Director of St. Louis nonprofit tackles education issues in new column

The child, one of the older students attending voluntary summer school, pouted visibly. He had that frustrated walk: a varying sway to his step; a progressively leftward lean that turned his walk into a kind of stumble toward the wall; eyes downcast and purposefully shifting away from attempts at visual contact; mouth somewhat sucked in, situated in a slight frown; feet lazily alternating between stomping and sliding on the ground.

Why was this kid so sullen?

It didn't take long for him to confide in me that he was frustrated because no one had taught him how to work with fractions, and he wanted to understand them.

A second child, one of the younger students attending summer school, often talked with her friends at her table. She frequently shared her crayons, or helped her classmates with their worksheets, or completed extra independent reading.

When it came time for one-on-one reading with an adult, she was always one of the first to volunteer to read. She always brought a handful of books with her, hopeful that she would be able to get through more than one story. But with 15 other students in the classroom, extended individual reading time sometimes proved hard to come by.

A third child, another of the younger students at summer school, didn't pay much attention to the class spelling lessons on the board. He said the words aloud, in unison with the teacher and the class, and he had his pencil and paper ready for the assignment. But as soon as it came time to spell more than one word, he checked out. The reason was devilishly simple: he didn't know the alphabet. Even spelling his name was a major challenge.

I've worked with many children over the past three and a half years. I am the director the Education Exchange Corps, an education nonprofit that places college students and others as teaching assistants primarily in elementary school classrooms with the St. Louis city school district. Most of the children I work with come from poorer backgrounds than many kids, but that doesn't necessarily mean they perform more poorly than their peers at other schools. However, study after study has shown that, on average, as these children move up in grade level, their relative math and reading skills fall backward.

I think it is important that you know at least a little about my background before I start writing opinion columns on education every other week. Today, I run a nonprofit organization. Only a few months ago, I graduated from Duke University with degrees in economics and political science.

And then the answer to the question we St. Louisans always ask of each other: Where did you go to high school?

Before Duke, I attended Clayton High School.

I have been in classrooms with the affluent and the poor, the high achievers and those struggling to spell the word "was," those expecting to go to college or a graduate program and those who have been told that college isn't in their futures.

But no matter in what classroom I've been, I've always had high expectations. So when I see a kid walking that walk in the hallway, or another kid reading through books with a voracious appetite for knowledge, or another who can't identify the letter "E," I get involved because I know what these kids can accomplish.

So now, in part through my following columns and the conversations we have, I hope to find some of the best ideas to help kids achieve. For the most part, I'll be covering education issues in Richmond Heights and Clayton, but issues in education often transcend neighborhoods, counties, cities, states and even countries. They say we live in a world that is becoming more flat. As residents of the Great Plains (close enough, at least), we should be able to share our wisdom about what it takes to thrive in a flat world.

The most basic assumption I will make is that all children, independent of geographic location, deserve an education. It might come in different forms in different places, but that's a discussion for a different column. If we accept education as a universal requisite, then we must accept the responsibilities that come with such a mandate.

What kid doesn't deserve to know how to add fractions? That question is, I hope, easy to answer. How much effort should we put into teaching that child math?

Now that's a discussion that we need to have.