Staff pick: Searching for Hope by Matthew Tully

Today we are excited to launch a new monthly staff pick feature on our blog! This month's selection is Searching for Hope, reviewed by trade marketing and publicity manager, Mandy Clarke.

Going to high school in an upper-middle class area of Northwest Indiana, extracurricular activities were abundant, the words football and high school were synonymous, and the graduation rate hovered around 95%. My teenage thoughts revolved mainly around my friends, whichever boy I liked, ways to trick my parents into borrowing one of their cars, and gymnastics. You know—the important stuff. I edited the school newspaper and wrote about things like homecoming, prom, and SATs. College was a given.

At Manual High School in Indianapolis where there is no football at all, teenage drama is very real with guns being fired, multiple in-school arrests, its very own police staff, and a graduation rate of 39%. Complete with students who think that’s normal.

In Searching for Hope, Indianapolis Star columnist Matthew Tully describes the time he spent at a low-income Indianapolis Public School as an investigative reporter who stirred an entire city with his weekly front page columns during the 2009-10 school year. The book is not a collection of the columns, but the story of Tully’s personal experience as he enters the lives of these high schoolers, administrators, teachers, counselors, and law enforcement officers.

An identity-less student. An assembly-line mentality. A soon-to-be nationally renowned choir. Thousands of Star readers moved to donate almost $100,000. Administrators hunting down kids just to get state funding—not to educate them. These are just a few of the stories of desperation, inspiration, and hopelessness in this book.

Easy to read, yet not so easy to digest, Searching for Hope reads like fiction—but sadly is not. Highly recommended for general readers, book clubs, and those interested in education and educational policy alike, Searching for Hope will evoke a strong reaction from its readers.