In the inner city of Waterbury, Connecticut an ensemble of passionate professionals tackle the country’s rising literacy crisis: fighting to reverse the catastrophic future ahead for their students and the nation at large.
hopeville, usa:
the cost of failure in the
american classroom
Katherine, an exhausted hairdresser in mismatched pajamas, opens the screen door of a brick, single family home. She carries her fussing daughter, Cat, in her arms across a small yard. Katherine argues as she straps Cat into the car seat of a silver Toyota Corolla; muttering the words “you have to go” repeatedly over Cat’s protests. Cat sinks down into the seat. Her Hello Kitty backpack--- roughly the same size as Cat’s small body--- forces her legs to dangle uncomfortably. Katherine puts on the Frozen soundtrack to soothe her daughter and she drives off.
The car quickly moves past a strip of abandoned factories adorned with graffiti. It passes an overcrowded grocery store, a police station, and a rehabilitation facility. Waterbury, Connecticut--- nicknamed “The Brass City”--- was once a booming economic titan at the center of the industrial revolution. Suffering the fate of many American towns, the factories have long since closed. The prosperity, unfortunately, vanished with them.
The car pulls into the parking lot of Sprague Elementary; a foreboding, decaying fortress of a building that does not register as a school at first glance. Cat enters through the front doors and joins a line of twenty-four first graders. Unbeknownst to Cat and her classmates, they are embarking on a crucial year in their young lives.
The first graders are rapidly approaching the event horizon of literacy: If they do not reach a standard level of reading in the next two years, they will likely never read proficiently. A profound, invisible burden rests on their tiny shoulders. At only 6 years old, they face joining the ranks of the staggering 30 million literacy-compromised adults in America: many of whom have been incarcerated or have failed to participate productively in society. The majority of the twenty-four first graders at Sprague Elementary are reading well below grade level. Cat is one of them.
The teachers and administrators in the Waterbury School system are working tirelessly to prevent the ill-fated future of their students. At the center, is a renegade by the name of Dena Mortenson. The English Language Arts Supervisor has fought against an increasingly underfunded educational system focused on short term gains. By scraping together allocated money, Mortenson is implementing a new professional development program. She believes if teachers are actively trained to deal with the hurdles of their students on an individual level, students will have a fair chance at rupturing the self-perpetuating, systemic cycle of illiteracy. The Sprague Elementary first graders will be the initial beneficiaries of the test program.
Thirty-five miles south of Waterbury, inside the ancient stone walls of Yale University, Mark Seidenberg is pouring over research collected in a sealed, titanium lab. An expert, cognitive scientist, Seidenberg is bursting at the seams to share his statistical findings of literacy learning. He believes teachers--- notwithstanding all their best efforts and intentions---do not have the resources or understanding of literacy to teach basic reading and writing skills. Though it may seem like a grandiose claim spoken from an ivory tower, Seidenberg’s hypothesis resonates with larger statistics of literacy rates.
64% of adult Americans are reading at a 6th grade level. The current systems in place are not equipped to handle the increasing crisis.
Hopeville, USA - The Cost of Failure in an American Classroom is an exploration of the socio-economic and emotional impacts of a literacy-compromised country through the lens of one school year in Waterbury, Connecticut.
synopsis by Tara Duffy
Harvey Hubbell V
Director + Writer
Eric Adams
Producer + Writer
Tara Duffy
Associate Producer
Rusty Dyer
Director of Photography
Ian Weik
Camera
Jillian Irizarry
Production Coordinator
Jordan Levesque
Editor
Whitney Stow
Assistant Editor
Clinton Sosa
Archivist
Michael Bacon
Composer