Applying Life Lessons
Troy Grant, a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy and Culture, knows that years of research are ahead as he explores how to make education curricula more relevant and practical for at-risk students.
However, Grant, 38, also knows how far he has traveled from the New Haven, Conn., housing project where he grew up. A self-described rambunctious boy, Grant was placed in a school for developmentally disabled children when he was 9. At 11, authorities arrested him for breaking into a Woolworths store.
Grant persevered. He graduated from high school, joined the Air Force and completed his bachelors at City University of New York at 28 before earning his M.A. in Education from The Johns Hopkins University. Grants teaching experience includes several years at the New Era Academy in Baltimore.
Here I am now, in a Ph.D. program. So the question I ask is, What happened where education didnt find a place for me when I was a child? Grant said. What do you do with someone who has my kind of potential?
Although Grant will explore those questions in his doctoral work, he has also addressed them in his book, An Autobiography of an Unknown Man (Spencer Publishing, 2005). The Barnes & Noble bookstore at Baltimores Inner Harbor recently honored Grants achievements with a signing and reading from the newly released second edition.
Being in an interdisciplinary program such as the LLC program is quite a complement to my own unsettled thoughts about how the world has been constructed and structured, especially regarding inequality in education, Grant said. The LLC program encourages and pushes me to create new knowledge. My first year has been rather demanding but I feel better prepared as a result of the academic sharpening.
For more about Grant, click here to view coverage from the ABC news affiliate in Philadelphia after he recited the U.S. Constitution before a live audience.
(3/3/08)
© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 410-455-1000
