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Crossing the Water: Eighteen Months on an Island Working with Troubled Boys-a Teacher's Memoir

by Daniel Robb

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412605,442 (4.1)1
Off the coast of Cape Cod lies a small windswept island called Penikese. Alone on the island is a school for juvenile delinquents, the Penikese Island School, where Daniel Robb lived and worked for three years as a teacher. By turns harsh, desolate, and starkly beautiful, the island offers its temporary residents respite from lives filled with abuse, violence, and chaos. But as Robb discovers, peace, solitude, and a structured lifestyle can go only so far toward healing the anger and hurt he finds not only in his students but within himself. Lyrical and heartfelt, Crossing the Water is the memoir of his first eighteen months on Penikese, and a poignant meditation on the many ways that young men can become lost.… (more)
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  ShanLand | Feb 28, 2022 |
Daniel Robb, who grew up in the Cape Cod town of Woods Hole, home to the famed oceanography lab, decides to take a job as a live-in teacher at a residential school for troubled boys on Penikese, a tiny island off the coast of New Bedford. Having grown up in a sad home without a father's constant presence, Dan feels that he can give back and understand the eight boys, who are sent to Penikese for their last chance before being imprisoned in juvenile facilities. Dan and the other teachers immerse the boys in difficult physical labor (building a stone wall, fixing the primitive farm equipment, taking care of pigs) and also in reading and keeping journals. Their success is fleeting and transient, as, due to their rocky childhoods, most of the boys have settled into patterns of suspicion of any authority and mistrust of adults. But there are hard-won victories, and Dan himself learns about handling unrealistic expectations of himself and the boys. This is a balanced story of Dan's past and the boys' futures. ( )
  froxgirl | Nov 4, 2020 |
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Off the coast of Cape Cod lies a small windswept island called Penikese. Alone on the island is a school for juvenile delinquents, the Penikese Island School, where Daniel Robb lived and worked for three years as a teacher. By turns harsh, desolate, and starkly beautiful, the island offers its temporary residents respite from lives filled with abuse, violence, and chaos. But as Robb discovers, peace, solitude, and a structured lifestyle can go only so far toward healing the anger and hurt he finds not only in his students but within himself. Lyrical and heartfelt, Crossing the Water is the memoir of his first eighteen months on Penikese, and a poignant meditation on the many ways that young men can become lost.

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