Counselor David Wise: nurturing confidence

Barry Yeoman

Joseph Moylan takes pride in these young scholars. Once a month, the founder invites community leaders to a PowerPoint presentation in DNS’s Spanish classroom. The October guests sit on plastic chairs with built-in writing tablets, munching Quiznos subs.

“This program is taking children who are falling through the academic and social cracks in our society and allows them to achieve at a very high level,” Moylan tells them. Of the students who complete the three years, “90 percent will graduate from college.” The screen flashes with a list of private high schools DNS alumni attend: Durham Academy, Carolina Friends School, Word of God Christian Academy, Ravenscroft School, Baltimore’s Archbishop Curley High. Moylan goes on to share data from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. It shows that five students entered DNS’s first class, the Class of 2005, with a median language score below grade level—and graduated almost two years ahead. In reading and math, they progressed from average to slightly above.

“Why does it work?” Moylan asks. “It is impressing on these young men that [success] is their responsibility.” Every morning, he says, a teacher greets them with handshakes and asks whether they’re ready to learn. “At the end of the day, somebody in charge will say, ‘Did you do your best today? And if you did, come back tomorrow.’ ”

Formula for success: Teachers such as Nathan Eubank set high expectations for students, while helping them to accept responsibility

Barry Yeoman

Visitors come away moved, and often eager to donate or raise money. Their impulse isn’t surprising. Moylan’s presentation taps into one of the most enduring and optimistic American narratives: the story of an exceptional teacher performing miracles, even in the face of deeply entrenched poverty and discrimination. Try watching Freedom Writers—in which Hilary Swank (as the real-life Erin Gruwell) turns a class full of California gang members into published authors—without shedding a tear. Or the climactic scene from Coach Carter, where Rick Gonzales, as the heat-packing Timo, stands up and recites peace activist Marianne Williamson’s words: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

Miracle workers, if rare, do exist. Gruwell engaged her students with the war diaries of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic, a young refugee from Sarajevo—then passed out journals so the teens could chronicle their own violent lives. All 150 of her students went on to college. Often, though, these stories take on a mythic quality. Just as Coach Carter offered a rosy rendering of Ken Carter’s career at another California high school, Moylan’s presentations tend to be idealized. They overstate the availability of resources such as tutoring. They glide over DNS’s attrition rate: In the first two classes, ten of the twenty-one incoming sixth-graders failed to complete the three-year curriculum. And they exaggerate the success of similar schools. According to the NativityMiguel Network, the college entrance (not graduation) rate of those who complete middle school is 68 percent—16 points above the national average for students from poor families, but considerably lower than Moylan claims. Moylan says he bases his figures on telephone conversations with a few older Nativity schools. He doesn’t have hard data.

Behind the scenes, DNS’s teachers feel less optimistic than Moylan. In a series of meetings, they grapple with a dilemma educators have eternally faced: how to teach intelligent, motivated children alongside those who are still mastering basic literacy. What’s more distasteful—to leave the slowest behind or to bore the smartest? Is it fair to try to teach both in the same classroom? “I don’t know the mission of this school,” says Manuel Montaño, the math and Spanish teacher. “Is it to save the best students, or is it to save everyone?”

Moreover, the teachers despair that many students behave like gentleman only under the spotlight. When the adult visitors leave, the hallways fill with trash, noise, and the occasional scuffle. “We need to get our confidence back,” says Sally Keener, an educational consultant and DNS board member, at a meeting devoted to discipline issues. “We have to redeem our school. Do you realize we’ve lost it?”

“We never had it,” replies Eubank, the Latin teacher.

The day after the Executive Lunch, the faculty gathers to discuss one of the most beloved students. Kyle—the “pink energizer bunny”—continues to fail. During a humanities assignment, he labeled the continents Afica, Eurp, Northamarc, and Atrala, even though he was copying from a worksheet. On his science midterm, he spelled spectroscope SpicDan. Kyle demonstrates his smarts daily: He has lightning-fast wit and a vast library of memorized song lyrics. “He can tell me things,” science teacher Vannelle explains to his colleagues. “But if you ask him to write it, it’s not even in the ballpark.”

Now, months late, Kyle’s complete public-school records have arrived, revealing a learning disability deeper than anyone had surmised. “He’s been in special ed since second grade,” says school counselor David Wise. “Academically, he’s always performed notably below grade level. There was some major disparity between what his ability seemed to be and how he actually performed.”

This news represents a crisis on multiple levels. DNS isn’t equipped to teach children with severe disabilities. “Without intense support, I don’t feel like I can give him what he needs,” says Walters. Yet Kyle’s spirit is one of the school’s unifying forces. Losing him would blast a crater in the sixth grade.

After thirty agonizing minutes, everyone acknowledges that the public schools have greater resources to provide specialized instruction to children with learning disabilities. “There’s only so much we can do,” says Wise. “And if we don’t believe we can do enough, it only stands to reason to seek for withdrawal.”

Eubank grasps at one final straw. “Hypothetically, what if we did something, and it wasn’t a strain, and he started doing better?”

“If a miracle happens, I wouldn’t be averse to keeping him,” Wise says. But he reminds everyone that in the recent Iowa Test, Kyle got less than a third of the correct answers in spelling, punctuation, and math computation.

Eubank grimaces. “My list of students I’d rather lose is about thirty names long,” he says. Others chuckle awkwardly. “I’m serious,” he says.

During the last chapel of the trimester, the guest preacher is Vensen Ambeau M. Div. ’06, DNS’s after-school coordinator. The boys know Ambeau as the studious-looking man with dreadlocks who oversees recess. But he’s also an ordained African Methodist Episcopal minister. Today he has prepared a message in hip-hop style: “It’s not the bling on the ring, or the shine on the chain, or the squeaks on the sneaks. It’s how we see our life in Christ.” As the sermon progresses, Ambeau’s message gets closer to the harshness of the boys’ lives: “At home you get cursed at for looking at someone and probably told your daddy wasn’t anything so you won’t be anything. That’s a lot for you to have to deal with at this age; and I don’t want to say to you the best way to deal with your issues is to simply get over it. I want you to know God is traveling with you to heal the emotional and spiritual hurt that life has brought upon you.”

The kids are riveted. As he ends the sermon, Ambeau comes back to Marianne Williamson’s words, the ones from the pivotal scene in Coach Carter:

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.

When Ambeau finishes, the boys flock around him. He has given voice to their aspirations. But as the trimester ends, their realities are decidedly more complicated than Williamson’s lofty words.

Twelve of the fourteen boys from the sixth-grade class remain. Lawrence is warned that he needs to pull up his grades if he wants to stay at DNS. Kyle has surprised everyone by scoring a B on a science quiz, but the learning problems persist. By Christmas, he is gone.

Reginald has aced most of his classes. He has come to think of the school community as an extended family. “I have a whole bunch of moms and a whole bunch of dads,” he says. He views his classmates’ success as his personal responsibility, and has taken to tutoring Lawrence. Reginald’s father notices a change. The boy doesn’t try to slide on his reputation, as he once did. “He’s always been a pleasant, well-mannered kid,” the father says. In the past, teachers would forgive Reginald for missing assignments “because he’s such a nice kid. Now he’s more than a nice kid. He’s a man.”

Travis, the Latin whiz, has finished the trimester with all passing grades. He still gets into trouble, but his grandmother says he has “settled down a bit. He’s paying more attention to things.” When Travis’ brother entered DNS’s inaugural class, “he was a mean little rascal,” the grandmother says. But the school “turned him around,” and now he attends the rigorous Asheville School in western North Carolina. Travis says he wants to emulate his brother, “so I can maybe help my grandma when she gets old.”

The challenges of educating these students often overwhelm DNS’s faculty. “My soul is tired,” Walters tells the boys toward the end of the trimester. Two of her colleagues, Ambeau and Montaño, will resign their positions in the coming weeks. Likewise, Weaver, the headmaster, will not return after his extended medical leave. But Walters will be back, ready for another stretch. “I always tell them that I’m in the middle waiting for them,” she says. “If they meet me halfway, I’ll do what I can to carry them the rest of the way.”

Yeoman is a freelance writer whose work appears in Mother Jones; O, The Oprah Magazine; and AARP The Magazine.

Editor’s note: As we produced this story, we struggled with how to protect students’ privacy while honestly depicting the challenges facing poor students, their parents, and their teachers. To achieve this balance, we have changed the names of the children in the story. The students in the photos are not necessarily the same ones profiled.