A lesson in trying

There’s a certain level of horror that sinks in when you realize you’ve just interrupted a student’s prayer; a shock that goes far beyond the awkwardness of disrupting, say, a teacher’s soliloquy on long division.

That’s what happened when I ducked my head into the first open door I could find along the white-and-green-striped walls of the basement beneath First Presbyterian Church. I was looking for Nancy Zito, founder of the Gardere Community Christian School, and I spoke too soon.

The new private school—operating downtown for this academic year before it relocates this fall to House of Repentance Baptist Church on GSRI Avenue near Gardere Lane—uses a faith-based curriculum, but that is not the only thing separating it from other local institutions of learning. Reaching out to children in an area known as a den of violent crime and the birthplace of the Thuggin It and Lovin It gang videos takes a unique approach.

Gardere Community has just 30 students but 60 volunteer mentors.

Having twice as many volunteers as students might seem like overkill to some, but Zito says her students are getting results (see Lauren Brown’s cover story starting on page 62). Zito has faced plenty of opposition, too, however. People have told her flat out they won’t send money to a Christian school. Others have advised her to reinvent Gardere Community as a charter.

“I’m not anti-public school,” Zito says. “I was one of the biggest advocates for public schools in New York City for 30 years. But we have to all work together to come up with new solutions.”

In a recent WIRED magazine interview, Google founder Larry Page stressed the importance of evolving beyond the confines of competition to find fresh ideas. He’s referring to his company’s battles with other online titans, but his strategy is applicable to any industry

“Incremental improvement is guaranteed to be obsolete over time,” Page said. “That’s why periodically, you should work on something new that you think is really amazing. If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.”

Collectively, our city appears to be at least beginning to take Page’s advice with regard to education.

From new online learning opportunities to the Dunham School employing the oval-table Harkness Method in its classrooms, New Schools for Baton Rouge nearing launch, Thrive charter school boarding its students and the Mentorship Academy placing them at a young age into industry-specific internships that match their interests, Baton Rouge is thinking outside the box, too.

It is this flexibility and diversity of approach that has Mentorship Academy’s Executive Director, Brian Dixon, most hopeful for the future of education in the Capital City.

“For far too long, our approach to education has been a rigid system of prescribed courses and content aimed to prepare students for a predictable world,” Dixon told me recently. “But our world is no longer predictable.”

Baton Rouge still has a long road toward education excellence, but like a lesson that finally registers with a young learner, the city is— now, more than ever—committed to trying again.

“That’s how our students show [they know they are cared for],” Zito says. “They keep trying. That’s a reward in itself, when they say they’ll try one more time.”