for WHYY) “I really thought hard and long about how I wanted to start this morning, and I was encouraged by a few people in this room to share a story about a young man that I know very well,” he said. He talked about a young man who had endured trauma, neglect and abuse as a child growing up poor in Philadelphia during the crack-cocaine epidemic. The young man never met his father. And the young man’s mother, Jovan explained, often went out partying. “The result of her partying led to her coming home one night with her girlfriends, and he vividly recalls his mother giving him a joint to smoke. He was five years old at the time,” said Jovan. “So, she continued down this downward spiral of drug abuse, continued to party, and all he could really think of was getting away.” The young man, of course, was Jovan Weaver himself. And the story of how he got away — went from potential casualty of the streets to principal of one of city’s most needy and controversial elementary schools — is one he’s often shied away from telling, one he’s often repressed, one that’s sometimes easier to deal with by putting in the third person. “I try often not to think about it,” he said later in an interview. “But if I step outside of myself — and, you know, listen to myself — I will be like, ‘Holy shit. You shouldn’t be here.’” The story of Jovan Weaver and Wister Elementary can also be experienced as a radio documentary. The tale is told across the four-episode second season of our podcast “Schooled.” It’s based on more than two years of reporting about the students, the parents, the faculty, and the huge political fight that sprung from Wister Elementary. You can listen by using the play button above.
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