Original painting by Esmeralda Piza

The Good Lessons:

A Teaching life with gangs, delinquents & troubled teens

"A necessary read for anyone serious about personal transformation and peace in our communities."

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

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The Good Lessons follows two schools, one in South Central Los Angeles and the other on an Arizona Indian reservation as both commit to tackle pervasive crime and gang violence through radical schooling.

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These are beautiful, harrowing stories of transformation as an urban and a tribal community decide to throw out convention and rethink what it means, and what it takes, to raise their most alienated and difficult children.

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Cover art by Peter Tovar (original pastel)