It was the first day of a school for fourth-graders in a rural Georgia district, and I was there to watch their excitement — slowly shrivel and die. For 50 minutes, the teacher recited her class rules in a voice so listless and flat that she could have been reading from the telephone book.
I was literally praying for a fire drill so I could escape, and it still saddens me that those 27 children returned to that lifeless classroom day after day.
“That’s a molasses class,” says Ron Clark, the desk-jumping, algebra-rapping, superstar teacher whose astounding success with struggling East Harlem students was celebrated in a movie and by Oprah Winfrey. In 2007, Clark used his fame to create his dream middle school in a southeast Atlanta neighborhood, intent on practicing the craft he still considers his first mission and also on training other teachers.
Today, the private Ron Clark Academy vibrates with the energy and passion that earned its founder a national teacher-of-the-year title and helped him pen a bestseller, “The Essential 55.” Now, he has a new book that speaks to parents and teachers, “The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck.”
In a conversation and throughout his book, one theme dominates: All children can learn to high standards and Clark, 39, will Double Dutch, bungee jump or rap U.S. history to motivate students .
Contrast the first day of classes at Ron Clark Academy to what most schools will do this month. Clark and his staff choreograph the first few hours to convince their students that this is going to be the best year of their lives. The students arrive to a boisterous band and the entire school staff lined up to hug and high-five them. Some children are swept up and carried into the schools amid hoots and hollers. Once inside, staff members barrel down a two-story twisting blue slide in the school’s atrium to introduce themselves.
Borrowing from Harry Potter, Ron Clark Academy established four houses, and students are assigned by a 6-foot-wide spinning wheel. Children run up the coin steps —coins from every nation are embedded in the steps — and take their first ride down the slide as their houses are announced. It’s pandemonium
And then it’s silence — for three days.
An unexpected side to Clark’s Willy Wonka persona is his insistence on Sunday-best attire for staff and students, impeccable manners, firm handshakes, strong eye contact, hard work and earned rewards. As he says, “Not every child deserves a cookie.” (Somewhere in his hometown of Chocowinity, N.C., there must be a proud Sunday school teacher.) After those wild, first few hours, Ron Clark students are not allowed to talk for three full days unless asked a question or at lunch.
For while Clark describes his school as the most magical in the world — his classroom is entered through a secret passageway behind a moving bookcase, and a noted graffiti artist painted the hallways — he also calls it the strictest. “I was brought up in a strict Southern household, no back talk,” he says. “You have to set the right tone from the start.”
His students accept the rigid discipline, he says, because they see the deep commitment behind it. While the school charges $18,000 annual tuition, only 10 percent of students pay the full freight. Most pay according to their means, on average $45 a month. The school accepts only 30 of 400 applicants, and Clark visits each of their homes before classes begin, believing he has to understand “what that child experiences every night.”
If students are falling behind, Clark shows up at their home to work with them. He demonstrates math in parent/student classes so families can work together at home.
Every parent’s phone number is programmed into every staff member’s phone. In their four years at Ron Clark, the students travel to six continents with their teachers and to several U.S. cities. On a New York trip, Clark cajoled Panasonic to thrill his students by flashing their school photos from a giant screen in Times Square.
Clark asks a lot of his teachers, who earn salaries comparable to their public school counterparts. In return, he works to uplift them, rounding up donations to present each with a $1,000 gift card to buy school attire and honoring them at public events (and throughout his new book).
Proceeds from his book go into the school, which also earns income from the 3,000 educators who come each year to watch and slide. Clark knows that not every teacher can jump up on a desk or perform a rap, but he believes his school and its use of music offers a model with wider application. “We are a big store. You are shopping for something that works for you,” he says.
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