opinion

Tully: Here’s what worries a teacher at School 93

This is the kind of student that worries Tammy Laughner. He’s a 5th-grader at IPS School 93, all of 11 years old, and he’s already falling behind in a school year only in its second week.

You could see the source of Laughner’s concern on the boy’s face and in his body language. In the way he shrugged when she asked him one question and slumped in his chair when she asked another. Or in the way he defiantly, or maybe defensively, crossed his arms later, looking away and offering at most one-word answers to the questions coming his way.

Laughner might have been worried. But she wasn’t giving up.

“Watch this,” she said, showing the student how to work out a math problem. “This is a really cool one. Seriously, watch this. I think you’ll like it.”

He didn’t care. But Laughner, who is helping lead an attempted turnaround of School 93, kept pushing.

“Are you with me?” she asked later, trying to make eye contact with a boy whose eyes were now searching for the floor. “Are you with me?”

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t. Not yet.

And that’s why he was sitting in the office Laughner shares with other School 93 leaders. That’s why the longtime educator had pulled him out of class for some one-on-one instruction. That’s why she was using tricks learned during decades as a high-performing teacher to engage the student.

It wasn’t just that tests given during the school year’s opening days had found the student failing. Sure, that’s a problem. A big one. But what alarmed Laughner, what worried her most, was that he seemed to be just fine with failing. Like he was used to it.

“That’s what caught my eye,” she said. “I knew I had to reach out. I knew he needed some one-on-one time. It worries you when you see a student that has a comfort level with failing.”

After several minutes, Laughner sent the student back to class. He left without saying a word, with a frown, eager to get away and perhaps not knowing Laughner’s secret: She’d be back for him before long. And then she’d come again. And again. And again. That’s what you have to do, she said. You have to prove that you care.

“They’ll take you to the nth degree,” she said. “They might not even realize it, but our kids want you to prove to them that you care, that you’re going to stick with them.”

Laughner is part of a small team that drove an inspiring turnaround nearby at School 99 several years ago, and the team is now in its first days of running this elementary school near 34th Street and Shadeland Avenue. It’s a school where most children come from poverty, where heartbreaking stories can be found in every classroom, and where the state’s lowest possible ratings have been doled out for several years running. The only way to fix this school, the team argues, is by making sure nobody, not a teacher and not a student, is left alone to fail.

That’s why Laughner has spent time worrying about the 5th-grader, a boy with big brown eyes who cheers for Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors, plays Xbox games whenever he can, is friendly when you finally get him to talk, and shares an apartment with his mom and three siblings.

“We have to get him hooked,” Laughner said. “We have to find a way to get him hooked into the curriculum, and then hooked in with other kids who think school is cool.”

The turnaround attempt is founded on a program called Project Restore that Laughner and her team created and implemented several years ago, when most of them were classroom teachers. It uses weekly testing to engage students, creating a uniquely competitive but supportive atmosphere among students and classrooms. During the first week of school, a class of 3rd-graders marched down the hall, proudly chanting “We’re Number One!” after collectively scoring big on their weekly math test scores.

Not everyone buys in, of course. Not the 5th-grader that Laughner was worrying about on Wednesday, for instance. At least not yet.

And while some might suggest patience, the team here believes the boy’s acceptance of failure demands urgency. Apathy is a killer in struggling schools, in any school, and most students here are already behind academically, according to state test data. Falling further beind is not an option. And Laughner knows something else: Failure is contagious, just like success.

“If I don’t get this figured out,” she said, “he’ll start to bring other kids down with him. We can’t let that happen, because that’s when everything can start to fall apart.”

So later Wednesday, Laughner pulled the student out of a class for more personal instruction. His mood was different this time. His classroom teacher had cheered him on, and another specialist had worked with him and a small group of other students. He was still quiet but his time he correctly answered half of the multiplication problems Laughner laid out on flash cards. She encouraged him with each answer, peppering him with words of support. A few minutes later, he answered all but one problem correctly.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Laughner said, as the two high-fived and the slightest smile cut across the boy’s face. “You can do this — I knew you could do this.”

It was a step forward. A small step, yes, but still a step. One of so many the school will have to take to reverse years of being ranked as one of the city’s most troubled. It won’t be easy but Laughner was pleased after sending the 5th-grader back to class, because, for perhaps the first time this school year, he’d experienced something very important: A bit of success.

“I want him to know what that feels like,” she said. “The faster I can help him have a positive academic experience the better chance I have of changing the direction he wants to go.”

In a neighborhood riddled by crime and poverty, and in a school where failure has been the norm for years, the goal this year is to change the direction at School 93. If that can be done, the children the school serves will have a better chance of succeeding in life. It’s that simple and that important. And it’s why even one student falling behind is seen as a problem that must be treated with urgency.

You can reach me at matthew.tully@indystar.com or at Twitter.com/matthewltully.