"A necessary read for anyone serious about youth and the transformative power of education."

        Luis Rodriguez, Los Angeles Poet Laureate and author of "Always Running: La  Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A."

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Teaching in Tough Places and its Spanish version Maestro de Delincuentes follows two schools at the height of the gang era. Arturo Hernandez-Sametier recounts beautiful, harrowing stories of transformation when one school in South Central Los Angeles and another on a Native American reservation throw out convention and rethink what it means, and what it takes, to raise their most alienated, violent and difficult children.

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