9486 in the collection
Never Giving Up
Ohanian Comment: The world definitely needs more teachers who never give up on a kid. Never.
The system did not allow for the possibility of giving up on a student. "We tell them they'll never be expelled," Mr. DeSisto said in a 1981 interview in The Boston Globe. "We say they can't do anything horrible enough to make us abandon them. Of course they are going to test us."
Michael DeSisto, founder and headmaster of the innovative DeSisto School in Stockbridge, Mass., which specializes in helping troubled adolescents through unusual programs in fields like the culinary and performing arts, died on Nov. 1 in Boston. He was 64 and lived on the school's campus.
The cause was a cerebral hemorrhage three days after successful kidney transplant surgery, school officials said.
Mr. DeSisto, an educator and psychotherapist, was known for his work with emotionally troubled adolescents. For 11 years he was director of the Lake Grove School on Long Island. Then, in 1978, with financing from students' parents, he went out on his own, founding the DeSisto School on the campus of the former Stockbridge School, in the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts.
The DeSisto School, officially described as a therapeutic boarding school, combines a general academic college-preparatory program with individual and group psychotherapy, parent-student therapy, other family involvement and residential life with opportunities in the culinary arts and the performing arts. Many students have entered the school straight from drug rehabilitation or brushes with the law.
A stage musical, "Inappropriate," written by Mr. DeSisto, Lonnie McNeil and Michael Sottile and performed by the school's student theater company, had an Off Broadway run at the Theater Row Theater in 1999 and 2000. The show, based partly on teenagers' journals, included songs about sexual abuse, drug use, relationships with parents and other intense emotional concerns of adolescence.
Mr. DeSisto's book for parents, "Decoding Your Teenager: How to Understand Each Other During the Turbulent Years," was published in 1991. It divided adolescents into 10 types and advised parents on dealing and communicating with each.
Mr. DeSisto's methods were praised by some and criticized by others. Students who broke the rules did not receive typical forms of punishment but were often required to do manual labor on the school's farm.
The system did not allow for the possibility of giving up on a student. "We tell them they'll never be expelled," Mr. DeSisto said in a 1981 interview in The Boston Globe. "We say they can't do anything horrible enough to make us abandon them. Of course they are going to test us."
Born and reared in Boston, Mr. DeSisto attended St. John's Seminary there and received a bachelor's degree from Stonehill College in North Easton, Mass.
He is survived by his wife, Margie Charles Bullock, and by a sister, Jacqueline DeSisto, of Stockbridge.
— Anita Gates
A. Michael DeSisto, 64; Founded School for Troubled Youth, Dies
New York Times
2003-11-11
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/arts/theater/11DESI.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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