About Our School

Classrooms

Featured Programs

Parent Resources

PTSA & CSC

From Kids

History

BROMWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (214)
2500 East
Fourth Avenue,
80206-4214
(Columbine Street at East Fourth Avenue)

Telephone:
(303) 388-5969
Fax: (720) 424-9355
E-mail: Bromwell@dpsk12.org

Mr. Jonathan Wolfer, Principal

Mopping Up Education

She's doing both right now.

"I can do the mop dance, the mop dance, the mop dance. I can do the mop dance -- can you?"

The fourth-graders gathered on the floor at the front of classroom A-6 watch her round-eyed, a mixture of amusement and amazement on their faces. They have no idea what's up, and they can't wait to find out.

This is learning, Loftus-style.

The teacher sings the mop song three times, each time a little differently: kind of jazzy, then kind of country, then kind of vampy.

Each song and dance is different -- except for one thing. Did the class see what she did all three times? Can they copy her?

"Who wants to try?" she asks.

A few tentative hands go up.

"Thank you to the people who are willing to take a risk," Loftus says.

One by one, the volunteers take a crack at the mop song-and-dance. Some are shy and sheepish. Others ham it up. In a few minutes, the whole group is caught up in the challenge; hands wave wildly for a chance to dance.

It's a quick lesson in observation, in risk-taking, in performing before an audience, in respecting others, all rolled up in a completely silly package custom-made for the 9-year-old mind.

There's no mop dance on the Colorado Student Assessment Program, the criterion being used to give letter grades to public schools this year for the first time.

Willingness to take a chance isn't part of the standards. But to Loftus, who's been at this for 33 years, it's a big part of what teaching and learning are all about.

"We have a lot of pressure to be prepared for the CSAP," she says. "I think the things they're trying to assess in that test are the things that need to be taught in the classroom. But I don't think sitting kids down every single day and talking only about what could be questioned on a test is the way to teach the love of learning. It loses its magic."

In the push to meet or exceed standards, teaching becomes a balancing act in which educators find themselves juggling the needs of the students against the expectations of parents and politicians. And no Denver public school comes with higher expectations than Bromwell Elementary in Cherry Creek North.

Last spring, 98 percent of the children who are fourth-graders now scored proficient or above on the CSAP, the second-highest score among DPS' 84 elementaries.

"Even at the end of the year, if you got an A, so what?" Loftus says. "How does this help our school the following year?"

Loftus, a fit 55, has taught at Bromwell for 23 years and still boggles colleagues with her energy. She regularly beats the custodian to school in the morning. Her classroom walls are papered with student poems and paintings. A few days before Halloween, Loftus stood on desks, hanging 23 ghost mobiles, each as distinctive as the artist.

Loftus began in special education, teaching children considered "educationally mentally retarded." She has taught in small-town Kansas and the toughest part of Philadelphia, and she says that a child's success is relative.

"I think there are a lot of kids that a teacher might take from the 10th to the 25th percentile, and she will have done an incredible teaching job to do that. And they will have done an incredible learning job to do that," Loftus says. "But that's still going to be a failure under this grading system. And how unfair is that, when this kid goes, 'Gee, I guess I really didn't do very well after all.'

"The only thing you can do is have success build upon success, and you have to make that kid feel like he has really accomplished something. That it was worth his time to show up and do this."

Loftus does that with her students every day. They come to school expecting challenges, creativity and chances to share their thoughts, because in her classroom, they are important people with important things to say.

"She treats us like we're ordinary adults," Erik says. "She doesn't treat us like kids. She understands the maximum amount fourth-graders can handle."

"I want them to understand that I respect their minds and I respect their ideas, and I consider them to be intelligent beings who have already accomplished many things in their lives," Loftus says. "I want them to understand that learning is an adventure. And that this is just one more leg of the adventure."

Her students have already gotten the message.

"She makes work fun," Clara says. "She makes things into games."

Like "Math Basketball." Get the right answer to the problem and get a shot. It's the only way to get points for your team, and everybody wants to win.

"Some teachers just hand you a math paper," Eric says. "And you'd just go, 'Oh geez, another paper."'

She's sitting in her big chair at the front of the room, holding up a colorful design; the children are gathered on the floor at her feet.

"Tell me what this is," she says.

An upside-down flower, one child guesses. Fishbones. A man-eating alien.

Loftus holds up another design. A cow wearing pilot's goggles. A dragon. A weird vacuum cleaner.

Then Amalia sees a capital S. Suddenly, they all see letters, and then a word: Susan. It's the name and its mirror image, and they all get to make their own.

"You get a lot of satisfaction when the light goes on," Loftus says. "When a kid gets something for the first time, or they get excited by something they've discovered, and they want to share it, and you can help them go further with it. It's a perk that I don't think other jobs really have."

Teaching didn't appeal to Loftus early on -- it was her grandmother's dream for her. But her first experience working with children while she was in college changed her mind, and student teaching in Kansas reinforced it.

"I just thought, 'This teaching is such a piece of cake. Why wouldn't anybody do this?"' Loftus says.

Then came graduate school in Philadelphia and a big-time reality check: a roomful of special education students, ranging in age from 7 to 13, in an inner-city school tougher than any Loftus had seen before or since.

"I had three kids that year who saw their parents murdered," she says. "I had kids who had never eaten an orange. The kids came to school on the trolley, and the police rode with them. Kids were frisked."

Loftus came to Denver in 1967 at a friend's suggestion and taught special education at Hallett Elementary, then moved to Bromwell in 1977.

It's tough to say who wants to come to school more each day, Loftus or her students.

"Kids are just so open and eager and honest," she says. "And it sort of feeds you all the time. Every day is new and different."

To understand what kind of a teacher Loftus is, look up -- a stuffed arm and leg hang from the ceiling, like somebody's stuck up there.

Check out the "Gallery of Greats," a display of recent photos of past students. Loftus is the teacher they still call and write and come back to see.

"She just puts her heart and soul into teaching. It's her life," says Andrea Lewis, who teaches Bromwell's other fourth-grade class. "I've never met an individual so devoted to kids and so excited about their learning."

Loftus and Lewis have taught together for 14 years; they both have won Denver Distinguished Teacher Awards. A removable wall separates their classes, but their desks abut each other so the teachers can talk across them.

"She's been such a mentor to me," Lewis says. "We laugh, we cry, we share our successes -- Sue doesn't have any failures. We talk about what we'll do when we retire, and I say, 'You'll never retire.'

"Everybody needs to have a teacher like Sue Loftus once in their lives."

Over the years, Loftus has taught whole families of children, which explains the photos of groups of adults. They invite her to their weddings and send pictures of their babies. They credit her with inspiring their world travel and professional success.

"I got a letter from a kid who's graduating from Stanford," she says. "And he said, 'I would never be at Stanford if you hadn't pushed those times tables down my throat.' And at the bottom of the letter he said, 'I will not chew gum. I will not chew gum. I will not chew gum."'

Loftus has been the teacher they love and remember, and far more than a teacher to some.

"You're different things to different kids," she says. "You hope you're what they need at the time."

Loftus taught one girl how to ride a bike, right out there on the playground. The student invited Loftus to her wedding in New York, and of course, the teacher went.

Loftus still gets a call from her every month. She filled the void in the life of a child whose mom wasn't around.

"You're constantly thinking about how to reach that one, or what to do for this one, or how to make that one feel better about themselves, or how to help them make a friend, or how to make that learning connection," Loftus says.

It's a mistake to think that the relative affluence of Bromwell families creates problem-free children. Family dysfunction crosses all economic boundaries and takes a seat in every classroom in every school.

Loftus points to a photo on her wall.

"This kid was amazing," she says. "When he came into fourth grade, he didn't use any vowels. No vowels, no capitalization, no punctuation -- just hated to write. So I said, 'Tell me. Just talk."'

For a whole semester, Loftus wrote down his words. Later that year, he won a young authors' award. He often wrote about his abusive father.

On this October afternoon, another father comes in and asks to take his child out of school.

"He's not even supposed to see his child," the school secretary tells principal Frank Bingham.

"I hate situations like this," Bingham says with a sigh.

Down the hall, Loftus decorates the wall with her students' renderings of Anasazi pottery and talks about situations she has known.

There was the time a mother tracked her children from New York to Denver and Bromwell. They had a tearful reunion, and then the fear set in.

The children were so afraid of what their father would do, now that their mother had found them.

"How can kids think about learning with something like that on their minds?" Loftus says.

Then there are the children of divorce: some with parents who like and support each other, others caught in the crossfire of an emotional tug-of-war.

"Some of them can't even sit at the same table and talk about their child," Loftus says of the parents. "I want to say, 'This isn't about you. This is about your child, and their progress. Think about your child."'

For seven hours every weekday, Loftus thinks about all of those other people's children.

There are strong personalities in her class this year, and most of them belong to boys. That makes it even more important to empower the girls, Loftus says.

"It's coming," she says. "There are more and more of them willing to step forward. You try to give them that message -- take a chance. Give us your ideas. It's getting everybody to feel comfortable about their place in class."

Like Phoebe, quiet but self-confident, an athlete who can compete with the boys on the playground. There's Clara, who's bright but tends to hold back. And then there are a bunch of shy ones: Olivia, Nina, Bryn.

"They're all bright, they're all eager, they're all willing to do their best," Loftus says. "You just have to sort of nurture them along, try to help the kids who are having trouble coming forward."

Nick is new to the school, very bright, but needs lots of pushing to get him going. Jake is a character, a child Loftus would like to see do something over and above. She's trying to find a mentor for him to encourage his love of computer graphics.

"All kids can learn, and all kids have something unique to offer," she says. "And for some kids it's really obvious, you can bring it out really easily. And a lot of kids you really have to keep probing and see what it is that makes them want to show their stuff, to do what they can do. And find their own uniqueness. And I think that's what a teacher does. They guide kids to become what they can become."

There are rules and order and structure in Loftus' classroom, but she spends little time on discipline; this is a well-behaved bunch. Loftus counts to quiet them -- they're supposed to have their desks cleared and be ready for the next activity by the time she gets to five.

"I wish she'd count to 10," Nina says.

But the children love Loftus' trust. She's easy-going; Forgot your homework? There's no lecture. Just bring it tomorrow. She doesn't play favorites. And if children ask if they can do something, Loftus doesn't put them off. If she says they're going to do it, they do it.

"She really follows through," Erik says. "We never wonder, 'Are we really going to do it, or is she just saying that?"'

Loftus has taught at schools where just getting a child to attend was a major priority. But basics such as attendance pose no challenge at Bromwell. That means they have the luxury as a school to focus on other goals, such as helping children become more respectful, more kind, more cooperative, more helpful.

"For us, that's a big deal," Loftus says. "Because we feel like if we're training these kids to go out in society and operate as real citizens, these are really important skills to bring to wherever they're going to be. And how do you measure that on this test?"

There's no test to measure all the lessons learned in classroom A-6 every week. But if taking a chance and doing a mop dance is the most important learning a child does, then that's success -- Loftus-style.

Would you like to go to the next installment? Click on 4th Graders Give Thanks For Family, Food, Fun.

© 2000 Denver Rocky Mountain News/Denver Publishing Co. All rights reserved.

This article is copyrighted by the Denver Rocky Mountain News and may not be reproduced or republished without their permission. You can contact them for further information at the Rocky Mountain News website. We are grateful for their permission to post it here for the enrichment of our school community.