|
As an August drizzle falls outside, thirty-one middle-schoolers
sit at long tables in a North Carolina mountain lodge. It’s
the end of summer vacation: Next week they will begin the academic
year at Durham Nativity School, an all-male, tuition-free, private
middle school designed to offer a rigorous education to a handful
of youngsters from poor families.
For three years, the boys will wear French blue shirts and striped
ties, greet their teachers with handshakes, and enjoy a five-to-one
student-to-teacher ratio. If they graduate from eighth grade, the
administration will help them apply for scholarships to private
high schools.
Before delving into Latin and world geography, though, the student
body has retreated to the 200-acre Camp Kahdalea, where a lanky
mountain guide is explaining how to safely navigate a high-ropes
course. “You want to make sure your waist belt is as tight
as possible,” he says, demonstrating the gear. He scans the
room. “Have any questions? Comments? Fears?”
“Fears!” says twelve-year-old Kyle, punctuating his
own anxiety. He has latte-brown skin and hazel eyes, a T-shirt
from hip-hop star P. Miller’s fashion line, and a goofball
smile that doesn’t let up, even when he’s scared.
Camp staffers hand out long ropes with lobster-claw clasps, which
the boys will use to secure themselves as they walk a steel cable
thirty-five feet up in the air. They point out the course’s
features, including the “leap of faith,” a three-foot
gap the boys must jump to complete the challenge. Kyle has never
climbed so much as a ladder without his grandfather present. But
during a trial run on some low ropes, his fears vanish.
“I wiggle till I giggle, and I just don’t fall down.
I’m a monkey in a tree,” he announces. “When
I practice, I don’t feel scared anymore. Now, any obstacle,
even the leap of faith, better watch out, because here I come.”
Watching Kyle balance across a cable, it’s easy to believe
he can overcome anything. A self-described “pink energizer
bunny,” he belts out Elvis songs and Broadway tunes; raps
freestyle with élan; and strikes 1950s Adonis poses with
a keen sense of physical comedy. “He could probably sell
salt water to any fish,” says the school’s founding
headmaster, Troy Weaver ’83.
What he can’t do well is read and write. Diagnosed with a
learning disability, Kyle struggles with spelling and cannot make
sense of subjects and predicates. “He’s so used to
being able to do everything well, the fact that he can’t
do something well really grates on him,” says his mother,
who raises three sons, works at a call center, and takes online
business classes.
Up in the air, Kyle gains his footing on the cable and practically
glides across the ropes course. How will this translate to the
classroom, for him and thirty others? Can small classes, compassionate
discipline, and a daily dose of religion guide these young men
across an economic and academic leap of faith?
Durham Nativity School (DNS) opened five years ago with a bold
premise: Take a small number of promising boys from low-income
households. Spend $19,000 per child each year, compared with $8,400
in the public schools. Dress them in uniforms; limit class sizes
to fifteen; and teach them manners, study habits, and volunteerism
alongside the standard middle-school curriculum. Track them through
high school and college, with the expectation that they’ll
eventually return to Durham as civic leaders.
It’s a concept that dates back to 1971, when the Jesuits
started a school on New York’s Lower East Side focusing on
social and spiritual development. Others followed suit until more
than fifty faith-based middle schools came together as the NativityMiguel
Network.
NativityMiguel schools feature extended academic days and years.
They don’t charge tuition, but they do expect intensive parental
involvement. They emphasize structure and discipline. And they
get results: According to the network’s website, 90 percent
of graduates go on to complete high school. Most attend college.
Boosters find these numbers compelling, particularly as other efforts
to close the nation’s learning gap have failed. In 2005,
three years after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act,
12 percent of black and 15 percent of Hispanic eighth-graders qualified
as “proficient” in reading, compared with 39 percent
of their white peers.
It took a Duke surgery professor to bring the Nativity model to
Durham. As Joseph Moylan neared retirement age, he recalled his
own son’s experience tutoring a less fortunate classmate,
and wondered how to reach more children who lived in poverty. Visiting
schools across the country, he took notice of Nativity’s
academic success rate. “Our vision was that we could create
a university laboratory school,” he says. He imagined Duke
professors teaching some of the classes, while public-policy researchers
studied the results. (So far, this has not happened.)
Moylan recruited a Duke-heavy board, including Dean of Students
Sue Wasiolek ’76, M.H.A. ’78, LL.M. ’93, and
Tom White ’76, a former president of the Greater Durham Chamber
of Commerce. He solicited funding from GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, Home
Depot, Citigroup Smith Barney, and an array of churches and foundations.
Seeking a headmaster, he tapped another Duke alumnus. Troy Weaver
had taught at the Durham County Youth Home, a facility for juvenile
offenders, as well as the prestigious Cary Academy, near Raleigh.
As an African-American educator, he particularly relished the idea
of reaching out to minority males—the school does not discriminate
by race, but the student body reflects its location in a predominantly
African-American and Hispanic neighborhood.
“I felt this would be a proactive stance to get them at a
younger age to keep them away from a life of crime,” he says.
Weaver also liked Nativity’s religious bent. “What
burned me up is that these kids can’t pray in school, but
the first thing we throw at them at the detention center is a Bible,” he
says. Weaver hired a multiracial faculty to carry out his vision,
and the school opened its doors in 2002.
Today, some of DNS’s greatest supporters come from the Duke
community. They trek across town to East Durham, past chemical
and asphalt plants, to a business district where grates protect
storefront windows and Stella’s Restaurant offers up liver-pudding
and fried-bologna biscuits. DNS is located on the top floor of
a red-brick Baptist church: a cluster of blue and yellow classrooms
reached by way of an L-shaped hallway lined with donated lockers. “When
you visit, several things strike you,” says Cynthia Brodhead,
the wife of Duke President Richard H. Brodhead. “First is
the dignity and self-confidence of the students. Second is the
high expectations that the teachers and staff have for the students,
and the way the students internalize these expectations and make
them their own. Third is the strong school spirit: the atmosphere
of belonging, of commitment, and mutual support.” How to
create and maintain that atmosphere is a challenge DNS’s
educators struggle with daily.
Every morning, first thing, the entire Nativity School comes together
for announcements and vocabulary review. The students offer prayer
requests for sick grandmothers, traveling uncles, and crime victims
they saw on TV. They link elbows with their teachers and one another
and recite the school creed: As DNS men we will never give up;
never be silenced by injustice, ignorance, or prejudice; never
be alone, for God and our DNS brothers are with us always.
As the fall trimester begins, faculty members spend as much time
teaching social skills—standing straight, making eye contact
during handshakes—as they do teaching astronomy and grammar. “I’m
going to be giving you life lessons,” says humanities teacher
Karen Walters on Day Two. “If it seems like I’m fussing,
maybe I am. That’s me, trying to get you to be the best possible
you you can be.”
By the week’s end, Walters’ sixth-graders are performing
songs they’ve written about the importance of studying. In
front of their peers, some of the boys are natural hams. Not Reginald,
a beefy eleven-year-old with a prominent jaw and earnest gaze.
Reginald came to DNS an honors student, planning to work his way
into Duke’s Class of 2017. At the moment, though, he looks
like he’d rather be anywhere but in front of the whiteboard.
He mumbles his song sotto voce, but before he can wriggle away,
Walters calls him out. “Was your heart in that?” she
asks.
“No,” Reginald says. He studies the floor.
“If you think something is the worst thing you’ve ever
written, you’ve got to make it look like the best thing since Roots,” Walters says.
She walks to the front of the room and places a hand under Reginald’s
chin. “I’m using you as an example,” she says. “I’m
not picking on you. Care about what you write! I’d like for
you to do it again.”
“Can I sit down?” Reginald asks. Walters doesn’t
let him. “Give me some feeling,” she says. “You
are articulate, handsome. You know what’s going on. Do we
believe in him?” “Yes!” the other boys shout.
“These are your brothers, son,” Walters says. “We’re
just waiting.”
When Reginald finishes his rap (Test taking, test taking / You
gotta study / Studying is fun / It’s all about the college),
his classmates whoop. “I’d pay money for that,” says
Kyle, patting his friend on the back. Reginald doesn’t quite
believe it, but Walters refuses to let the boy dwell in self-doubt. “We’re
in a house of the Lord,” she says. “Negativity is out
the door.”
• continues on
page two.
|
