Five 8th-grade girls, wearing pink pajamas for the slumber party, gathered in a semicircle around her, soaking up every pearl she offered.
“You girls have to remember that you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it,” she said. “Don’t let those outside community influences drag you down.
“Remember, the best way out of a bad neighborhood is a good education.”
A teacher at Sherman School of Excellence on Chicago’s South Side, Apostolos was part of a historic experiment under No Child Left Behind: Take the worst schools, the ones that have defied reform, and rebuild them from the bottom up with the best teachers available.
But Apostolos, 56, saw her job as more than classroom teacher. She was not simply preparing students for 9th grade — she was preparing them for life.
She invited the 15 girls in the class over to her 26th-floor home one Friday night in early January to show them the possibilities outside their Back of the Yards neighborhood. Only a few turned in parental permission slips for the outing.
She had already taken her young guests, at her own expense, to dinner at P.J. Clarke’s, the upscale hamburger joint. Then they went to “Stomp the Yard.” The highlight, planned for the next day, would be window shopping along tony Michigan Avenue.
Whether in school or out, Apostolos played parent as much as teacher.
She railed at students about their poor grammar and marked them down on a poster board in her classroom when they said “ain’t” or “we is going.”
She reminded them to chew with their mouths closed and restrain themselves when challenged to a fight. She forced them to pick up every dropped eraser and throw away every scrap of unneeded paper to keep the classroom pristine. Once, she gave a 10-minute lesson on bathing and hygiene.
“She’s teaching us to act proper, to be proper ladies,” said Tiara Harris.
As they sat in Apostolos’ apartment, the girls opened up about the school year. It had been the best year they’d ever had, all agreed. But they were annoyed about the time eaten up by classmates who misbehaved or didn’t pay attention.
“Every time we trying to learn something new, they be messing it up,” said the usually reserved Shakelle Williams.
Apostolos grabbed the remark as another teaching moment.
“Remember, your environment may not be like theirs,” she said. “Sometimes people are not in good environments to help them grow. They seek affection at school because they don’t get it at home.”
As Friday night turned into Saturday morning, Apostolos pleaded exhaustion. Her arthritic knee, the one that had caused her so much pain in December, throbbed, she said, and she had been up since 5 a.m.
She said “good night” and headed to bed at 1 a.m.
The next morning, as the girls feasted on pancakes, eggs, grits and biscuits, Apostolos delivered disappointing news.
“I think I’m going to have to cancel the window shopping,” she said. “I’m not feeling well. My knee hurts and I am starting to have chest pains.”
The girls offered sympathy, but bemoaned the end of the party.
“We don’t want to go back home.”
“It’s more fun to stay with you.”
Apostolos apologized, but had no choice but to cut the day short. A few hours later, after the girls left, Apostolos drove herself to the emergency room at Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital.
Worried doctors admitted her for observation.
Jan. 23
90 SCHOOL DAYS LEFT
Three days later, early on a Tuesday morning, a sore Apostolos trudged up three flights of stairs and returned to Room 301. Four students already were in the classroom studying for a social studies exam and awaiting the return of their favorite tutor.
Apostolos dropped a heavy black bag, loaded with a mammoth bottle of ibuprofen and the two dozen student journals she had taken home to grade. She adjusted the soft beige brace that covered her leg.
The students rushed to her for a group embrace.
“I’m fine,” she told them. “You don’t need to worry about Ms. Apostolos.”
And with that, she launched into a tutoring session on the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution for an upcoming exam. Chicago 8th graders must pass the exam to graduate.
Apostolos did not tell students that doctors had found a Baker’s cyst in her knee, a fluid-filled sac trapped behind a joint that afflicts arthritis sufferers.
She did not tell them about the pain, or that her physician had warned her stress was exacerbating the condition. And she did not tell them that the doctor suggested she take a few more days off.
“I just couldn’t see doing that because it would put these kids further and further behind,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to them.”
As the school day came to an end, Derrick Fields, the most sentimental student in the class, though not one of the best spellers, handed Apostolos a handmade card. On the outside it read:
“by Derrick Fields and the students get well son”
Apostolos opened it to reveal an awkwardly drawn large, red heart. Above the heart it read:
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“Ms. Apostolos, we love you more than money.”
* * *
Even as she pushed her physical limits, Apostolos was looking for a new edge in the classroom, a tactic that would help her break through to her students.
“Go to the board, Ervin, and write down the seasons in chronological order,” she directed on a January morning.
The 8th grader shuffled to the whiteboard that spanned the front of the room and wrote, “Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall,” in bright-red marker.
“OK, how many people agree?” Apostolos asked. “Come on, think.”
Finally Tiara Harris raised her hand.
“I think winter come first,” she said, “and then spring come next because it got to melt the snow and ice and stuff so summer can come in, and then fall.”
“Exactly,” Apostolos said.
This lesson may have seemed basic, even silly. Eighth graders should know the order of the seasons.
But teaching is a science. And Apostolos was using sound research to back up this lesson that teaches students how to connect ideas in the correct order. It’s the heart of thinking, reading and writing.
Apostolos already had taught several lessons focused on the sequence of ideas. But on a December reading exam, only three of 34 students had proved they understood it.
A skilled teacher re-evaluates teaching strategies, modifying or abandoning those that do not work. Apostolos knew students learn best when new ideas are connected to what they already know. Maybe, she thought, she had been too abstract in her earlier lessons.
So on this morning, Apostolos focused on basic tasks her students could relate to, such as organizing homework assignments in a notebook, using a recipe to cook gumbo, and, now, ordering the seasons.
In a few months, the students in Room 301 would take a tougher version of that December reading exam. More than half the kids would get 100 percent right.
* * *
“Dear Ms. Apostolos,” the classroom journal entry began.
“I just started a new book and the book is Thirteen Winter. It about a little girl suffering a very frustrating disease called dyslexia and the disease cause memory loss in math grammar and spelling. And she tries to learn and remember her work and cant … she reminds me of myself because I don’t really get math, and really can’t spell well but I try my best.
“Love Sarah”
The journal musings of Sarah Stevens gave Apostolos a window into the mind of the hesitant 13-year-old.
Journal-writing was an indispensable part of Apostolos’ language arts program. Every few days, she asked students to write about the plot, character development and conflicts in the books they were reading. She knew it helped them improve their writing skills and develop clarity in thinking.
But they also unburdened their hearts. And that helped Apostolos when it came to teaching.
By reading Sarah’s journal, Apostolos learned the teenager still grieved over her father, who had died a few years earlier in a car accident. So when Apostolos used the song “Fathers” to teach students how to analyze poetry, she knew why Sarah sat silently. And she gave her extra time to work through her feelings.
When a melancholy boy wrote that his father never loved him, Apostolos pulled him aside and let him know he was loved in Room 301. He came out of his shell that day and volunteered, for the first time, to stand in front of the class and discuss the book he was reading.
Even Kyesha Caver, the emotionally guarded star of the class, opened up in her journal. She once wrote that she wanted to be valedictorian, “so I know I have to step it up a notch.”
Apostolos praised Kyesha the next day, but also sent her to the board to work through a particularly tough geometry problem.
March 6
64 DAYS LEFT
A question had been dogging Apostolos most of the school year.
In the middle of the third quarter, as she prepared 12 failure notices to send home to parents, Apostolos wondered again whether teaching was her calling. Despite progress by her students, Apostolos was unhappy with the overall results.
Most students had scored below 30 percent on the recent math exam on parallel lines and interior and exterior angles. Many had done poorly on the practice Constitution quiz.
Some students — such as Sarah, who had begun the year with little hope for anything better than her usual C’s — had blossomed by the second quarter. Sarah was carrying A’s in math and reading by the third quarter.
But Apostolos worried the class was moving too slowly for other students, such as Kyesha. She made a mental note to push her star a bit harder.
On the other end of the spectrum, there was DJ. Initially one of the most eager learners, the 15-year-old had lost his focus in November after police questioned him about a murder. His grades had slipped and Apostolos could not keep him engaged.
After starting the new year with an upbeat spirit, Apostolos felt defeated by March. She didn’t know what new strategies she could try, or how many more hours she could give. Even as she worried about the year’s impending deadlines — tests, high school placement, graduation — she struggled about whether to come back to Sherman for another year.
“I saw my doctor last week, and he told me I have to find a better way to give back to the community,” she said. “He told me: ‘Get out of the classroom. It’s too stressful.'”
March 15
57 DAYS LEFT
In mid-March, on the fourth day of state testing, Apostolos’ students filed into the classroom somber and nervous.
Everyone knew the stakes. If the students failed the math and reading exams, they would not graduate. If they did not show marked improvement over the previous year, the grand experiment at Sherman — the one that brought strong teachers, such as Apostolos, into classrooms — would be labeled by some as a failure.
The testing period had been disrupted early on. Half the girls in Apostolos’ class had a running feud with some 7th-grade girls and it had grown violent.
During testing week, a group was hit with chemical spray outside the school. A girl opened her front door late one night to find three dozen girls threatening to beat her up. And two girls were chased home from school with threats of razor blades.
Apostolos spoke to her girls. She called their parents. Finally, she went to the principal.
“This scares me,” she said, “not just because I fear for the safety of my girls, but I also worry that they cannot concentrate on the tests with this mess going on.”
A few days later, Principal Lionel Allen, a 6-foot-6 former football player, paced the floor of the school’s gymnasium, angry and embarrassed by the violence that had seeped into his school.
He’d gathered together 60 parents, aunt, uncles and grandparents of the girls involved in the fighting. The students sat in the front row.
“We are at the end of the road,” he said. “We have done everything a staff can do to bring resolution to this problem. These are your kids. It’s time y’all take responsibility for how these sisters are acting.”
Emerging research has shown that strong leadership and robust teacher support are crucial for a successful school. Sherman had both.
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What was missing was the parental support. And Allen intended to get it.
“The truth is, there are not only students in here who could care less, there are parents in here who could care less about education,” Allen said, his voice rising like a preacher’s.
An uncomfortable rumble moved through the audience. A man complained that Allen was unfairly blaming the parents.
“What’s sad is the black community is the only community where we got to fight to educate,” said Allen, who is African-American.
“We know there are people out there waiting for this thing to fail,” he said. “There are people saying, ‘I don’t care how many great teachers you bring into an all-black school that is 99 percent below the poverty level, it ain’t going to work.'”
As he spoke, the mood began to turn. A woman in the back of the room shouted “Amen.”
– – –
IN THE WEB EDITION
Find more about the Sherman school story online at chicagotribune.com/sherman
* Watch videos where Montie Apostolos and her students discuss the challenges of the 8th grade
* Click on an interactive class photo to see students’ hopes and dreams
* View a photo gallery of life in the school and neighborhood
– – –
DAY BY DAY
CHAPTER ONE: Teacher Montie Apostolos gets her first challenges in Room 301: Kyesha Caver, the star student, held back by the pace of her classmates; Sarah Stevens, who is stretching to become a good student; and DJ, the playful underachiever whose life takes a dark turn. Read chapter one at chicagotribune.com/sherman
CHAPTER TWO: After holding a slumber party for some of the girls from Room 301, Apostolos succumbs to physical strains. Progress continues in the classroom, but a feud breaks out during crucial state testing.
CHAPTER THREE: As the year ends, Kyesha, Sarah and DJ find surprises awaiting them. Class results are promising, but Apostolos tries to figure out whether she can do it all again another year. COMING TUESDAY
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