An ambitious Southwest Philadelphia charter school uses an ancient language as a new formula for learning.
There are minefields on the path to maturity for every young person in this city. But for many young male Philadelphians, the danger runs deeper.
Young men in Philadelphia public schools are more likely than most to live with one parent, have a parent in jail, reside in drug-addled neighborhoods or experience violence. Students in too many Philadelphia public schools can�t be guaranteed basic safety, let alone a decent education.
Enter the Boys� Latin of Philadelphia Charter School, a new college prep school at 55th and Cedar in Southwest Philadelphia with an ambitious plan to avert the tragedy that defines the city�s public school system. Boys� Latin�s first batch of students�144 ninth-graders�occupy a 10-room temporary structure as they wait for contractors to finish renovations on the building next door.
Last year there were 11 murders within five blocks of where Boys� Latin sits. �I worry about the students,� says teacher Paula Sahm, who lives in the Art Museum area of Philadelphia. �I�ll sit and watch the news, and if I even hear Southwest Philly, I get chills.�
Next to the trailer setup is the shell of a former school, once attached to Transfiguration Church, which was destroyed by fire in 2006. Boards cover most of the windows, and pickup trucks occupy most of the adjacent lot. But by next year the school building plans to house 300 Boys� Latin students, with plans to grow enrollment to 600 by 2010.
Inside the temporary structures teachers drill Latin, biology, math, music, and English composition and literature into the minds of the kids who make up the school�s inaugural class. It�s a full-blown college prep program, one entirely different from the curriculum offered by the schools most of these students attended before. The range of student ability is dramatic. While some of the students previously attended private school, others can barely read.
David Hardy, 57, Philadelphia Boys� Latin�s CEO, says he chose Latin as the foundation for his new school because students who study it consistently score higher on SATs and do better in other subjects because it holds them to high standards that public schools can�t hold them to.
Studying the Latin language, according to the school�s statement, also helps students learn other languages faster�especially romance languages�while aiding in the acquisition of non-romance languages. Additionally, Latin�s differing structures and sentence order �help develop observant, analytical and logical students,� according to the school�s website and promotional pamphlets.
That it may seem more difficult for his students is of no concern to Hardy. �If you can create an environment where learning can take place,� he says, �you can teach anything.�
Hardy says Boys� Latin recruits students through advertising, school visits and word of mouth. Interested parents attend information sessions held by Hardy and his staff. Prospective students are then scheduled for an interview in which they�re told what will be expected of them�essentially reading them the riot act about the amount of work and time they�ll have to put in on homework and other school activities, as well as the strict discipline and behavior codes of the school. If they�re still interested after that, they�re enrolled on a first-come, first-served basis, he says.
Philadelphia Boys� Latin is a far cry from 78 Avenue Louis Pasteur, home to the Boston Latin School, the original American Latin School founded almost 400 years ago and that enrolls about 2,400 students in grades seven through 12. That Latin school, a magnet public school, draws from the smartest sixth- and eighth-graders in the city and the surrounding area.
School building: Teacher Sara Flounders and CEO David Hardy hope Latin will help their students achieve.
A far cry because many of these Philadelphia students struggle to spell and grasp basic concepts�not in Latin, but in English. Boston Latin enrolls mostly affluent students, predominantly white and Asian, and these days increasingly female.
The students seem to increasingly come from richer and richer sections of the city. Few hail from neighborhoods anywhere near as dangerous as those where many of the Boys� Latin students reside. Still, it appears some of the same intensity Boston Latin is famous for may be brewing here.
Sara Flounders� classroom could be the set of a high school-set TV show.
Coats line the north wall of the room, and crumpled paper lies beneath student desks. Books, papers, tests and worksheets overwhelm her desk. Posters on the wall pay homage to Donovan McNabb and various Phillies players.
Everything is straight out of central casting, save the captions beneath the images. �VENI, VIDI, VICI,� reads one, written in garish colors beneath the McNabb picture. Another picture of a clock with wings says, �TEMPUS FUGIT.�
Flounders, 29, a Havertown native, is smartly dressed in khaki skirt, leather boots and a periwinkle cardigan as she leads her Latin class of some 20 students through tales of Greek mythology.
Her love affair with Latin began in high school at Merion Mercy Academy, a private Catholic school on the Main Line. �I had the best Latin teacher in the world there,� she says.
She continued her study of Latin at Holy Cross (having scored a full scholarship for the study of classics), and received her teaching certification from Harvard. After a stint student-teaching at the other Boston Latin school�Boston Latin Academy�she returned to Philadelphia to became Boys� Latin�s one-woman Latin department.
Flounders says Latin �teaches logic and discipline and analytical skills,� results in higher test scores and improves skills in everything from grammar to vocabulary to historical knowledge of ancient Rome and its culture.
Her students have studied both the language and Greek and Roman myths, and now she�s trying to push them through The Aeneid, Virgil�s epic tale, which tells of the sack of Troy, the flight of Aeneas and his eventual migration to Italy.
Flounders reads a paragraph. The sentences students work to translate provide the foundation for what they�ll study over the next three years. They mispronounce most of every sentence.
The mistakes continue, but when Flounders says, �C�mon guys, you know femina,� the room answers as one: �woman!�
Boston Latin began admitting girls almost 40 years ago. Here at Philadelphia Boys� Latin, the students don�t see girls for the entire school day, which runs from 8 until 5.
David Hardy, the boss at Philadelphia Boys� Latin, is lean, dark, and walks bent like a paper clip off center. Hardy, who grew up in North Philly, graduated from Yankton College in South Dakota.
He runs Boys� Latin like his own fiefdom. As CEO, he is businessman, cheerleader, principal, publicist and a general Mr. Fix-It. He believes in making students work, pitting them against each other and dragging them to success by the nose.
Success didn�t come easily for Hardy. One of his first ventures�a flower business�tanked. He worked at a school that taught at-risk inner-city students at the Community Academy Charter School in North Philadelphia for 19 years. During his tenure the school grew from 65 students to more than 1,200. Hardy was the whiz behind a $17 million bond to finance the school, which was a Pennsylvania charter school record.
Hardy, who lives and breathes the charter school system, left Community Academy after deciding to start his own school. He sits in the cramped main office, hands clasped over crossed legs, pate gleaming, his tie knotted just so as he explains why he thought Latin was a winning idea.
�I told them it was gonna be a Latin school,� Hardy says of how he defined the school in the 2005 application. �I said it would be somewhat like Boston Latin, and people thought no way that application was getting through.�
Hardy knew the local public schools�most famously West Philadelphia High School�were notorious for being violent and disruptive. He decided to locate Boys� Latin in Southwest Philadelphia, then home to just four of the city�s 62 charter schools, figuring the city would favor a school that provides an alternative.
But the week before the application vote, the Women�s Law Project, upset over the proposed charter�s all-male policy, sent in a formal opposition to the school district, giving Boys� Latin little time to battle back. �The next week we were rejected,� Hardy says.
Hardy believes American schools, by their very nature, favor female students. Elementary school teaching positions are poorly paid, and because �so much of what goes on is nurturing or mom-like kind of activities, a lot of people don�t feel comfortable with a male as a kindergarten through second-grade teacher.�
Female students see their own image in their teachers every day, but male students are more likely to cause trouble. �As they go up the ladder they�re more competitive,� he says, �more tactile, more energetic, you know, so it�s just different for them.�
Hardy garnered petitions��we had more than 900. Most from Southwest Philly, but some from as far as New York and Washington, D.C.� He then asked if he could address the School Reform Commission.
He mustered a small army of supporters, including Jeanne Allen from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Education Reform (which advocates for charter schools and school-choice programs); state Sen. Anthony Williams; state Rep. Dwight Evans, who is head of the appropriations committee; and speaker of the Pennsylvania House John Perzel. The School Reform Commission blinked first, and gave him a chance to redo the charter application.
Hardy reapplied, and on June 26, 2006, almost a year after he filed the first application, he had his school.
Back in Latin class, Sara Flounders is trying to get her students to take her quiz by repeating the same phrases.
�Gentlemen, please take your seats!�
�Gentlemen, I expect you to be silent.�
After a minute and a half, finally, there�s silence.
But moments later, noise erupts again and Flounders starts handing out demerits. Shock and disbelief abounds.
Back to her lesson, Flounders writes on the board, �ibi,� �cras,� �umbra.�
Basic Latin words, but her students beg for time, hoping to wrest the words from the recesses of their brains. A familiar scene for anyone who once took Latin.
As Flounders collects her students� papers, one starts tap dancing at his desk, pumping his arms to his chest when she turns her back. Another student opens his textbook, flips it over and balances the whole thing on his head.
The quiz has done nothing to dampen spirits.
Pencils tap, teeth click and demerits fly like errant paper planes.
David Hardy says he doesn�t like neighborhood schools, because if you �live in a bad neighborhood you get a bad education.�
Where else, he asks, but in the inner city can you not expel a kid? Public schools put kids in shackles, he says, creating cyclical environments from which there�s no escape.
At Boys� Latin, the emphasis is on breaking the cycle of failure. Students wear khaki pants, blazers, light blue shirts, red-and-black-striped ties and black leather shoes. They carry school-authorized book bags.
They also carry a school handbook and ID at all times. Demerits are issued for breaking any number of rules, and they can lead to detentions and suspensions. Think Catholic school without contrition.
For Hardy, discipline isn�t just demerits and detentions.
Sometimes, he says, all he needs to dole out is a case of acute, paralyzing embarrassment.
Within the confines of the school�s office�a space 10 feet wide, maybe 25 feet long, cluttered with desks, two refrigerators, a couple of tables, laptops and reams of papers and books�he towers over two students yanked from class for passing condoms to each other.
�That�ll knock all your plans off track,� he says to the kids, tossing the condoms onto a nearby computer cart.
One of the boys apologizes but adds that when the �time is right I want to be ready.�
Hardy sends them back to class and starts chuckling. �You never know when that time might pop up, that you might need a condom,� he says facetiously. �You know, riding on a subway.�
Hardy says sex isn�t such a big problem for Boys� Latin students, because of their age. At 14, he says, most boys are still awkward and don�t even know how to talk to girls. If his students are having sex, it�s most likely because older girls are using them as pets, or his boys are finding younger girls.
Teacher Paula Sahm doesn�t walk her classroom�she stalks it.
Sahm teaches English. Her students are kids with everything from behavioral problems to general illiteracy. She teaches only 22 students, and at the moment she�s helping them try to understand the causes behind the devastation in many of their neighborhoods.
She asks the students what their communities are missing.
�Money,� says one.
�Unity,� says another.
�Caring,� says a third.
The question is how to get drugs out of the neighborhood when the police confiscate hundreds of pounds of coke in a single bust but then admit it won�t have much impact in stopping drug violence. The class erupts in debate.
Finally, a student who�s been quiet throughout speaks up. �You can�t do nothing about it,� he nearly explodes. �You can�t stop it.�
It�s early March, and all of Boys� Latin�s students are prepping for the national Latin exam they�ll take later in the week.
A student who previously made it a point to tell a reporter how much less fighting he�s been involved in since coming to Boys� Latin has just been expelled for stealing a cell phone.
�He�s going back to public school,� Hardy says. �In five minutes he�ll know the difference.�
Nattily turned out as ever in a tweed business suit and dimpled tie, Hardy leans back in his chair and thinks about expelling students. �It�s real bad,� he murmurs. �Real bad.�
He says the student�s only option now is to try to navigate public school. �We can�t have people stealing here,� he says. �This is our community.�
Had the student admitted to the theft, or had this been his first offense, Hardy might�ve overlooked the infraction. But he denied the charge and had already been suspended for a previous theft.
As Hardy discusses the expulsion, a fight breaks out a few rooms away.
Hardy runs to the scene and helps intercept the brawlers�one diminutive with wavy black hair, the other squat and barrel-chested with a trace of a mustache bristling over his dark skin.
Turns out a trivial dustup over tossed paper balls prompted the fisticuffs. �What are you doing throwing paper balls?� Hardy asks one. �I expect you to be more of a leader.�
Hardy listens to a weak and tearful rebuttal from one of the students. �Everybody else says you threw the first punch,� Hardy says to him. When he gets a long ramble in response, he tells the boy, �You�re going to be suspended. You escalated something silly.�
Hardy summons the child�s teachers, and asks him how he�s doing with his work. The boy says he�s doing well in art, but Hardy counters by bringing in his biology teacher.
�You�re not preparing like you used to,� the teachers reports. �You had one of the best grades in my class on the first report card. What changed?�
The student sits quietly, his head hanging, protesting with plaintive tears.
Finally the biology teacher stands, grimaces and marches from the room. As he leaves, he drops his hand onto the boy�s head in half rebuke, half encouragement.
It�s March, and the students of Boys� Latin are assembling for the second time all year. Because the trailers are too small and the school�s future building still isn�t ready, the students celebrate their first convocation in the chapel of Mercy Hospital, just a block away.
Sculptures scattered around the room tell the story of Jesus� march to the cross, and two immense lattice frames hang beneath the 30-foot skylight, offset by a miniscule dove hanging just below.
Hardy starts the convocation by ordering the students to stand. The students come to their feet, and recite the Boys� Latin School pledge: �Education is my birthright. Education is the birthright of all children. Education is the pathway to freedom, the freedom to achieve my personal dreams.�
The words roll off the students� tongues: �I commit myself this day to my family and my community. I make these commitments freely and publicly.�
The results of the Latin exam are back. Two students have won medals, and 25 have come within a hair�s breadth. �It was a 40-question test, and we didn�t do a lot of Latin culture. When you look at it that way, I think they did very well,� Hardy says.
The important thing, he says, is that students are learning to read�in English, Latin and soon other languages. They�re learning to think and to dress well. Of the initial 144, the inaugural class of Boys� Latin has lost just 12 students since September. And where once there was only raw energy, a focus and drive in the students has emerged. There�s something happening here in Southwest Philadelphia.
St. John Barned-Smith last wrote about a war veteran eager to return to Iraq. Comments on this story can be sent to [email protected]