What It Takes to Pull Me Through

by Marcus, David L.

• ISBN13: 9780618772025
• ISBN10: 0618772022
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-05
• Publisher: Mariner Books

Summary

The Academy at Swift River specializes in one of the toughest tasks a school can undertake: helping teenagers in crisis regain their bearings. During a fourteen-month academic term at the school, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David L. Marcus witnesses the intense process that turns these kids around. In his time on campus, Marcus gets to know a diverse and remarkable group of teenagers: a former straight-A student reeling from the death of her mother, a teachers' son grappling with anger over being adopted, a southern girl immersed in drug abuse and unsafe sex, and a boy from Queens overwhelmed by depression. Granted full access to the Swift River proceednigs, Marcus is given the rare chance to observe the students' struggles and see their transformations from the inside. In What It Takes to Pull Me Through, he charts a path to redemption that any teen, any parent, can follow.

Author Biography

David L. Marcus has been an education writer and foreign correspondent at U.S. News & World Report, the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald, and the Dallas Morning News, where he was the cowinner of a Pulitzer Prize. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, he is a contributing editor at U.S. News. He is frequently invited to speak at schools and conferences.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Summer Vacation	ix
Introduction	1	(8)
Part I Truths and Half-Truths
``I Hate You, Dad''	9	(9)
Psychological Scavenger Hunt	18	(15)
Back to Basics	33	(11)
The Counselor and the Teacher	44	(7)
Mary Alice: ``Every Parent's Worst Nightmare''	51	(5)
Bianca: ``I Can't Do Anything Right''	56	(10)
Stoners, Wiggers, and Wanna-bes	66	(10)
``Y'all Had No Clue''	76	(7)
Tyrone: ``Lonely Once Again''	83	(9)
Back to Pattern	92	(11)
Part II Shames and Blames
Ph.D. in Manipulation	103	(10)
D.J.: ``The Bad Thing That Happened to Good People''	113	(8)
Storming, Norming, and Forming	121	(8)
``I'm Angry at Myself for Being Born''	129	(7)
Falling in Love Again	136	(14)
Winter of the Underground	150	(9)
Disclosures	159	(8)
Making Connections	167	(11)
Dating, Dumping, and Dry-Humping	178	(7)
A Case of the ``Fuck-Its''	185	(10)
Real Friends	195	(6)
Return to Innocence	201	(12)
Part III Forgiveness
``This Is Not a Test, This Is Your Life''	213	(10)
More Than Labels	223	(6)
``I Love That Kid''	229	(8)
``Laugh Now, Cry Later''	237	(8)
Life's a Permanent Party	245	(9)
Pura Vida	254	(8)
``I Can't Go Through This Again''	262	(10)
``Your Child Is Not Fixed''	272	(11)
Conquering Heroes	283	(8)
``You Have Your Little Girl Back''	291	(7)
Epilogue: ``So Many Fake People in the Real World''	298	(13)
Memo to Parents	311	(7)
Author's Note	318	(4)
Acknowledgments	322	(3)
Sources	325	(12)
Bibliography	337