First Day

The first day of fourth grade. So hard to believe that Parker is starting his fifth year at Shamrock (though even harder to accept that he has only two years left). I look at his first-day kindergarten picture, and at the one I took this morning. What happened to the neatly tucked-in shirt? What happened to the first-day-of-school haircut? Parker's not the only one who's changed.


The fourth grade classrooms look out onto the butterfly garden. Back when Parker was in kindergarten, that space held a few ragged bushes and a bumpy stretch of weeds.


It looks quite different now.


The birds and butterflies have been busy there all summer, and as I pick through the leaves I see the telltale holes chewed by a variety of caterpillars. Parker's kindergarten class won the school's "best door" prize by recreating "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in construction paper. Now, if they look closely, they can see the whole process unfold in real time, right outside their windows.


Although school is in session, I hear only the fountain, some crickets and a few snatches of birdsong. Shamrock's adopted rabbit sits in a corner, chewing blades of grass. It's amazing how four hundred kids can be so quiet.

Across the yard, a small group of this year's kindergartners emerges from a classroom and walks toward the cafeteria, fingers to their lips, eyes down on the black-painted line they're supposed to follow as they walk from place to place.


There's a change there as well. When Parker entered kindergarten, he was the only child in his grade who went home to one of the comfortably middle-class houses that fill the well-off Plaza-Midwood neighborhood. This year, for the first time, there are several Plaza-Midwood children on the rolls.

We've been waiting for this moment. As I wrote when I started this blog, Peter and I came to high-poverty Shamrock because we don't believe in segregation. We believed we could help build a school where kids of many different kinds could thrive together. Now, we seem to have reached the point where some of our neighbors believe that too.

This shift has opened up new possibilities and new challenges.

There were advantages to having just a couple of Plaza-Midwood familes at Shamrock. Peter and I have made more new friends than we might have if more neighbors had been at the school. It also gave Shamrock time to build up on its own. The partial magnet program we have worked to establish is aimed at "gifted" students. A sudden rush of ambitious magnet parents could have divided the school, creating magnet classes that were far better off (and probably quite a bit whiter) than the school as a whole. But because the magnet drew few new families, that didn't happen. Instead, the "gifted" classes came to reflect the mix of ethnic and economic groups that make up Shamrock's broader population.

Now, it's a matter of welcoming a new group of students to an established program and helping them feel at home. They won't slide in unnoticed. Middle-class parents come to a school ready to act, wielding long lists of contacts, expectations and ideas. E-mails have flown faster and more furiously this summer than ever before. It's an energy and a focus that the school needs. But we'll have to work to mesh these new folks with the ones who have been here far longer, working in their own ways. We all have a lot to learn.

Why I Love Shamrock: I

For some time now, I've been trying to figure out exactly why I love Shamrock Gardens Elementary so much. How do you capture such an encompassing feeling, a sentiment that floats free from any single experience or revelation, slipping tantalizingly in and out of view?

But a few days ago, as I was leaving the school, I felt as though I finally held it in my hand.

I had just spent the morning helping one of Parker's classmates, Jessica, transfer to another school. Jessica's family had just moved, and Jessica couldn't stay at Shamrock. Everyone hates to see her go. She has been in Parker's class since kindergarten, and her parents have been dedicated volunteers for years.

Jessica needs a school that challenges her (she's officially "gifted" by CMS standards). But her family had just moved into the home school zone for Billingsville Elementary, which according to CMS statistics has fewer than six gifted children in the entire school. Jessica needed to be in a magnet program.

This is easier said than done. Negotiating CMS bureaucracy can be tricky even in the best of circumstances. And Jessica's parents don't speak English, which makes it even tougher.

Jessica's mom started with a couple of calls to student placement, but didn't get any clear answers, at least as far as I could tell. (I can limp along in Spanish, but it was hard for us to understand each other.) So last Wednesday, we set out in person to figure things out.

We started at the Family Application Center, where we learned that Jessica was eligible to apply to Barringer Academic Center. But the only way for her to get there, we were told, was to request a reassignment, a process that could only be completed online.

Jessica's family doesn't have Internet access. We could have done it from my computer, but I had a feeling we would run into complications. So we headed back across town to Shamrock.

The first thing you need to know about Shamrock and computers is that it often takes a full half hour just to log onto the system. Our high per-pupil funding rate has given some folks the idea that our school is a palace, with money being wasted right and left on needless frills. It only takes a quick visit to dispel any such illusion, especially if that visit involves venturing into one of our ancient bathrooms, or using a school computer.

We arrived at Shamrock's media center, started the login process, and settled in to wait. One of the fourth grade teachers, Ms. Gales, was there using a different computer. Once she saw what we were up to, she called us over and told us to use her computer, where she was already logged in. She knew the form we wanted, tapped through the CMS website, and pulled it up on screen. She told us to let her know when we were done with the computer, and she would get back to her work then.

To access the form, we needed Jessica's student number, along with the PIN number parents use when they log into CMS sites from home. Jessica knew her student number by heart. But since her family had never needed her PIN, no one knew what it was.

We walked over to the technology room, where our technology specialist, Ms. Scariot, and our media specialist, Ms. Hollar, were working together on a project (all of this, of course, was happening in the summer, when no teacher is paid to be at the school). After some exploratory hunting around the CMS computer system, Ms. Scariot made a call to someone who could guide her to the page for generating PINs. A few minutes later, we had one.

Back to the media center to fill out the form. We were going fine until we hit the page where we were supposed to list the reason for the reassignment request. We had to select one of three categories: "job," "CMS employee" or "extreme hardship." Nothing for "simple, reasonable request." Ms. Gales came back over to check on us, and explained that we should use "extreme hardship," so we did. She advised us to print out hard copies of the confirmation form, just in case the request somehow got lost in the system. We did that too.

Once we filed the request, we needed to do a second for Jessica's younger sister, who would be entering kindergarten in the fall. She too needed a number and a PIN. So we headed up to the office, where our financial secretary, Ms. Tillman, looked up the number. We got a second PIN. Some time later, our mission was complete, and I headed to the car.

This is why I love Shamrock. From the moment we arrived until the time we left, everyone at the school did whatever they could to help us. Helping a child transfer from Billingsville to Barringer isn't in the job description for Shamrock's media specialist, or technology specialist or fourth grade teachers or financial secretary. But everyone at the school cares more about kids than they do about job descriptions. They do the right thing.

As I write this, I can't help thinking about a discussion the school board held the other day, about pre-kindergarten. CMS currently pays part of the cost of a public pre-K program for disadvantaged kids, called "Bright Beginnings." Any kindergarten teacher will tell you that kids who have been through Bright Beginnings come to kindergarten far better prepared for its challenges than those who did not have a strong pre-K experience. (There's more debate about how long those effects last, but laying out those numbers would require a separate post.)

Still, debate about results aside, one strand of the anti-Bright Beginnings argument focuses purely on "job description." CMS, this reasoning goes, shouldn't offer pre-K that because, as one school board member put it, "our mandate is for K-12 education." If pre-K is to exist, she and other argue, it should be the job of other organizations – although what those organizations would be and where the funding would come from remain a mystery. Figuring that out isn't in the job description either.

Too much in our society seems to work this way, as people and institutions seek to strictly limit their responsibility, whether for children, the environment, or a host of other crucial pieces of our future. I love being at a place that doesn't march to this particular drummer.

Miracle

My friend Beth and I are in the butterfly garden, planting a milkweed patch that we hope will attract monarchs later in the summer. She notices the spice bush we planted last fall, and wanders over to take a look. She has two spice bushes, she says, but has yet to see a spice bush caterpillar on either of them this year.

Then she stops, reaches into the bush, and gently unrolls a furled leaf. There lies a bright green caterpillar with two, huge staring yellow eyes. It's one of the most beautiful I've ever seen.

The eyes aren't real, Beth points out. They're there to make the caterpillar look like a snake's head, so that it can scare away birds that might think of it as lunch. The caterpillar's real head, small and white, pokes out beneath.

Kids gather quickly to look. Another of our everyday miracles.

Science Olympiad

"Sham-rock." "SHAM-ROCK." The call echoes around UNC Charlotte's gymnasium as our students yell for their school, a blur of green and purple rocking from side to side. It is the end of a long Science Olympiad day, and the judges are late with the results. So the students from the participating schools, restless in their seats, are passing the time any way they can.


Some of our parents have caught the spirit as well, and they are leading the students in a variety of cheers: "Give Me an 'S'" "We Will Rock You," and so on. We aren't expecting to top the winners' lists, but our spirit is hard to beat. It's a beautiful sight.

It has been a long road to the Science Olympiad competition. There are fifteen different events, and a school needs to field at least two competitors for each. Our students have been coming to weekly practices since January, trying out their hands at pasta and marshmallow towers, paper gliders and (most popular) soda-bottle rockets that soar into the air with a satisfying whoosh, leaving a trail of water behind.

Fielding a top-notch Science Olympiad team is a lot of work. Materials have to be chosen and purchased. Competitors need to get a grasp of basic scientific principles: of structure, of flight, of growth and decay. And they need to work through the classic scientific process – try, fail, improve, try, fail, improve, over and over.

As so often happens, we had few resources and fewer volunteers, and a lot of the time the kids were on their own. In some ways this wasn't bad – they got to tackle challenges themselves, in their own ways. But there were predictable drawbacks.

Using spray bottles to soak each other proved more entertaining than using them to mist terrariums. Overly enthusiastic testing took a toll on many gliders. Hurried, haphazard cleanups meant that materials tended to get misplaced. And the transition from experimenting to testing and improvement was difficult to make.

The kids were definitely learning some things. But what did it add up to? Hard to tell. It was all too easy to imagine a debacle, with dozens of perfect entries putting our improvisations to shame.

Happily, the final competition fell two weeks after UNC Charlotte's classes ended, and Peter was able to step in for some last-minute coaching and tests. Having an architect involved made a big difference for our pasta towers, which had to hold a weight of 15 kilos to qualify for competition.

* * *

When competition day finally arrives, it starts at a bleary-eyed 7:30 a.m. Despite the early hour, 28 of the 30 team members show up at the gym, all but two wearing their school t-shirts. Several bring family members, who lug cameras, lunches and books. There are 23 schools taking part, and the gym quickly fills with eager students clad in a rainbow of school T-shirts.

The kids learn one lesson fast. Big competitions, like the real Olympics, look exciting on television. But for the actual competitors, they're mostly waiting, waiting, waiting.

At the glider competition, a long line of jostling competitors clutches planes of all shapes, sizes anxiously awaiting their team's turn. The judges take a while to get into a smooth testing rhythm, and the line crawls. As the packed students grow restless, planes began to crack, requiring emergency pep talks and repairs.

The first few gliders stall and dive, landing only a few feet from the starting line. But then one boy launches a craft that shoots halfway across the gym, fast and smooth. Everyone applauds.

Watching the first entries, we relax a little. The entries are all over the map – some clearly better than ours, some not nearly as good. We will not be embarrassed. We will fit right in.

The day goes surprisingly smoothly. All the gliders fly, and so do the rockets. One of our pasta towers cracks beneath the test weight, but the other holds. Our kids get to all their events, more or less on time. Between events, they play games or explore. A couple of our chess club members settle in for a match, while other students run up and down the grassy hills outside the gym. Everyone loves the bathrooms, where the sinks spurt water in great streams. No one gets lost for long. Only one kid melts down.


When it comes time for the awards ceremony each school groups together, kids in the front and families in the back, chatting, cheering and watching volunteers arrange the trophies and the big piles of medals. As the wait drags on, we joke that the judges must be using the time-consuming SOLVE process with which Shamrock students approach their End of Grade tests (STUDY the problem; ORGANIZE the facts; LINE up a plan; VERIFY with action; EXAMINE your results).

Finally, though, the organizers come up to the podium to announce the winners. A couple of events into the presentations, we hear "Shamrock Gardens Elementary," and everyone erupts. Our bottle biome team has taken fourth place! The two competitors make their way to the front, and come back with their medals and big smiles. A little later, we hear our name again – eighth place in the glider competition! At the end of the day, we will take home three eighth-place medals – glider, pasta tower and mystery engineering, along with the bottle biome fourth.


For the adults, it was a satisfying day. Our kids got to do something they hadn't done before. For a first effort, for the level of organization we managed to pull together, our performance was entirely respectable. The teams that took home the lion's share of the medals, as well as the team trophies, were the county powerhouses – the schools with high-powered gifted programs and far greater percentages of well-off families. Tough competition for a small, working-class school. Just showing up was its own victory, and for us that was sweet.

But for a school like Shamrock, the meaning of victory raises a dilemma There are the miracles, so often chronicled in movies, where underdog teams bring together hard work, persistence and a touch of crazy genius to knock off bigger, wealthier schools. Beyond the silver screen, however, it doesn't happen often.

But how can you explain to kids that being at a small, low-income school puts them at a big disadvantage in events such as these? How can you tell them that it will always be an uphill battle, because other schools find it easier to raise money, buy equipment and recruit parent volunteers? How can you ask them to lower their expectations? Yet if they don't, and our team doesn't finish near the top, how can you keep them from feeling that they're just not as smart as the kids on the other teams?

So we have no choice but to work harder next year. We'll be better organized, and we'll search more diligently for volunteers. We want one of those top eight spots, where the school gets a trophy, and everyone a medal. We'll see . . .


The top-finishing teams in Mecklenburg County's 2010 Elementary Science Olympiad Competition were, in order, Barringer, Olde Providence, Villa Heights, Polo Ridge, Providence Spring, Hawk Ridge, Idlewild and Myers Park Traditional.

Beautiful Music

Sunshine streams in the windows at St. Luke Methodist church, warming the sanctuary's pale yellow walls to a bright glow. The late spring air feels fresh and light. A perfect Sunday morning.


At the front of the sanctuary, just below the choir loft and the pulpit, a dozen children stand in front of folding chairs, looking out over the congregation. They have come to play the annual concert of the St. Luke Hand in Hand Orchestra, sponsored by the church for Shamrock Gardens students.

Each Tuesday afternoon for the past seven years, a group of Shamrock students has crossed Shamrock Drive, instruments in hand, and descended the set of concrete steps that leads to St. Luke's fellowship hall. Once there, they eat snacks, work on their homework, and learn to play violins, violas and cellos, with the guidance of music instructor Maya Johnson and under the watchful eyes of St. Luke volunteers.

St. Luke is an aging church. Most of its members joined half a century or so ago, when the nearby brick ranch houses were brand new, and the young couples who filled them were all white, as were the students at the recently built Shamrock Gardens Elementary. Over time, as neighborhoods and school have diversified, many long-time residents have passed on or moved away. But members of St. Luke have remained, still welcoming newcomers to their streets, still looking after the children in the school across the road.

St Luke members started Hand in Hand ten years ago. They bought sneakers for the kindergarteners, made treats for the teachers and began to acquire orchestra instruments for the fourth and fifth grade orchestra. Three years later, when Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools cut its elementary orchestra program, St. Luke members hired a teacher and organized the weekly parade across the road. Members also tutor, buy glasses for kids without insurance, help pay for field trips and support the school in countless other ways.

It isn't easy for a small church to raise the money for these programs. Twice a year, church members serve up the best church barbecue in Charlotte, as well as brownies, Mountain Dew layer cakes and sweet potato pies. They write grants, and hold sales. Year after year, they find a way. A former school board representative is fond of saying that if every church in Charlotte gave according to its means the way St. Luke does, there wouldn't be a problem in the city.


This morning's service is devoted to children. The congregation starts off singing "Jesus Loves Me," and the text is from Luke 18: "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these."

In his meditation, Pastor Richard Clough talks about how much adults can learn from children. He praises the students for the work they've done. Success does not come easy, he says. But when you reach a goal you've worked hard for, accomplishment is sweet. And no one can take it away. You can always look back and remember it.

Then comes time to play. Orchestra members make their way through a series of light, short tunes: "Caribbean Island," "Carolina Breeze," "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Back in the fall, the students could barely hold the unfamiliar instruments. Now they bow fluidly, in unison, and more or less in tune. To the parents, teachers and friends ranged in the pews, it could not sound more beautiful. The students finish and stand, to loud applause.


Afterwards, the church offers a good-by to Angela Beavers, the Communities in Schools representative for Shamrock, who has worked with the orchestra since its beginning, but who is now leaving Shamrock for a higher-level job. Ms. Beavers has to pause and wipe her eyes as she talks about St. Luke's devotion to music, to children and to God.

Awards follow: medals and trophies to the students, plaques for some of the most devoted volunteers. Relatives and friends smile, take pictures, and sometimes tear up themselves. Everyone exits into the brilliant Sunday sun.


Back home, I tell Parker that he will never in his life meet better people than the members of St. Luke Methodist Church. He nods, although I can tell he is distracted. His mind is full of games and friends and what he's going to do this summer. He can't fully appreciate the spirit that allows you to embrace a stranger's child. But I hope that someday he will look back, and understand.

School Board Talk: Segregation

Context: Two weeks ago, CMS staff announced that they were reorganizing the system's "Learning Communities," the subdivisions of the countywide system. Previously, these communities had been organized geographically – North, South, East, etc. – with the exception of a handful of schools, including Shamrock Gardens, which were placed in an "Achievement Zone" that provided extra attention and resources.

Under the proposed reorganization, all of CMS's 44 Title I elementary schools would be placed in a single, elementary-focused "Central Zone" and all of its Title I middle and high schools would be placed in a middle/high school "Central Zone." Non-Title I schools would remain in geographic zones that include elementary, middle and high schools.


I'm here to ask the board and staff to rethink the proposed new Central Zones, zones which locate Shamrock Gardens and many other schools not in a neighborhood, not in a part of our county, but in the placeless, rootless state of poverty.

Being in the Achievement Zone was sort of embarrassing, but it had real benefits because it brought significant resources. It's not an accident that Shamrock was the best-funded school per-pupil in the system. It's also not an accident that our students logged a lot of growth. I'll say it yet again: Money does matter if it's spent right.

But in a time when budget cuts are falling most heavily on low-income students and high-poverty schools, it appears the schools in the proposed central zones won't benefit from those kinds of targeted resources. At this point, it's just segregation.

Architects of segregation have historically argued that it is a good thing for all involved. "They're not really like us." "Better for everyone, if you put like with like." "If they're all in the same place, their problems can be dealt with more efficiently."

You see this in some comments that applaud the proposed new zones. "Remove from good districts schools that pull them down." "The real plus to the zone change is now each area can have that "laser" focus for results" – meaning that high-poverty schools can focus on bringing up the bottom while other schools focus on their high achievers.

Schools with many low-income students do need additional resources, because they cannot draw on the same parental and community resources that wealthier schools enjoy. But schools like ours are about far more than poverty and low performance.

Of Shamrock's low-income students, last year 12 percent were well above grade level, 52 percent at grade level, 24 percent below grade level and 12 percent well below grade level. It's a broad range. Just like wealthier schools, our school faces the task of working both with struggling students and with high flyers.

We have high expectations at Shamrock Gardens. We don't aspire to be the best high-poverty school we can be. We aspire to be the best school we can be. And to be honest, I think that we could probably learn more from non-Title-I school Endhaven, where last year 22 percent of low-income students scored well above grade average – 10 points higher than our mark – than from fellow Title I school Ashley Park, where 2 percent scored at that level.

In economically mixed zones, when principals from different kinds of schools meet to share ideas and strategies, it is less likely that kids will get overlooked at schools where they're in the minority. Mixed zones also provide more scope for creativity, because schools approach these common challenges from different perspectives. As well as being more fruitful, such exchanges would help emphasize the things that our schools and students have in common, rather than what divides them. That's one reason our family loves Shamrock Gardens so much, because of the commonalities that we are part of.

Our schools and our community are already far too divided. Do not make it worse.

Multiplication Rocks

I was good at math in grade school. Adding and multiplying came easily, and I especially loved long division – estimating, subtracting, estimating again, the longer the better. I still take pleasure doing math by hand, in adding the figures on the deposit slip or calculating the tip.

But as with so many skills I take for granted, I have no idea how I learned this. I remember vividly the moment in the park when my father pushed me on my black two-wheeler, newly freed from training wheels, and I kept going. Math memories are far murkier – blurry images of worksheets and practice quizzes. I have lots of little tricks for playing with numbers in my head, but I can't say where they came from.

Working with Parker has been no help, as math seems to have changed since I learned it. Shades of déjà vu! I grew up hearing people fuss about "new math," and now it's new again!

According to Parker's second grade teacher, the way I learned to add and subtract is called "the algorithm," and the U.S. stood alone in learning this clunky, error-prone method. She showed me some of her teaching aids, which suggest that after students have mastered the new, improved methods, a teacher might wish to introduce this "algorithm," with its outdated concepts of "carrying" and "borrowing" (students now "share" and "regroup") as a kind of historical artifact, a quaint relic of the past that their parents might find familiar, but which they would never want to use.

I tried my best to understand how my son was getting to his answers, but it never quite made sense. I now remark to friends that I always knew a time would come when I couldn't help Parker with his math, but I never expected it to be in second grade.

Still the "old" – or perhaps I should say the "old new" – ways still have their uses. Third grade remains the year of multiplying, at least in North Carolina. As Parker's class launched into the task, he brought home several ways to make those old, familiar tables stick in his mind (3 x 5, thankfully, does still equal 15). He punched and kicked his way through them, arranged objects, listened to a rap-style CD. But none of it quite seemed to work.

Then I had one of those rare moments of parental inspiration. Schoolhouse Rock! I spent my third grade Saturdays in front of the TV (another tradition carried away on the winds of technology), when cartoon action was punctuated with three-minute educational "moments" offering useful facts: "Three Is a Magic Number," "Figure Eight Is Double Four," "A Noun Is a Person, Place or Thing. "

So we headed to youtube, where all those old clips now reside. Parker loved them. And as we watched, I began to recognize the strategies I use when I multiply. Maybe, I began to think, I didn't learn math in school at all. Maybe it was all TV! In gratitude, I sprang for the CD.

Parker had a fever yesterday, and stayed home from school. His teacher had sent home a multiplication practice sheet . He worked on it in bed, steadily filling in the answers, singing snatches of the different songs as he worked. He only got one wrong. I feel my confidence rising. Division, here we come!