A new documentary follows the lives of students in three school marching bands in New Orleans. “The Whole Gritty City” was shown on CBS 48 hours earlier this month and can be viewed here.

As the movie’s web page explains

Living in a city traumatized by a flood and besieged by street violence, there’s a deep longing to have “no cares in the world”. But New Orleans is also the birth place of jazz: a community that to this day draws on a deeply rooted musical culture. For thousands of kids in the city’s marching bands music is an escape, a refuge and a lifeline.

Sarah Carr writes about the movie in “Out of the Mouths of Babes and Trumpeters: “Gritty City” Triumphs with Child-Centered Perspective”

Carr is the author of a book about schools in New Orleans, Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America’s Children, which was reviewed by Mike McShane here.

Education Next earlier published “New Schools in New Orleans: School reform both exhilarated and imperiled by success,” by Jed Horne

—Education Next