This special examines the issues surrounding teaching, and family and community responsibility for at-risk children.
Glenfield Middle School in Montclair, New Jersey, is the anchor school for the south end in Montclair. The school is divided into houses, each of whose students keep the same core teachers from sixth through eighth grade.
Tourrie Moses was a highly promising student, inquisitive, engaged, and eager to learn when he entered Glenfield in the sixth grade. Friendly and well-liked by his teachers and classmates, he was elected president of the student council by eighth grade.
But what happened to Moses — once considered bound for a top college by his teachers — in the ensuing years causing him to spend more time in the streets than in school? Why is Dan Gill, a teacher at Glenfield for more than 40 years, still haunted by Moses, the student he calls “the one that got away”?
Public media tells the story of Moses, one of thousands of at-risk youths in America today, in "The One That Got Away." The one-hour special follows Gill as he reconnects with Moses currently serving 15 years for murder in the New Jersey state prison, and examines the relevant issues about teaching, familial and communal responsibility, and at-risk children.
Filmed over the course of three years by Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmakers John Block and Steve McCarthy, Moses’ life unfolds through interviews with the man himself, his family, teachers, and classmates, including his mother Twanda Moses; his father Shelton White; his cousin Ottis Wright; science teacher Nicole Blank; social studies and lead teacher Dan Gill; math teacher Peter von Hoffman; language arts teacher Deborah Maher; in class support teacher Tracey Wolfson; and more.
Each interview reveals how the intertwined forces of home life, school life and street life can negatively impact a child, particularly one growing up in impoverished conditions.
“I believe if all circumstances are not aligned appropriately that you can get off track to success when you come from a challenging location,” says James Earle, principal of Montclair High School in New Jersey. “But here’s what has to happen: there has to be someone to rescue you, to give you a lifeline…and we forget quite often that someone rescued us.”
Though Gill knows it is too late to rescue Moses, he still thinks about that little boy in his sixth grade class. Two years after Moses’ conviction, Gill takes a one-day leave of absence from school to visit Moses. He wants to help a kid who is in his class, one not unlike Moses, Gill asks Moses, “I got a kid like you. You got any advice for me?”
“Always pursue and let him know that you love him,” says Moses.
According to JANUS/Solutions, it costs $46,000 a year to house an inmate in New Jersey’s state prison system, while the estimated average cost of providing comprehensive support for an at-risk youth and his or her family in N.J. is $20,000.
Block and McCarthy hope this film can spark a national conversation about how to help America’s youth in troubling situations.
CREDITS:
A production of BlockMcCarthy Films LLC. Director/Producer/Co-editor is John Block. Producer/Director of Photography is Steve McCarthy. Funding for "The One That Got Away" is provided by the JPB Foundation and the Ford Foundation as part of Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America; and the John and Rose Cali Family Foundation; New Jersey Education Association; Silver Family Foundation, Montclair, New Jersey; and others.
