Review: DMPS, Community Partners Screen Education Documentary
A young audience member at the panel discussion during a screening of the documentary “American Promise.”
American Promise is a timely documentary film about urban education that raises more questions than it answers. Two free screenings were shown yesterday at Fleur Cinema & Cafe and the intermission between them was highlighted by a panel discussion led by Des Moines Public Schools students and administrators along with representatives from community nonprofit organizations.
The film patiently follows the paths of two African-American boys, Idriss and Seun, from kindergarten through high school graduation as they ping pong between stresses imposed at their prestigious private school and at home.
Irrespective of the film’s achievements and flaws, outstanding performances in leading roles were turned in locally by United Way of Central Iowa, the Des Moines “I Have a Dream” Foundation, the Drake University School of Education and RunDSM, the umbrella group of student programs founded by DMPS teachers Kristopher Rollins and Emily Lang. Those stakeholders collaborated to present the film and even provided free popcorn. Also, big bravos to Fleur Cinema for donation of theater space for the special screenings.
Thumbs up, also, to the panelists: DMPS Superintendent Tom Ahart; North High Communities in Schools Coordinator Charles Mercer IV; Dwight Miller, founder of The Greater Men Foundation Inc.; Dawn Martinez Oropeza, Executive Director of Latinas/Latinos al Exito; Mario Cruz, a junior at Hoover High School; Kathryn Garcia, a senior at East High School; Rashaad Pryor, a senior at Lincoln High School and Brianna Lam, a freshman at North High School. The students are all enrolled in Urban Leadership 101, a new class this year at Central Campus taught by Rollins and Lang, who moderated the panel discussion.
Topics addressed by the film and discussed by the panelists included the most effective ways for both parents and educators to walk the fine line between boosting students’ self-esteem and holding them to rigorous standards. If college is the universal objective for students, should it necessarily be? What, if anything, does the film demonstrate about the unique challenges of educating African-American boys?
Are Idriss’ and Seun’s struggles as depicted in the film the fault of their school[s]? The filmmakers seem to want audiences to believe so without clearly making that case. Still, American Promise is a compelling time lapse chronicle, a video scrapbook of two young lives and the early, formative stages of their respective journeys. Nationally, if it ignites a conversation like the one that happened here yesterday between an eclectic coalition of students, educators and their communities, it may achieve the success and wide acceptance that the parents it portrays, two of whom produced the film, sought for their sons.
