The Kid Across the Hall

"Growing up in the lap of middle-class comfort, Reid Saaris was alarmed by the way his life so diverged from that of his best friend, Jamie. From laughing together in class, the boys became separated by a hallway, Reid having been placed in advanced courses. Eventually, bored and neglected, Jamie stopped attending school altogether, though his memory would stay with Reid as he continued on to the ivory tower. Inspired to pay forward his good fortune, Reid took up the righteous mantle of teacher at an under-resourced South Carolina high school. Upon starting, he was baffled by the cultural emphasis on discipline rather than education. In The Students Across the Hall Reid documents his efforts to change things, starting with his AP U.S. History Class. Subverting the trope of the savior, he highlights the way each false start with his students forced a reckoning with his personal failure to pull others from his past with him to success. A student project to bring about one, big positive change, then became the launchpad for his own professional awakening. Acknowledging that a few dedicated teachers cannot topple the systems and ideologies that exclude, especially, low-income students and students of color from quality education, the second part of Reid's journey would lead to the founding of Equal Opportunities Schools (EOS), an organization dedicated to identifying overlooked, discouraged, and otherwise missing students. Incorporating lessons learned as a teacher, he and his team began consulting with high schools across the country to expand access to advanced education. Only through the efforts of, first, his students in South Carolina, and later his team at EOS, would Reid come to understand, and overcome, the limitations of his vision. Grappling with topics such as implicit bias, intersectionality, critical race theory, and allyship, Reid's story is one of learning and unlearning; of leading and, ultimately, following"--