Daphna Rubin
Hoggard Films

The thought I carried around with me while we were making this film is how did these young people end up where they are today? And what role does their public high school play in their lives? Can it stand up to the influences of a place like New Orleans? We've all read about the decline of our nation's public school systems and the various initiatives to change them. This is no great epiphany. But for me, witnessing these students' lives firsthand and the vastly under-resourced school that tries to face all the challenges that come along with them were eye-opening experiences. How did we get here? And why aren't we more concerned especially when the stakes are so high?

There's a lot of talk about education in this country but essentially it's left up to local districts to figure it out no matter what resources they have. Holding educators and schools accountable does not seem to be a workable solution when the problems we witnessed were myriad and extended well beyond the schoolyard.

Not only do these young people contend with the same issues that any teenager faces - acceptance, confidence, self-esteem, etc. - but many of them carry the extra burdens that come along with life in places that are often dangerous and dysfunctional.

In some of the first video diary entries that came back, the students' descriptions of life in New Orleans ranged from not knowing whether you would survive from one day to the next to how close they'd come to extraordinary tragedy in their lives... a parent being assaulted, the death of a sibling, the murder of a friend, the absence of an imprisoned father... There wasn't one student who deviated from this experience. And there wasn't one among them who described the New Orleans beloved by tourists around the world though many described New Orleans as a city they will always love.