Whatever It Takes Documentary Review….

I was watching PBS last night and this enjoyable documentary popped up. The documentary is on the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics which has a small population of 108. It focused on the new principal at the school Edward Tom and one student named Sharifea Baskerville. Another student gets briefly looked at in the documentary. He winds up dropping out of school and gets picked up on some drug charges. The school has students wearing uniforms.

Throughout the documentary we look at one school year, the 2005-2006 school year, and the problems and triumphs Edwards has. The school is not your typical school. 80 is passing and anything less puts you into tutoring. We find that Edwards used to work at Saks Fifth Avenue before working in the school system. At then end I liked Edward and his way of doing things and I felt he got the job done as the leader of the school.

When it came to Sharifea Baskerville she was a bigger problem. He mom has drug problems so Sharifea has to wind up helping take care of the rest of the kids in the family. Sharifea wants to become a pedestrian. Edwards finds a summer enrichment program at Dartmouth she could attend. She gets in, but we later find out that she has been not doing her homework big time which threatens her chance to get into the program.

The best part of the documentary for me was when they got into the cartoon like segments. One for Edward and one for Sharifea. I felt it really got us closer to knowing and understanding the two main people in the documentary.

At the end of school year we find out that 27 students in the school got over 75 on the math regents with 9 students getting over 95. When Shariefa finally got to take the math regents she passed easily.

We also saw students in the Dartmouth program in an engineering class talk about a final project they had to do.

Again if another airing of the documentary comes on again watch it, it was a joy to see.