Applying Life Lessons
Troy Grant, a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy and Culture, knows that years of research are ahead as he explores how to make education curricula more relevant and practical for at-risk students.
However, Grant, 38, also knows how far he has traveled from the New Haven, Conn., housing project where he grew up. A self-described �rambunctious� boy, Grant was placed in a school for developmentally disabled children when he was 9. At 11, authorities arrested him for breaking into a Woolworth�s store.
Grant persevered. He graduated from high school, joined the Air Force and completed his bachelor�s at City University of New York at 28 before earning his M.A. in Education from The Johns Hopkins University. Grant�s teaching experience includes several years at the New Era Academy in Baltimore.
�Here I am now, in a Ph.D. program. So the question I ask is, �What happened where education didn�t find a place for me when I was a child?� � Grant said. �What do you do with someone who has my kind of potential?�
Although Grant will explore those questions in his doctoral work, he has also addressed them in his book, An Autobiography of an Unknown Man (Spencer Publishing, 2005). The Barnes & Noble bookstore at Baltimore�s Inner Harbor recently honored Grant�s achievements with a signing and reading from the newly released second edition.
�Being in an interdisciplinary program such as the LLC program is quite a complement to my own unsettled thoughts about how the world has been constructed and structured, especially regarding inequality in education,� Grant said. �The LLC program encourages and pushes me to create new knowledge. My first year has been rather demanding but I feel better prepared as a result of the academic sharpening.�
For more about Grant, click here to view coverage from the ABC news affiliate in Philadelphia after he recited the U.S. Constitution before a live audience.
(3/3/08)
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