'Regular' Students Demonstrate Plenty of Gifts and Talents

Next week is Teacher Appreciation Week, designated by the National Parent Teacher Association to honor those who "lend their passion and skills to educate our children." This is the voice of a retired teacher who spent her working life fulfilling the mission the association envisions.

One segment of the school population is being overlooked, especially in Fairfax County: students who enroll in the "regular" classes and the teachers who teach them.

Even though the terms GT (gifted and talented) and honors have become passe, they have been replaced by the even glossier AP (Advanced Placement) and IB (International Baccalaureate). Such exalted status is awarded to these courses that students and teachers who opt out get little respect. However, many wonderful educational opportunities exist in regular classes for students and teachers alike. I know this firsthand.

I retired in 2000 after more than 25 years in the high school classroom, the last 17 in Fairfax County public schools. I was awarded the rank of Career Level II educator during the merit-pay evaluations of the early '90s. Even so, I never sought to work with the advanced classes. I felt that there was much greater need for my skills and experience with teenagers who had little opportunity for enrichment at home. The students responded.

My greatest thrill came during the fourth quarter of each year when my English classes tackled Shakespeare. Instead of merely assigning the play to be read, we always dug in deeply. After viewing the film version, reading the play in the original, discussing the language and writing about the themes, the students selected a favorite scene to enact in small groups. They memorized lines, made costumes, built scenery. It was exciting, and they were excited.

I was always amazed by the creative, accurate portrayals they gave. This was true of all my students, including those in transitional English, a special class for ESL students preparing to mainstream but not quite comfortable with native speakers. I gave them a challenge along with adequate preparation, and they achieved wonders. My standards were high, and there were no free rides.

The experience our daughter had in a Fairfax County school buttresses my point. In her freshman year, she took the accelerated English 9 course, which at that time was labeled GT. She absolutely hated it. The teacher did not motivate, and the material was far above her maturity level. She refused to even consider a GT class again. In 10th grade, she had a fabulous teacher and worked eagerly on all assignments. She requested the same "regular" teacher the following year and continued to blossom. That episode proved to me, if I needed proof, that the individual classroom teacher makes all the difference. The course title is incidental.

Some years ago, my family attended a baseball game at the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. I was taken aback when, during the seventh-inning stretch, an announcement was made welcoming the "sixth-grade GT class" from an elementary school. Why include the GT designation? Would a "regular" class of baseball fans have been less welcome?

I taught in Europe for the Department of Defense overseas school system and became quite familiar with the IB program. That program serves a valuable purpose for kids whose parents live and work abroad, sometimes in remote locations, and who move frequently. IB allows these children to have continuity as they travel the world. When IB was brought to my Fairfax County school in the late '90s, however, I was puzzled. What purpose would it serve that was not being covered by AP and GT programs? When the principal told us during a faculty meeting that he would be talking with real estate agents that afternoon to explain IB to them, I realized that this was as much an effort to keep the wealthy, highly educated families in our community as it was an educational asset.

Ideally, young people in the IB curriculum get a worldview and global appreciation not stressed in other courses. Yet in our school, many teachers chosen for the program had never left Northern Virginia or had traveled little, and certainly had not lived abroad or become immersed in another culture.

IB promises rigorous, in-depth study, frequent essay writing and challenging oral assignments. Aren't these the elements that all teachers should be incorporating into all classes?

It was extremely expensive to bring IB to our high school. In the first year alone, $80,000 was spent, mostly on airfare and hotel rooms for teachers attending training sessions. That same year, I requested funding to take three regular English 10 classes (two school bus loads) on a field trip to the Newseum in Arlington. This field trip would complement the course emphasis on clear, concise, coherent writing. And my students, generally, came from homes where this kind of enrichment was rare.

I was told that the trip was approved but that I would have to find the money to fund it. That involved $20 an hour for each driver for the five hours involved, along with a fee for mileage. I had to ask my students to pay to be enriched. After all, they were only in regular English.

I think back with great fondness to the "average" kids I taught. Many were highly intelligent and extremely creative. Often they came from families that, for many reasons, did not emphasize the importance of education or instill in them a competitive drive. But, like the teenagers who enroll in the advanced classes, my regular students had amazing gifts and talents. The regular students, and the teachers who work so skillfully with them, deserve our respect.

Bernie Nakamura has lived in Northern Virginia since 1973 with her husband, Bob. Nakamura taught in Philadelphia, France and Belgium and in Fairfax County at Edison, Falls Church and Robinson high schools in the mid-1980s before settling at South Lakes in Reston in 1986 and teaching there for 14 years. She is the mother of Washington Post staff writer David Nakamura and of Emy Parham, who manages a drug research project for the University of Maryland.