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What Happens When an Élite Public School Becomes Open to All? | The New Yorker

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Rebecca Johnson, a teacher for more than twenty years, approached the first day of class at Lowell High School last fall with unusual anxiety. “I am used to having my plans and procedures mostly ready to go, and I am just excited to meet a new crop of kids,” she explained before the term began. “While I am still experiencing much of that excitement, I am also feeling some trepidation, and I am not sure exactly why.” On the first morning of school, she dressed the way she always does: an untucked button-down shirt, this one with flowers; gray slacks; and extraordinarily sensible black shoes. On arriving, she prepared herself, as usual, a mug of milky tea. Lowell is in western San Francisco, near the ocean, and a thick, low fog was sweeping through the eucalyptus and cypress trees as students arrived for the first time since the start of the pandemic, eighteen months earlier. Shortly after 8 a.m., Johnson began walking the lower hallways, then the upper, while a tide of students lapped o

Save this story Save this story Rebecca Johnson, a teacher for more than twenty years, approached the first day of class at Lowell High School last fall with unusual anxiety. “I am used to having my plans and procedures mostly ready to go, and I am just excited to meet a new crop of kids,” she explained before the term began. “While I am still experiencing much of that excitement, I am also feeling some trepidation, and I am not sure exactly why.” On the first morning of school, she dressed the way she always does: an untucked button-down shirt, this one with flowers; gray slacks; and extraord

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