The Teacher at the Head of the Class

After a few months at Lab, they often wept again, with gratitude, because the school meant no more endless rounds of tutors and therapists. It meant free time after school for exhausted children who worked hard every minute of the school day. It meant an end to the isolation of parenting a child who learned differently, because the school community embraced the potential of these children.

Five years ago I met Sally again, but this time as the parent of a prospective student. It was clear my son had the family dyslexia gene, and reading was going to be a struggle. He enrolled for third grade, where 12 students in his class had four educators.

His lead teacher that year spent a long time figuring out how to get him interested in reading.

Of course he was interested, but it was so hard and frustrating for him that he pushed it away.

Finally, she realized his interest in baseball might do it. Every day, his homework consisted of reading lessons she had taken from news stories about baseball and had rewritten at his reading level. Every day she created a page of four or five questions for him to answer from his reading. Little by little, his reading got better. He was studying without realizing it. He thought he was just having fun.

This learning environment was Sally Smith's creation, her gift to the world of education. She saw how arts could teach all kinds of things, and she shaped the Lab School around the arts. She hired artists as teachers because she knew they would think creatively. They taught sophisticated content without reading.

In his first year there, the mythologies of ancient times were taught through what was called Gods Club. The students were taught by Cleopatra, complete with headdress. The students dressed in togas. Each took the identity of a Greek god. To enter the classroom, they used passwords that changed every day, such as "Corinthian," which taught them the name of a column's capital. A painted Nile River ran through the middle of the classroom just as the real Nile runs through Egypt.

When the winter break came, and we took our son to the Egyptian galleries at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, he read the hieroglyphics to us while we listened slack-jawed.

This was her famous Academic Club method, one of the many she shared as professor in charge of American University's masters program for special education. Our son went on to Knights and Ladies Club, taught by Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Renaissance Club taught by Lorenzo de Medici. He jousted and learned about Holy Wars, made cheese and tasted ravioli, painted a fresco and took on the persona of Dante.

He learned, and after four years he moved on to a mainstream school, which was Smith's ultimate goal for all her students.

A couple of months ago, my son was visiting the school and saw Smith. She was in a wheelchair, dressed in her usual eye-popping splendor. She took his hand and asked him how he liked his new school.

She really wanted to know the answer, and she really listened when he gave it. That was Sally Smith's genius.