Pride
and punishment are part of the job
School personnel
must juggle student development with needed discipline
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 • BY JOHN MOONEY •
STAR-LEDGER STAFF
It was a warm spring
morning, and the office at Eighteenth Avenue School was
quiet for a Friday.
The wooden bench along the
wall was empty, not yet hosting the typical handful of boys
-- almost always boys -- who earn a few minutes with
principal Barbara Ervin after crossing their teachers at the
Newark elementary school.
Before it came to that for
one student, a teacher walked in and called a grandmother
about why her grandson, usually well-behaved, was acting
out. "Have you been sick or anything?" Margaret Lesperance
asked into the phone.
Across the hall, social
worker Nicolle Hutchins talked with a girl sprawled on a red
beanbag chair.
Coming out of the
principal's office, another boy didn't get off so easy. "And
pick up your feet when you're walking," Ervin told him,
shooing the boy back to class.
Under state and federal
mandates to improve, Eighteenth Avenue School and its 51
teachers and staff are under intense pressure to boost the
performance and achievement of their 300 students. But
before they can, theymustcontrol and shape students'
behavior and create a climate in which theyhave the best
chance to learn.
Sometimes the odds seem
long, and it is frequent on the four floors of the
century-old building that stern voices and muted strategies
are employed to keep students on track. The emotions can run
high, too, when a child goes into full-scale
defiance.
Through it all, Ervin is
the central player. In her third year at the helm, the
former second-grade teacher often speaks of the school as a
respite from the hardscrabble neighborhood around her, one
of Newark's poorest.
"We're a safe haven for
these children," she says frequently.
She tries to focus on the
positive, offering rewards and incentives. There was the
roller-skating trip to Branch Brook Park last fall for
students chosen for their effort and behavior, and paper
trees outside classrooms for students to display their own
acts of kindness.
Often it is the students
themselves who provide models for good behavior.
Conspicuous in their badges
and yellow belts, student "safety patrol" members help
direct traffic. And class lines that snake the halls even
have orderly routines.
Sometimes, the school leans
on others for help. Typically on Fridays, students and
volunteer mentors from Anheuser-Busch pair up in the halls,
part of the school's long-running partnership with the
company.
Newark native Michael
Scott's charge is first-grader Rasheed Adams. The two often
read together, and talk about what's happening in class or
at home. "Rasheed looks forward to it every Friday," said
Paula Adams, Rasheed's mother.
But Eighteenth Avenue has
its share of trouble, especially with the rise in its
special education population to now more than a third of the
student body.
During the course of the
year, two special education teachers were reassigned after
allegations they physically mishandled students. One teacher
was cleared; the other's case is pending, but it has fueled
a tension in the school.
Lesperance deals with some
of the toughest kids, all with emotional disorders. When
they shut down, she has "Cool Off Corner" outside her door,
including a couch, a "Time Out Tunnel" and a large plastic
jar labeled the "Anger Bottle," half full of scrap-paper
confessions. "I was angry because my sister was getting on
my nerves," reads one.
When removing students from
class doesn't work, sometimes Lesperance lets them remain
and the rest of the class leaves. At worst, the teacher or a
security guard must restrain a child.
One boy threw a chair
toward a visitor this winter. Some will kick and yell, and
Lesperance has the marks to show for it. "When you get to
physical restraint, it's the last resort," Lesperance
said.
More typical is the
teacher's daily balancing act between encouraging those
students who want to learn and working with the less
inclined.
The strategies vary.
Nordica Francis taught 20 years in New York City before
coming to Newark four years ago, and she runs a tight
classroom.
Like other teachers, she
jots names of repeat offenders on the blackboard. She moves
the desk of one student who can't stop jostling with her
neighbor, and speaks to another boy in the hall who isn't
doing any work at all.
"It can be draining," she
said. "By 3 o'clock, I want to sleep."
Sixth-grade teacher Sheila
Pugh, the mother of four children herself, walks amid the
desks during a recent lesson on the Holocaust. She mixed
facts with admonitions to focus. She grew up in Newark, and
said a big part of her job is building up kids to fend off
the worst of their neighborhoods.
Eighteenth Avenue's
sixth-graders are a well-mannered group, and their test
scores are a high point in the school's progress. Many say
that's no coincidence.
"I treat them like my own
kids, and tell them we can deal with problems here or deal
with them in Ms. Ervin's office," Pugh said. "They know I'm
not playing. They're good kids."
Most young visitors to
Ervin's office seem to come from the same group of nine or
10 students, some making more than one trip a
day.
And each case challenges
Ervin: where to draw the line, when to call home, when to
suspend, when to point back to a teacher's own classroom
skills.
Ervin estimated she
suspends one or two of the students a month, holding to
district limits that no child be suspended more than twice
in the same year or for more than 10 days total. She hears
the whispers from teachers who wish she was tougher
sometimes.
"I know some say I don't
suspend enough, but I'm not going to do it for every little
thing," she said.
Beyond Ervin, vice
principal Derrick Davis is the chief disciplinarian. His
long hair falling on his shoulders, Davis moves between
classrooms, often a child in tow. On a recent day, there
were two.
"Instead of sending them
back to class and have them act out again, what's it take
for me to stay with them? Fifteen minutes?" he
said.
But in his first year on
the job, Davis said it's been a powerful lesson in school
administration.
"If as an administrator,
you think you'll sit behind a desk and get something done,
it's not going to happen," he said. "Not in my
world."
John Mooney covers education. He may be reached at
jmooney@starledger.com or (973) 392-1548.
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