The classrooms were the same.
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Their worlds were not.
Same School, Different Class is a powerful dual memoir by David Waddell and Kim Bancroft about class, belonging, race, memory, and the silence institutions often leave behind.
A story decades in the making
The story is a dual memoir by David Waddell and Kim Bancroft, two former classmates who shared classrooms, but not the same reality. Told in alternating voices, the book explores how class, belonging, privilege, race, and silence shaped their lives and the story their school told about itself. Honest, moving, and long overdue, it is a story about the past that speaks powerfully to the present.
What This Book Is
Two classmates. One School. Two very different realities
Why It Matters
The questions at the heart of this book are not stuck in the past.
As schools and communities wrestle with identity, belonging, legacy, and truth, Same School, Different Class offers something rare: a deeply personal story that also challenges how institutions remember themselves. It asks readers to look beyond official narratives and confront harder questions about who was seen, who was overlooked, and what silence has cost.
Institutional Memory
What schools celebrate and what they leave unsaid shapes how history is understood.
Belonging and Identity
Two students can share the same campus and still live entirely different truths.
The Cost of Silence
What is left unspoken does not disappear. It lingers across generations.
Reflections
“What makes this book so powerful is its restraint. It does not shout. It does not blame. And in that revelation, it asks hard and necessary questions about memory, belonging, and silence.”
A. Sabatini- Retired Independent School Administrator
“This is the unseen history of Greenwich.”
Wellington J. Ramsey III. Former Director of Admission
“David and Kim’s memoir/duet has high notes and lows, harmonies and discords- a soundtrack of lives that occupied the same educational and societal spaces, but differently. Their siren’s song and warriors’ call invite us all to join in chorus.”
Jabari Mahiri, Ph.D. Professor, U.C. Berkeley School of Education
“When I heard about the book, the first word I thought of was trauma. This book helps us understand the hidden danger of trauma that goes unnamed, unsupported, and unresolved. David ‘s family, faith, and resilience gave him the support system that helped carry him forward, but the book also reminds us that many people do not have that same foundation. What David and Kim have accomplished is powerful: they have created a space for truth healing and courageous communication.”
Lynn Pearcy-MBA-Executive Content Creator / Published Author
MEET THE AUTHORS
David Waddell is a mission-driven executive leader, coach, mentor, and storyteller with more than three decades of experience helping people recognize their value and step fully into their potential. Through Interview Skill Coaching Academy, he has helped students, young adults, professionals, veterans, and emerging leaders build confidence, communicate their strengths, and own their stories. In Same School, Different Class, Waddell brings a powerful personal lens to questions of identity, belonging, resilience, and the lasting impact of honest conversation. He writes and speaks from lived experience, offering a perspective shaped not only by reflection, but by having lived the tensions the book explores. His work reflects a deep belief that when people are seen clearly, prepared well, and challenged honestly, they are far more capable than they know.
David Waddell
Kim Bancroft
Ms. Bancroft spent decades in high schools and colleges teaching composition, literature, and education courses with an emphasis on social justice. In 2010 she turned to editing and writing. She edited Literary Industries (Heyday Books, 2014), the 1890 autobiography of her ancestor H.H. Bancroft, who founded The Bancroft Library. Kim also wrote a biography of the founder of Heyday Books, Malcolm Margolin, and a history of H.H. Bancroft’s wives, titled Writing Themselves into History: Emily and Matilda Bancroft in Letters and Journals. Kim sees Same School, Different Class as the culmination of her work on multicultural education and the capturing of meaningful personal stories. For more information on Bancroft, please visit : Kim Bancroft | Heyday and Kim Bancroft
Welcome to THE KAFAY, a space inspired by the music, memory, and emotional world behind Same School, Different Class. For David, music was more than background. It was refuge, release, and a way of making sense of what could not always be spoken. These songs help trace the distance between what he experienced at school and what he felt at home.
FOR SCHOOLS / EVENTS
Bring SSDC to Your School or Community
Same School, Different Class is more than a book. It is a conversation starter for schools, alumni communities, book clubs, libraries, and organizations seeking thoughtful dialogue around identity, belonging, memory, class, and institutional history. David Waddell and Kim Bancroft are available for select speaking engagements, school conversations, alumni events, panels, and community discussions.
Suggested Offerings List
Author Talks
School and Campus Conversations
Alumni and Community Events
Book Club Discussions
Panel Conversations
Conversations on Belonging, Identity, and Institutional Memory
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Showcase what this product is about. What’s it made of? How was it made? What are ways to enjoy it?
Podcast Coming
A new podcast inspired by the themes of Same School, Different Class is coming soon. The show will feature conversations on identity, belonging, memory, resilience, outsider experience, education, and personal growth.
The podcast will expand the dialogue beyond the book and create space for thoughtful, compelling conversations with guests from education, leadership, and lived experience.
Podcast coming soon inspired by Same School, Different Class themes and identify, belongings, and resilience.
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