Ga. school helps pupils soar

Pupils learn more than just math and reading; they learn about life, the school’s founder says.

ATLANTA (AP) — The seventh-grade pupils are playing a round-robin trivia game, excitedly naming the countries on a blank map showing on their classroom’s overhead projector. Burkina Faso. Cote d’Ivoire.

Justyn McGowan does a dance each time he gets an answer right and remains standing as one-by-one his classmates sit down, disappointed.

Ghana. Togo. Benin.

Faster and faster, the teacher goes around the room until it’s just Justyn and another boy.

The tallest mountain in Africa? Mount Kilimanjaro. The tallest mountain range in South America? The Andes.

And then it’s over. Justyn doesn’t win the game, but he’s still smiling, showing off the deep dimples in his cheeks. His 25 classmates erupt into cheers, applauding both pupils.

This is how it works at the extraordinary Ron Clark Academy, a private middle school tucked among boarded-up houses and graffiti-peppered walls in Lakewood, one of Atlanta’s poorest neighborhoods.

Ron Clark isn’t just the name behind the school — he teaches mathematics and global politics, plays basketball and spends many evenings on the phone with boys and girls who need help with homework.

Going over a test, the lanky 37-year-old quickly covers members of the U.S. Supreme Court and the presidential line of succession. Amid the questions, Clark utters the magic words that send his pupils into musical overdrive.

“It’s easy,” he says.

“It’s so easy, easy,” the pupils sing in unison, swaying their hands back and forth, ending with a “Bom, bom.”

These children know a collection of songs written by Clark, ditties that help them remember everything from algebra to political platforms. He wrote many of them while teaching in New York City schools, a unique strategy that helped him win the Disney American Teacher of the Year title in 2000 and inspired a TNT movie, “The Ron Clark Story.”

Seventh-grader Ajee Jenkins says music helps her connect with what she’s learning in a way she’s never experienced.

Indeed, music has made the children overnight stars. Last fall they scored millions of views of their YouTube video featuring an infectious election rap called “Vote However U Like,” which led to Justyn and his classmates’ performing on “Good Morning America,” CNN and BET.

Each appearance, the children discussed political platforms for Republicans and Democrats, talking about capital gains taxes and the war in Iraq with the composure and maturity of grown-ups.

They’ve written a follow-up song called “Dear Obama” that some pupils will perform at the inaugural celebration for the new president.

On the way to class each morning, Justyn passes a sign in the lobby at the foot of a blue plastic slide that curls from the second floor down to the first.

“Caution: People flying!” it warns.

It’s not merely a warning that pupils might come shooting out the mouth of the slide. The sign is the unspoken mantra in the halls of this unique school, where pupils say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” and look you in the eye while giving a firm handshake.

They wear their uniforms with pride: khaki pants, light blue shirts and navy blue blazers — girls have the option of wearing skirts. Their navy blue ties are trimmed with the colors and crests reflecting which of the four houses they belong to: Isibindi (Zulu for “courage”), Reveur (French for “dreamer”), Amistad (Spanish for “friendship”) or Altruismo (Portuguese for “altruism”).

From fundamental discipline to essential courtesy, these children are learning what it takes to succeed, and they’re soaring.

“I don’t care if you have a problem with your parents, your brother, your cousin. I don’t care if things are tough at home,” says Clark, a white man looking at a sea of black faces in his global politics class. “You have no excuse. You have got to find a way to rise above that and be successful.”

Debate is a key to what the pupils learn here, and it spills over into their personal conversations.

At lunch, Justyn and his friend Willie Thornton are deep in a discussion over which kind of pilot is more important to his country. Justyn dreams of flying for a commercial airline. Willie wants to be an Air Force fighter pilot. The 12-year-olds volley back and forth like seasoned politicians on the stump.

“People are depending on us to take them from one country to another country. They need us,” Justyn says.

“We have missiles, we have guns, but all Boeings have are peanuts and crackers,” Willie retorts.

Just one day at Ron Clark Academy reveals how these boys and girls from mostly working-class families in Atlanta are changing perceptions — and beating the odds. They come from some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. They could be joining gangs, failing out of school. They could easily become tragic statistics.

Instead, the 80 pupils who attend this academy in a renovated 100-year-old warehouse have gotten a chance at something most urban pupils can only dream about. They are attending a private school carrying a price tag of $14,000 a year per pupil, a bill paid almost entirely by donors.

Oprah Winfrey’s foundation sent the school a $365,000 check for Christmas, a gift that can pay for 26 pupils to attend the academy for a year. She calls Clark a role model and applauds the “profound difference you’re making with your passion for teaching.”

The children each have their own donated Dell laptop and sit in classrooms decorated with colorful mosaics painted by Atlanta graffiti artist Totem. Instead of chalkboards, teachers use interactive projection screens that respond to touch like an iPhone.

The bathrooms feature flat-screen TVs broadcasting CNN, a strategy Clark says keeps pupils preoccupied in the place where most school fights break out. They take trips abroad thanks to Delta Air Lines, traveling to countries most of their parents couldn’t afford to take them — the Netherlands, England, France and Australia. It’s part of the school’s curriculum to escort pupils to six of the seven continents by the time they finish the eighth grade.

“We’re not just teaching math and reading for a test. We’re teaching life,” says Clark. “We want kids to have appreciation of other countries and religions.”

Many days, teachers from school districts across the globe visit the academy, observing classes and learning techniques to take back to their schools. About 3,000 teachers visit each year, a way for Clark to reach beyond the pupils he teaches.