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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

Studies in Contrast

A first year for Cheltenham Elementary teacher Meaghan O'Brien.

A last year for Bromwell Elementary teacher Sue Loftus.

"That's actually the time to do it -- when you still love it," Loftus says. "Before they're going, 'Why doesn't she retire?' "

Loftus has been kicking the idea around all year. The bottom line is that she wants to spend more time with her mom in Missouri and travel to Finland in the fall.

And then there was the comment the woman at the district payroll office made one day after Loftus told her she'd been teaching for 34 years.

"Do you think if a perfect stranger screams 'Get out, girl!' to you over the phone, that it's a sign?" Loftus asked her husband.

The reality of losing Loftus has stunned Bromwell's other 4th grade teacher, Andrea Lewis. The two have been team-teaching for 15 years; they are so close, they can read each other's minds.

"I don't think it's quite sunk in yet," Lewis says. "It's like a divorce."

When Lewis asked how Loftus wanted to mark her retirement, the answer was easy. No hoopla, please; she just wanted to see her kids. So out went 200 invitations to as many of Loftus' former students as Lewis and some room mothers could track down, going back about 15 years.

Next week, they'll come together to honor a favorite teacher.

Highlights of the trip included the food (good), the bunkbeds (too close to the ceiling), various challenges involving communication and leadership (fun), and the time one of the boys peeked into the girls' showers (disgusting).

At Bromwell, fundraising has been the order of the month. Ten days of events -- an art show, a barbecue, a sock hop, a fun run, a silent auction and two performances of "Sleeping Beauty" -- netted $20,000. About $4,000 of that came from the sale to parents of 14 art projects, one created by each class. Loftus' class made a velvet scarf.

In all, the PTSA has raised more than $90,000 this year, money used in part to buy library books and art supplies and hire teachers for music and physical education.

Bromwell has its priorities, hysteria over the Colorado Student Assessment Program notwithstanding.

"Thank goodness we haven't felt the need here to eliminate all those other valuable experiences for kids," Principal Frank Bingham says.

But change is coming. Bromwell is losing three teachers with a combined total of nearly 100 years in the classroom.

Cheltenham Elementary is losing nine teachers out of 28, although that's an improvement over last year's loss of 15.

Only one of the departures from the West Colfax school is a retirement. Some teachers want more advancement opportunities. Others prefer to work at a school where daily life isn't so heartbreaking.

The retirements mean some shuffling in the ranks. Fourth grade teacher O'Brien, emotionally drained but more enthusiastic than ever after her first year in public school, plans to take over a 1st grade class whose veteran teacher is retiring.

"We're definitely passing the baton this year," O'Brien says.

After a year of managing a class that could frustrate even an old hand, O'Brien has decided she wants to make an even bigger impact at an earlier age.

This year's challenge, overwhelming in the beginning, has only whetted her appetite for something even tougher, and 1st grade is the toughest. Bring it on.

"Your first year is the roughest no matter where you are," says Bromwell's Loftus. "All the things you learn that first year is really the stuff that makes you either toss it over or say, 'There's something here.' "

There's a lot here for O'Brien.

"I do think I've made a difference," O'Brien says. "But if there's any way I can help them in different ways at a younger age that will help them with the challenges to come, then I want to be part of that."

O'Brien has had a difficult year, her kids say. "Some of us don't behave that well," Isaiah Arellano says.

On this day, one of her students has been suspended, a perfect excuse for his classmates to write essays entitled, "What Makes Me a Good Person."

It's also a chance to talk about choices in life and whether it's a good idea for kids to defend themselves with words instead of fists, even if they were hit -- or in this case, kicked -- first.

Apparently, O'Brien's student repeatedly kicked a girl after she tripped and fell, while two other boys stood by and laughed.

So now his classmates are talking about why he did what he did, and what they would have done differently, and whether violence is funny.

Tabitha Sepeda doesn't think that the boy meant to hurt the girl. The kids agree that the boy can't understand the pain he caused until he experiences it himself.

"From this conversation, I've learned several things from you," O'Brien says. "One of the things I've learned is that sometimes when people are mean to us, we feel it's okay to be mean back to them. But we get confused and we're not really sure we should do that, because we know that we need to be kind people in order to be treated kindly. Is that correct?

"And maybe sometimes to solve this problem, we can think about what the consequences are for ourselves, and for the other person."

O'Brien's kids understand the idea of consequences much better than they did at the beginning of the year.

"We don't hit each other as much. We've talked a lot about keeping our hands to ourselves," Isaiah says.

Earlier in the year, O'Brien's father, a school principal, counseled patience. There were days the young teacher left Job in the dust.

And despite the obstacles, most of her kids improved their reading by two grade levels.

"That might not have happened if this were an easy class," O'Brien says. "We wouldn't have been fighting so hard for them to learn. And the more we fought, the more they learned. But at the beginning of the year, I was fighting by myself."

Thank CSAP for turning things around, O'Brien says. Six weeks of drilling for the test made all the difference.

"And then they got on my team and realized what we were fighting for," she says. "And we had a common goal: to prove how great we are."

Her kids emerged from the CSAP battle a cohesive team, a group of learners.

"I'm not saying it's all fixed, and they're ready to conquer the world. But they're much better than when they came in," O'Brien says. "And I'm much better than when they came in."

The 4th grade CSAP scores will be out in July, but the 3rd grade reading scores are already in.

At Bromwell, 100 percent of its 48 3rd graders scored proficient or advanced, one of only six schools in the entire state with a perfect score.

"I told everybody last year, we're not going to go up from 98 percent," Bromwell's Bingham says. "And lo and behold."

He thought the media might make a big deal out of it, but nobody paid much attention. And that was fine with Bingham. In his opinion, there's too much emphasis placed on high-stakes testing. Schools in poor communities must devote scarce resources to teaching to a one-shot exam, while art, music and physical education fall by the wayside.

"It's hard for schools that are struggling with test scores to not sound like they're making excuses or that they're whiners when they talk about the problems with the test," Bingham says.

"So maybe somebody will listen to a school that scored 100 percent when we say there are problems with the purposes that this test is being used for politically."

Cheltenham's Frunzi isn't talking about problems with the test. She's looking at the scores.

Out of 110 3rd graders, just 29 percent were considered proficient or advanced, a 2 percent drop from the year before. Frunzi doesn't really consider it a decrease, though, because it includes the scores of Spanish-speaking kids who were tested in English.

Still, it's unacceptable, she says. And still, she has faith in the future. A goal for 2002: a 15 percent jump in 3rd grade reading scores.

"If we don't set our sights high, why bother?" Frunzi says.

There are more unhappy numbers. Another 36 percent of Cheltenham 3rd graders were unsatisfactory, 10 percent more than the year before and the highest level in three years. There were 34 percent in the partially proficient category -- a drop of 8 percent from a year earlier.

"We know our kids are not achieving at the level they can achieve," Frunzi says. "We are on our way up. Believe me, next year, the scores will be going up, literally. Because we have a lot of things in place for next year that will help."

A new literacy program. Intensive staff development. Intensive tutoring. Hiring someone to do outreach to parents. An additional computer lab, so most of the kids will have a session every day.

"If the scores don't go up next year," Frunzi says, "then there's real cause for alarm."

Even 3rd graders who score well on the CSAP have lower scores the next year on the 4th grade reading test, which is harder. The writing component is tough, too.

Last year, 85 percent of Bromwell's 4th graders were proficient or better in reading, 62 percent in writing. At Cheltenham, 25 percent were proficient in reading, 11 percent in writing.

"We can do better. We must do better," Frunzi says. "If we don't believe we can do better, then we might as well just hang up our hats now and let the days tick away."

It takes 12 minutes to drive the 5 miles between Cheltenham and Bromwell. No one knows how long it might take to bridge the learning gap -- or whether it's even possible for schools to make that profound a difference in children's lives.

Teachers like Sue Loftus made it their life's work to try, and teachers like Meaghan O'Brien want to do the same.

"If you make any kind of a significant impression on a kid," Loftus says, "I don't know how you could have a job that's any better than that."

A Tale of Two Schools, Part Eight

© 2001 Denver Rocky Mountain News/Denver Publishing Co. All rights reserved.

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