A private school has as its mission cultivating w

RALEIGH — Hope Elementary School is in an area where fostering high academic achievement has been difficult in the past. But school administrators are trying a little bit of everything to help students succeed. The school opened in August to serve the children of the Halifax Court public housing development. It is a private school operating under the sponsorship of Building Together Ministries, a nonprofit community improvement group.

The school borrows from the Marva Collins method of instruction, which teaches the students values and the consequences of choices along with math and science. (Collins, a celebrated educator, used her life savings to start Westside Preparatory in one of the most neglected areas of Chicago. The students of the school read and recited from the likes of Shakespeare and Chaucer fluently, and in a “60 Minutes” reunion three years ago, proved that they have continued to succeed.)

Hope School includes kindergarten to third grade pupils and has one class at each grade level. Tuition, which is based on family income, ranges from $25 to $350 a month. Next year, school administrators plan to add a fourth and fifth grade.

The school follows simple rules of instruction. The classes are small. Most have fewer than 12 students. The students wear blue and green uniforms. Third-graders have a weekly Bible verse to remember along with their spelling words.

“Teachers stress intense parent involvement and work to establish a personalized learning plan for each child,” said Helen Collier,

principal of the school. “With the small classes, we can focus on expecting the best out of the students, and they have a lot to offer,” said Collier, who retired from the Wake school system as an assistant superintendent in April. “We want to prepare the students to go to any middle school and be successful. That way they will have confidence in themselves and solid skills. We’re hoping to cultivate leadership in children who live here to go back and share that in the community.” She also looks at the school as a form of intervention, a way to catch students before they slip through the cracks. Delores Steele, executive director of Building Together Ministries, said on average only 20 percent of children who live in public housing areas such as Halifax graduate from high school. “A large number of our students are considered at-risk, which means that if we are going to overcome these at-risk factors, we have to have a support system in place,” Steele said. “When a school settles here, it makes it a place that the community already

owns.”

The teaching curriculum is a mixture of the N.C. Standard Form of Study, brain-based teaching — a method that tailors instruction to the strengths of each student — and the Marva philosophy. Collins’ son, Patrick, held a seminar with teachers at Hope in July. He will return in February to assist teachers in their classrooms. Bill McNeal, Wake associate superintendent for instruction, said

Collins’ literacy-based approach to teaching is new to the Triangle. “Its pretty unique in the area,” said McNeal. “I don’t know of a public noncharter school in the area that has embraced the complete Marva Collins program, because we all follow the North Carolina Standard Form of Study. It’s hard to quarrel with a program, at least based on the information I’ve seen, that has a track record of kids performing wonderfully in public displays of recitation, presentation and basic language articulation,” he said.

Another focus at Hope is the power of positivity, more specifically, powerful words. A good illustration of how this works came in Janet Bell’s third-grade class one recent day. As the children prepared to read a story about a boy named Stevie and his seeing-eye dog, Bell posed a question: “Think for a minute about things that money cannot buy.” One student tries to be funny, offering a snide answer. The class grows restless, wiggling and giggling. But Bell maintained her cool and offered the class some advice: “When everyone is

acting silly, you can choose to make a good decision.” Without a negative exchange, the comedians fell into place. Bell, a 30-year veteran of Wake public schools, smiled and continued with her lesson.

Hope also stresses the concept of a neighborhood school. The school is minutes away from Halifax Court, and most parents walk with their children to school. Many of the students attending Hope this fall already attended after-school programs at Building Together Ministries, where they do homework. Parents from the neighborhood have also taken jobs at the school. Phyllis Lanier is

one of them. Lanier, whose 6-year-old son, Tevin, attends first grade at the school, works as a teaching assistant with the kindergarten class. Lanier said Tevin, who attended Hilburn Elementary School in northwest Raleigh last year, is getting the personal attention he needs. “Anyone who is in the building gives them attention,” Lanier said. “They enjoy that. It’s like a big family

working together. We’re the parents, and we’re helping raise the children.”

Alicia B. Williams can be reached at (919) 829-4565 or awilliam@nando.com.

– Alicia B. Williams – Staff Writer