Getting South Bronx kids to read is no easy task

by Thorsten Schier

Photo Credit: Thorsten Schier

“Uh, oh!” exclaims the lanky boy sitting in the back row. He half stands up out of his chair, where he only slouched earlier.

Jonathan is excited, not about a video game or a TV series, but a tricky passage of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. “The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, and when he thinks, good easy man, full surely, his greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls as I do.

These lines are from the play’s third act, where Cardinal Mosley, a close advisor to the King, is found out as a trickster and humiliated. “And who do we know that has recently had a similar experience?” Adela Branac asks her 10th grade English class. The class replies almost in unison and even the kids who have so far hung on their seats like tired drapes are awake: “Kanye West!” West, a rap star, was recently lambasted for an outburst at the MTV video music awards during another performer’s acceptance ceremony.

The pop-cultural reference is Branac’s way to keep classic texts relevant and students interested. The 31-year-old teaches at South Bronx Preparatory in Mott Haven, a public High School with 600 hundred students from the neighborhood. Living in one of the poorest areas in New York is not always easy.

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