On Another Note

A phone call from an old friend results in a surprise job offer for Leah Wells. Going to work as "Miss Leah," a music and movement specialist for Head Start, means journeying both farther into the Bronx and deeper into herself than she's ever been. In the year that follows, she enters the staff rooms and classrooms as an outsider, a visiting artist from an unfamiliar culture, sometimes admired for her skills and creativity, other times resented for it. While figuring out how to engage class after class of wriggling preschoolers and contending with ambivalent supervisors, Miss Leah succeeds in bringing the joy of music into crowded, under-assisted classrooms.