Film Project Story

Producer/Director, Dr. James Ault

This documentary film project actually began with a small grant from the Louisville Institute to produce a documentary on the life of Virgilio Elizondo, a Mexican-American Catholic priest from San Antonio, Texas, considered one of the founders of Hispanic theology in the United States. However, as I was working with Father Elizondo to plan our main filming, he was named in an aggressive, self-aggrandizing lawsuit that ended up tragically taking his life. What should we do with the funds? On the suggestion of Joel Carpenter, a longstanding friend and colleague, we ended up applying the grant to tell Esperanza’s story.

I had been aware of Esperanza’s work since the late 1990s when Danny Cortés, brother of Esperanza’s founding director, Luis Cortés, and then my Program Officer at Pew Charitable Trust for my African Christianity Rising films, took me to visit its new offices. However, given the fact that the average cost of a PBS documentary hour is over $1million, applying this small grant of $25K for a biography of one person to tell the story of a complex organization like Esperanza, with many branches and many characters, seemed a daunting, perhaps impossible, task. However, what I began seeing in preproduction research and early filming in various branches of Esperanza’s work, blew me away in terms of its excellence and effectiveness in addressing the challenges in the lives of the inner-city poor and committed me to carrying out the project despite such funding limitations.       [continue below]  

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In retrospect, I did not come to these conclusions blindly. My first area of study as a sociologist was city life. But on a more personal level, I had some profound experiences during my college years working with inner-city youth in East Harlem, in public housing projects in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and then, in public housing (or “council flats” as they call them) in London. Getting to know Puerto Rican and African-American youth and their families in American urban contexts through those work experiences certainly helped prepare me for this project. But, as I embarked on it, other surprising personal connections to this project came to light. In an early production trip I fell into conversation with one of Esperanza’s founding board members, the Rev. John Rice, a United Methodist minister. On hearing my name, he shared with me the appreciation he had for his relation with my late father, James Ault, when he was the presiding Bishop for that church’s conference in Eastern Pennsylvania. He then shared with me the fact that he had helped Esperanza get started with its original housing counseling work in North Philadelphia with a grant from funds provided him by my father for such work in Philadelphia’s inner-city communities.

Another coincidence gave strength to this project from its very beginnings. It turned out that the incoming Director of the Louisville Institute, Edwin Aponte, had written his dissertation at Temple University in part on Esperanza. He knew their work intimately. Filming a pre-production interview/consultation with him contributed much to my understanding of its work and history from the very outset. Then, as I entered into doing preproduction research and early filming in various branches of Esperanza, I was impressed by its consistent effectiveness: in addition to its educational work with inner-city youth in its public charter high school and its two-year Christian college, which I decided to mainly focus on, I was impressed by its housing and immigration counseling services, its business corridor development work, its EARN or job-training center, its music school, AMLA, and its national programs, including youth work and its National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast held every other year in Washington, DC. After filming some in all these areas (except the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast not held that year), and developing some personal stories in Esperanza Academy High School and College, all with a good deal of sweat equity on my part, and then building some roughcut story threads from that footage running a total of 90 minutes, we ran out of funds.
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As I began reaching out for additional funding, other projects intervened before we finally received another modest grant of $30K to complete the project three years later from the Louisville Institute. We then embarked on some additional filming, which involved filming some new developments in the organization’s work, as well as follow-ups on personal stories of students we were already following. They included some moving and revealing ones, like the high school’s valedictorian, Rafael’s decision to leave Haverford College to help start a family business when his stepfather and brother had become unemployed. In addition, we had the opportunity to film Esperanza’s new elementary school where one could witness how its foundational culture was being planted and grown, and to film its then rapidly growing cyber school which was managing, despite remote learning, to embody some of the loving and caring practices, involving strong family engagements, at the heart of Esperanza’s educational work, and finally to film the opening of their new theater dedicated to bringing the arts to North Philadelphia. All this led to building a “Three Years Later” roughcut running 45 minutes.

However, that in addition to the 90 minute film we had already built, was far too much for a final film. One alternative was to consider creating a two-part series. But, in the end, the limited effectiveness of the “Three Years Later” cut, persuaded us to just use some of those materials in the final film, but without designating a three-years-later jump in time. That meant putting aside some of the follow-ups of personal stories based on that time jump, as well as our portrayal of its start-up elementary school, its burgeoning cyber school and its new theater. All those story threads we had built now appear in the film’s Educational Extras, if you are interested in checking them out and seeing what lessons they hold. Finally, a supplemental grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation was helpful in covering finishing costs for the 90-minute film we ended up creating from these materials.

At this point, the question of distribution was front and center. Through some personal connections, I reached out to PBS’ station in Philadelphia, WHYY, and was directed to its new Head of Production who eventually viewed the film’s final cut and spoke with me about it by phone.  In our open, free-wheeling and generally constructive conversation, she said that, while she found the stories of the students we followed very moving and compelling—“this school helped empower them to address things in their life,” she noted–she didn’t feel that the stories of the teachers who reached them, or the culture of the institution that supported their transforming work, of any interest. It puzzled me that she could not appreciate the importance of the founding culture of this organization; how it was, for example, that their public charter schools, with the same open enrollments and even less funding than neighborhood public schools, were able to dramatically outperform them.  And, while she saw that the teachers the film portrayed were “special people,” she said she didn’t need to hear anything about what motivated them, or “their philosophy.” Why, I kept wondering? Certainly I wondered whether the often negative attitudes toward public charter schools among liberally minded people, given their faulty assumptions that they embody socially conservative or elitist agendas, might have been at work here. But, as our conversation unfolded, it turned out that simply portraying the faith-based nature of this mission-driven organization and its schools is what troubled her. It’s too much like “proselytizing,” she said at one point, though admitting that wasn’t exactly the right word. “You just don’t want to feel like you’re in church,” she later uttered in conclusion.

Her negative reaction to the film’s matter-of-fact portrayal of the faith-based nature of Esperanza did not surprise me. I had become sadly familiar with such prejudices in my long career as a documentary filmmaker. It was evident in my very first film, an intimate portrait of a fundamentalist Baptist church outside Worcester, Massachusetts, then leading the growth of New Right social conservatism in American politics in the 1980s, a project which arose from my sociological field research trying to understand such movements in American life at the time.  After representatives of WBGH, PBS’ flagship station in Boston, came to view some roughcuts we had built—for a film eventually praised by figures on opposite sides of the political spectrum at the time—they said they weren’t interested. However, we soon heard that they then went on to recruit their own documentary filmmaker from Great Britain—a gay man, it turned out—to portray America’s growing fundamentalist movement at the time. Fully funded through WGBH, that filmmaker, as one reviewer put it, “set out to expose what he perceives as the hypocrisies within Fundamentalist Christian churches, and his interviewees fall fully into the traps he sets.” His film set off such a firestorm among powerful conservative church figures in Texas where he and WGBH had decided filmed, that they weren’t allowed to broadcast the film without first showing an open conversation with its subjects who objected to its negative, distorted portrayal of them.  

Then, when our own film, Born Again: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church, was finished, even though, because of its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it was slated for national broadcast on PBS, none of PBS’ premiere stations around the country would sponsor it. Finally, South Carolina Public Broadcasting stepped in—yes, a southern entity—and through them it was broadcast as a national prime-time special to consistent praise across diverse media platforms, as well as going on to win first prize in religion at the American Film and Video Festival that year. Years later, after experiencing other prejudices in PBS toward matter-of-fact portrayals of Christian realties, like my African Christianity Rising films exploring the sources and directions of Christianity’s explosive growth in Africa, films which were summarily dismissed by public broadcasters in the West, even though they were praised by leading thinkers on the subject and shot by one of the world’s greatest hand-held camera persons at the time, I wondered how it was that Born Again was broadcast nationally on PBS to begin with. Of course, having received completion funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was decisive, but how that funding happened held an interesting lesson. It turned out that the CPB Program Officer who came to view our early roughcuts for that film, who was then a rising figure at CPB and would go on to head it, however briefly, was African American. And he had grown up in an African American church in Pittsburgh where his father was the pastor. From his own experience, he saw in the personal stories we had captured that we had nailed the subject. Then, in what was perhaps the telling final chapter in his career at CPB, he ended up having a personal crisis, which appeared in the press, and which led to his resigning from his position as the organization’s head. He went on to become a pastor of his own church and an author. [continue below]  

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These institutions, then—the National Endowment for the Humanities and Public Broadcasting—are publicly funded entities pledged to serve all the American people in open-minded and objective ways, and, yet, that has not been my experience. That they shun matter-of-fact portrayals of the constructive activities of American citizens grounded in and motivated by their Christian faith. while they consistently support positive, uplifting, even glowing portraits of work on social justice issues they embrace, remains an expression of deeply rooted, systemic prejudice. It is no wonder, then, that Donald Trump in effectively firing up his base at his rallies invariably repeats his message that “faith and family, not government and bureaucracy are the heart of American life.” The evident prejudices of our nation’s public broadcasters continues to provide support for the political animus Trump’s sayings evoke.

In this prejudicial context, I want to lift up Esperanza’s inspiringly effective work in addressing some of the most challenging problems among the poor communities in cities across the United States and elsewhere, and point to meaningful lessons their work holds in how others might effectively address such problems elsewhere. Some of those lessons on Esperanza’s exemplary educational work are discussed in the other reflections posted here.   END

Lessons from Esperanza’s Educational Work

Producer/Director, Dr. James Ault

Since I am not an expert on educational work in inner-city contexts, I look forward to posting reflections experts see in our film about Esperanza’s exemplary educational work. Meanwhile, as a sociologist/ethnographer filming in Esperanza’s schools, I do have some of my own observations to share.

First, I take to heart the statement of David Solivan, one of Esperanza’s early leaders, that its high school’s success derives from the mission-founded culture planted by its Hispanic clergy founders with their commitment to “serve the least of these,” citing Matthew 25. In its public charter schools, I came to see, teachers and staff from diverse religious backgrounds—Jews, atheists and non-Christians, like the poetry group leader, Anna Pizzimenti—all feeling comfortable joining in that mission-driven work to care for their students, as the Educational Extra dealing with the reflections of some non-Christian teachers and staff reveals. That founding mission finds expression in Luis Cortés’ statement that he recruited Elizabeth Conde-Frazier to head their new Christian college “because she has passion for the individual soul,” something Dean Conde-Frazier demonstrates as she walks the hallways and takes time to mentor and care for students individually, in order to meet not only the educational gap they face in life, but also the “gap of the soul,” as she profoundly puts it.            [continue below]  

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But, to care for students’ individual souls means meeting them where they are in life, which requires understanding the circumstances of their lives and the very culture, or taken-for-granted assumptions and values that shape them. Here I would point to two important elements of culture Esperanza’s schools address: family and fighting. Fighting was one of the challenging issues that had to be addressed in laying the foundation for Esperanza Academy high school’s culture (and a subject too complicated, and set in the past, to include in the film itself). Fighting’s appeal to youth was shaped by the dangers in their neighborhoods, from crime and gang violence which flourished as a means to earn an income through the illegal drug trade, but also as a means to protect family and neighborhood given the weakness and unreliability of police protection. In addition, the readiness to fight is strengthened by the man-boy mentor relations gang membership provides young men growing up in fatherless homes, a reality the “Father Poem” of Esperanza Academy’s Poetry Group points to. The sophomore Andres’ story of hanging out with the wrong people who “thought fighting was cool,” and then getting arrested because of it, points to these dilemmas. In its early years the high school struggled with the issue of fighting, finally deciding to apply zero tolerance toward it, which led some community members to criticize them for condemning that familiar element of local culture.

In the end, the zero tolerance for fighting, softened by the ethic of forgiveness and second chances–a staple of Christian ethics planted firmly in the school’s culture–seemed to be working. Key enforcers of it were the Academy’s security personnel, or School Climate Officers (SCOs) as Esperanza significantly calls them, who can be seen embodying another element of school culture, its family dimension.  “I’m like a father figure, a brother,” one SCO, Mr. Philson or “Phil”, as he’s called, observes. “I have 800 names in my head, 800 personalities,” he says, emphasizing how important it is to let each one of their students “know you care for them, that you genuinely care for them” which he demonstrates again and again as he greets students in the cafeteria mentioning what test or what issues he knows they are facing.
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“The students care for him,” his close colleague, SCO Liset Morales, observes, “especially the boys.” “That’s my man!” she finds them often saying, pointing to the male role model such SCO’s provide as “father figures” or “brothers.” Miss Morales herself embodies another element of students’ culture that helps staff and teachers care for students meeting them where they are. That is when reprimanding a tall student as she escorts him out of the cafeteria she gives him a quick disciplinary slap, much to his amusement, even pleasure, it seems, from the smile on his face. While in some white middle-class contexts in American life, such physical discipline might be seen as “child abuse,” in the context of Hispanic and African American life, it would generally be seen and appreciated as part of the warm physicality of caring relationships present in this school, as the look on that male student’s face when Ms. Morales slaps him suggests, and perhaps even the familial dimension of their relationships. This warm physicality of relationships is evident in the warm affectionate hugs with “I love you’s,” caresses on the face, high-fives and fist pumps between school staff and students which pervades film passages of everyday life in Esperanza’s high-performing high school.

The SCO’s, or School Climate Officers, as they are aptly named, seem to be a particularly striking example of the Academy’s distinct culture. In another story, that of freshman Luis, who suffers a suspension for bad language he used in school, his mother, Berliz, enjoys sharing relevant information with SCO Phil when he greets her at the school’s front door. She recounts all the information SCO’s share with her about her son’s behaviors, and how caringly they treat him. “I’m so grateful! They’re a family . . . they’ve become family,” Berliz happily concludes. I was surprised that the WHYY commentator on the film, referred to in the Film Project Story, didn’t recognize this dimension of school life and simply said dismissively that she wasn’t interested in hearing from those “heavy-set guys in the cafeteria,” referring obviously to SCO Phil. And perhaps that indicates a lack of recognition, understanding of, or interest in, Hispanic- or African-American life.  (By the way, we had hoped to learn more about what was involved in shaping the role of SCO’s in the school from interviewing its founding head, but our interview with him had to be cancelled because of an illness he was going through at the time.)

Such ways in which Esperanza Academy meets students where they are in terms of family culture and values is strikingly evident in the Parent-Teacher Meeting in the story of Nydia, the dance student. To begin with, Nydia refers to her dance teacher and mentor, Tania, as a “mom-type teacher,” given the way she cares for her students and helps them with the personal dimensions of their lives. At that Parent-Teacher meeting “things got hashed out” as Nydia’s English teacher puts it, coming to an understanding of why Nydia’s performance in school declined so dramatically. It turned out that it was out of concern for her single mother’s serious, life-threatening illness, and in that context, her responsibility for her little sister, especially should her mother pass away. “She keeps me strong inside,” Nydia says about her little sister, “she motivates me,” following her mother’s reminder that she is her little sister’s leader and that she must guide her in life “like I’ve guided you.” That meeting, which Nydia says turned things around for her, “speaks to the school’s dedication to the parents’ active role in the student’s life,” as Nydia’s English teacher puts it. “We want to come behind the parent and support the parent in the child’s education.” This strong presence of family engagement plays out day-in-day-out in the life of the Academy, as well as at that of Esperanza College.

Of course, one dimension of the school’s active engagement with students’ parents and families is the staff’s ability to relate to parents in terms of their culture, and, also, in some cases, their language, at times Spanish. But, Nydia’s story also points to another important dimension of Esperanza Academy’s transformative work with students: the importance of the arts as a medium to express those things that are challenging them in life, and thereby help them overcome them. The arts, like poetry, dance, music, painting and theater, all loom large in the active lives of students at the Academy, as the story of the Poetry Group demonstrates. It gives them a voice to deal with challenges they face in life, like an absent father . . . or an abusive one, or dangers every day on the streets of their neighborhood. Given the low self-esteem inner-city minority kids often feel in the larger society around them, “giving them a voice,” as dance teacher Tania puts it, given “their passion to want to be seen, to want to be heard,” and to know that they matter, seems an important function of the art education we filmed at the Academy.

And it may be relevant to recognize that the arts provide an immediacy in finding a voice to express what matters to you, unlike the need to pursue studies further, to get a college or masters degree, in order to have a voice and something to say. Furthermore, to understand how much the arts figure in the transformative educational work of Esperanza Academy, it might be helpful to recognize their robust relevance in the family culture of many inner-city students, compared to other kinds of learning emphasized in paths to higher education, like the natural and social sciences, or academic approaches to literature or even to the arts. Such academic studies are generally grounded in abstract, discursive knowledge and concepts. However, in the close-knit extended family life of many Hispanic and African Americans (as well as white working-class or rural Americans), children come to effective and applicable knowledge of the world through the concrete and specific—like effective story-telling, often about specific people and things known in common in their close-knit communities—rather than through the abstract and general. Therefore, many people raised in such environments don’t readily take to abstract, discursive thinking emphasized in academic study aimed toward “higher education.” They prefer, take to, and are more skilled at, the concrete and specific, for example in metaphoric language employed, say, in poetry. And the arts, then, provide a more comfortable and fruitful educational avenue for them to embrace. And those educational paths are ones that seemed to flourish and have great impact at Esperanza Academy, though one also finds some students there excelling in other fields, say, in mathematics, like one senior who got accepted at the University of Pennsylvania during our last year filming.

So these are some limited reflections about Esperanza’s educational work from my standpoint as an ethnographic observer and filmmaker. I look forward to getting further reflections from experts who have studied and thought about the contexts of inner-city life I found at Esperanza’s public charter high school and college effectively dealing with. END

All These Educational Extra videos & more are available in their portfolio online here.