Transforming long-failing urban high schools like Fenger demands a complex set of moving parts. 

"They Never Give Up"

provides a snapshot of how these moving parts work together at Fenger, with special emphasis on how the social and emotional support that students experience outside class reinforces their learning and behavior in class. Audio of student voices, recorded during WKCD's several visits, enlarge our sense of the extraordinary challenges that youth and adults face daily here, as they struggle to distill hope from heartbreak.

This is the first of six WKCD case studies documenting the transformative power of social and emotional learning, and its connections to deeper learning, in a diverse collection of U.S. secondary schools. The series, Learning by Heart, was produced by WKCD for the NoVo Foundation and is aimed at the broadest audience possible: policymakers, practitioners, parents, media, and always the students at the center. 

Epilogue: Fenger High School was completing the final year of a three-year federally funded school improvement grant in April 2013, when WKCD observed the school in action and interviewed its faculty and students. In an epilogue, we describe the devastating loss of school improvement "inputs" at Fenger now that the additional federal funds are gone. 

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