Book Reading /Presentation by Author & Educator Roger Prosise

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Housing Projects, Mansions, and Schools: An Educator’s Odyssey, is a memoir about a boy who grew up with an alcoholic father in Cabrini-Green, one of the poorest communities in the country, who then became the superintendent of Bannockburn School in one of the wealthiest communities in the country.

It looks at issues he faced growing up as a poor kid in a bad neighborhood and how as an educator he worked with children facing some of the same issues he had faced.

Roger explores what he learned about the power of friendship to neutralize racial divisions, the importance of family in fostering—or harming —children’s ability to thrive; the role of education in helping kids transcend poverty and also, sometimes, in keeping kids in their place.

He’s been asked many times what it was like growing up in Cabrini-Green in the 1960s, when his family was one of the only white families there, this memoir answers that question. It illustrates the inequities in schools, but at its heart it’s a book about race, poverty, resilience, education, and the power of fitting in, and how these things are all woven together in life in general and one person’s life.