Targeted teaching
To make classes more manageable, administrators have enrolled some especially challenging students in Locke 4, an academy whose Opportunities program consists of three classrooms set aside for students who are doing poorly or displaying serious behavior problems. The program also accepts students returning after being convicted of crimes.
On a recent Monday, 14 students sat in an Opportunities class with one teacher and an aide -- Green Dot wanted especially small adult-to-student ratios for these youths. The posted class rules were simple: Stay seated during class; complete all of your work; be polite and respectful.
These expectations failed to achieve traction with several students, including a recently arriving freshman.
"Do you need help?" the teacher asked him.
"You need help," he retorted, looking around for admiration from his peers. "You know, lady, I don't like you."
The group was assigned to organize an essay on juvenile justice after reviewing case studies of four young offenders. If students actually write the essay, they'll get extra credit.
One table over from the ninth-grader, a wiry boy with slicked-back hair said he had landed in Locke 4 after punching a school security guard. He considers gang membership necessary to survive: "That's almost part of life."
Then he paused and offered something close to an endorsement of the new Locke: "Other schools, you have your enemies all the time. In this school everybody gets along. People talk to Bloods and Crips."
He started to work on the essay: "These cases are like what happened to my friends. They got shot at and shot back."
Last year, said senior Harold Thomas, "every other week a fight or something would be going on. I used to walk from the back to the front and all of a sudden, there was smoke coming from a classroom, and you'd hear the Fire Department coming."
To secure the campus, Green Dot has spent $700,000 on security, which might prove unaffordable over time. The investment has helped to nearly eliminate fights and reduce graffiti and other forms of vandalism. The school has also fenced off areas on campus to boost security and has provided some bus service so students don't have to traverse gang territories.
But no strategy can entirely screen out the realities of a tough neighborhood.
In April, a gunman wounded a student in front of campus as students were arriving.
