Johnston, Michael 1974-

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JOHNSTON, Michael 1974-

PERSONAL: Born 1974, in CO. Education: Yale University, graduated, 1997; attended Harvard Graduate School of Education.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o Grove/Atlantic Press, 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Agent—Sterling Lord, Sterling Lord Literistic, 65 Bleeker St., New York, NY 10012. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Author and educator.

WRITINGS:

The Deep Heart's Core, Grove/Atlantic (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael Johnston was born and raised in Colorado but found himself fascinated with the history and culture of the South. So after graduating from Yale in 1997, he applied for a job with Teach for American and landed a position at Greenville High School in Mississippi. For two years, Johnston taught English, coached several sport teams, directed two plays, and started the first Greenville High School Chess Club. At the end of his two-year contract he returned to school to earn a graduate degree and to write a memoir of his experiences as a teacher.

In the Deep Heart's Core, which Mark Alan Williams for Library Journal called "an inspiring and readable text," recounts Johnston's first impressions of that fateful day when, fresh out of college, he found himself facing a faculty, staff, and student body that, as Williams wrote, "felt completely defeated." The school building was falling apart. The school counselors, Johnston discovered, were using drugs. The children who attended the school came from the poorest of the poor Mississippi neighborhoods and faced daily abuses of one sort or another. There was violence, segregation, sexual promiscuity, and despair.

Johnston soon discovered that the only way he could break through to his students was to gain their trust. He took time to get to know his students' families. He exemplified a caring attitude in class. He spent hours after school developing programs that might teach his students new skills and develop self-confidence in them. "This was a learning process as much for the teacher as it was for the students," wrote Williams.

Johnston's book is not simply about its author. He draws the reader into lives shaped by poverty, gangs, and drugs, where, as a reviewer for Publishers Weekly put it, "successes are minuscule." Some of Johnston's students, after making substantial strides to improve, suddenly drop out of school. Another student is murdered. Hopes are continually dashed as rewards are dished out very slowly, if at all. Citing the honesty and compassion of Johnston's account, the Publishers Weekly reviewer commended his book as "a moving, memorable call for action."

Similar praise came from Jabari Asim in the Washington Post Book World, who called the book a "forceful testimony." A writer for San Francisco Chronicle described In the Deep Heart's Core as "a touching tale of hope where there often seems to be none."

Johnston has since returned to college to complete his graduate studies. He plans to become a principal in an urban school upon obtaining his degree. He hopes to be part of the motivating force behind the changes that schools like Greenville High most need.