Akron's new math and science middle school, which opens this fall in a temporary home, aims to serve children of all abilities.

It's not a magnet school for the district's best and brightest.

Felicia Campbell, one of the 14 teachers picked for the school's first year, wouldn't have it any other way.

''That's how it should be,'' said Campbell, a 20-year veteran who will teach language arts and social studies.

''If you tell me that this is just for an elite group of teachers or kids, then I would probably not want to be a part of it simply because I'm an Akron Public Schools teacher, which means I take in all kids.''

The new school aims to nurture and sustain the sense of wonder and discovery kids express about the natural world in elementary school but too often lose in the middle-school years, when they decide math and science aren't for them.

Campbell knows many of those students are smart enough for science, but they'll never get to those ideas through textbooks alone because they're not reading at their grade level.

That's why she's excited that the teaching methods she and her colleagues will use at the new STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) school aren't as dependent on textbooks.

Those methods — known as project-based, problem-centered or inquiry learning — provide students with opportunities to struggle with real-world projects and problems and experience the potentially addictive rush of solving them.

Teachers such as Campbell have practiced the methods in isolated classrooms around the district, but never together under one roof, Please see Teachers, across subject areas and disciplines, with everyone from the superintendent to the principal supporting the approach.

Campbell's last assignment was at Riedinger Middle School, one of five schools closed at the end of the school year because of declining enrollment.

Riedinger's principal, Traci Buckner, has been hired as the new math and science middle school principal.

Campbell and two other Riedinger teachers, Amanda Boyd and Sam Crews, are among the teachers selected for the new middle school from around the district.

A panel that included representatives of the school's main partners — Akron Public Schools, the University of Akron, the city and the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation — conducted the job interviews.

''We had to teach a lesson where we had live students. We had actual kids that were brought in. I had five kids,'' Campbell said. ''After we taught our lesson, then we were put through a grueling 12-person interview where they each had a set of questions for us on the spot. There was no prep.''

Campbell taught a specialized class at Riedinger for students who were reading at two or more years below their grade level. Twenty years of teaching also has taught her a little about human nature, at least at the middle-school level.

''Those students who didn't fare very well in elementary and didn't get the skills that they needed to help them be confident in their learning, they tend to be the instigators or the bullies that make the other kids feel somewhat bad,'' she said.

They know their academic shortcomings will be exposed if they're called on in class.

''So, rather than have that attention put on me, I'll just act up, I'll just pick with other kids, I'll just really be a real cutup in class,'' Campbell said.

''And then the attention all of a sudden switches from what I do or don't know academically to my behavior. As outrageous as it may sound, there are many students who would rather be known by their off-the-wall behavior than their academics.''

Those kids will pick on the better-prepared students who raise their hands and answer questions.

Traditional read-a-chapter, take-a-quiz teaching methods make the language arts teacher the gatekeeper for all other subjects.

''You have the burden of carrying the building because, as I always say, social studies, science, those are technically extended reading classes that deal with nonfiction,'' she said. ''It's fact-driven, information-driven.''

Boys especially are drawn to hands-on science, but if reading is too hard, they never get past the printed page.

''The problem is they get bogged down in trying to decipher every word, every syllable, and they work so hard trying to decipher what's in print until everything else that you say and do is kind of lost because they struggle so hard just trying to read the material,'' Campbell said.

''So once you get through that part, now you have to go back and make meaning out of what it is that you just read. By then, they've forgotten, because all the energy was put into trying to decipher what the words were.''

Trial and error|

These inquiry teaching methods require teachers to give up some of their control over those classrooms, and that doesn't come easily. And, just as their students learn through trial and error, so must the teachers.

In the traditional model, children are supposed to sit quietly in neat rows facing the front of the class.

Lessons are well planned and follow a strict timeline. The teacher lectures, assigns the reading in the textbook or the sample problems, collects the assignments and grades the quizzes.

At all times, the teacher controls the pace.

In a classroom using inquiry methods, things get a little messier and noisier. At the beginning of a project, the teacher typically will hand out a guide sheet describing what the project is about and what the student must demonstrate to get an ''A.''

Then students tackle the problem, usually working in groups, and the teacher coaches from the sidelines. Projects might be completed on schedule, or they might run a little long or short. They might take unexpected directions, depending on the students' interests.

Teachers might jump in with a traditional lecture or textbook reading when students hit a snag and need more information before they can continue, but generally students are responsible for getting the work done by the deadline.

Students have many ways of showing they understand the material.

''If you sit and talk with students, these same students who may struggle if you gave them a book, they can very intelligently tell you what pollution is, how they see it every day, what they think are some of the causes,'' Campbell said. ''And with that help, with the different types of technology and the different webs of information, we can help them make sense out of, 'Well, why is it the sky is foggy some days and there are odors in the air?'

''We can help them through that without them being a stellar reader, and at the same time, still help them fill those holes, fill those gaps, so that they are learning how to read better and comprehending and understanding what they're reading.''

Her students last spring, for example, were writing personal narratives, struggling to get through the mechanics of writing — correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.

In the new school, she could use video technology to guide students in creating mini-movies about their lives, with words, but also music and video clips and other characters to flesh out their stories.

''That's totally different than hearing, 'You're going to write a personal narrative about an important event in your life,' '' Campbell said. ''It's those types of experiences I really look forward to being able to do and having the technology to back it up and support it.''

Over the years, Campbell has had opportunities to use those methods, but only in after-school programs and other isolated circumstances.

''It's always been a separate program, and not so much part of the curriculum,'' she said. ''I have created my own projects for students, but once again, I was somewhat limited in how far I could go because of materials or time restraints keeping up with what you have to cover.''

Tough neighborhood|

Another colleague at Riedinger, Sam Crews, also is among the first class of teachers at the new school and he, too, has used these kinds of methods before, but never in a building where everyone was doing it together.

When Crews went to work at Riedinger in 1997, the district boasted a number of buildings that sounded like math and science schools.

The district had secured federal money to establish magnet programs to attract more whites to schools where most of the students were minorities.

So Buchtel High School became Buchtel Natural Science & Technology High School and Perkins Middle School became Perkins Technology Middle School and Essex Elementary became the Essex Global Telecommunications and Modern Languages Elementary School.

Later, when the federal grants dried up, so did most of the magnet programs, but the hope of improving math and science instruction continued.

Crews eventually progressed to teaching language arts, then science for several years and more recently, math. In his previous career, he counseled people with drug addictions and led teens on wilderness adventures that served as a kind of practical therapy, but he was still dismayed to learn about the home lives of his students at Riedinger.

Many of them lived in the inner-city Opportunity Park neighborhood near Riedinger, unfortunately named, because opportunities are so limited there for many kids.

''The biggest challenge you'll have all week is nothing compared to the challenge they had that morning just trying to get to school — if they're allowed to come to school, because maybe they're in charge of the siblings that day,'' Crews said.

He and other teachers used to do home visits after school, but they proved too dangerous — not in the homes but in the streets, trying to get to and from their students' homes. The same streets their students must travel to get to school.

''You don't just walk around Opportunity Park after dark,'' he said.

In a dozen years of teaching, he has attended the funerals of four former students because of gang violence.

''I buried five since '97 — one to sickle cell [anemia] and the rest were gangs. One of them got shot a block from my building,'' Crews said.

And already he has taught the children of former students.

''I'm talking about Opportunity Park culture: that you need to be pregnant by the time you're 16 because that's what gets you to the paycheck,'' Crews said.

He wanted to empower those kids, persuade them that they had choices, but he was frustrated that he was losing too many of them with the traditional way of teaching.

''It's hard when you feel like you're beating your head on the wall and giving all this energy and your kid ends up dead or they go home and get beat or any plethora of other examples I could give you that are so hurtful,'' he said.

Crews has seen many students become successful, but the kids he has lost, either to death or the streets, haunt him.

He never bought into the cliche that teaching was all worth it if you could just reach one kid and change that life.

''Really, my whole life, my whole career for one kid? I don't think so. I was shooting for more than that,'' he said.

Science teachers unite|

Crews sought out the counsel of older teachers and soon after he was hired, he joined a group of like-minded science teachers from around the district who would meet after school to compare notes.

Kathy Sparrow, the district's science curriculum specialist who since has retired, organized the group.

''That was a place where they could commiserate,'' Sparrow said. ''It always helps to talk to somebody who is doing the same thing or has similar experiences, so they could get feedback from them.''

The monthly gatherings were voluntary, only teachers and the science curriculum specialist, talking about their craft.

''This is some place where they were doing the same things, so they could connect with each other, even if all the teachers in their building weren't doing it,'' Sparrow said.

They knew that traditional read-a-chapter-take-a-quiz instruction, so deadly dull and irrelevant to their students' lives, wasn't working.

No regular Akron middle school has reached 75 percent proficiency on a state science test; only one has passed a math test. Ever.

''We talked about investigation. We talked about student-driven learning. We talked about inquiry,'' Crews said.

They learned how to do projects such as the eco-column, the combined aquarium-terrariums in fifth grade that sparked such wonder and excitement in their students.

''This is a woman who was way ahead of her time,'' Crews said of Sparrow. ''When I first came to the district, that science learning network, it was huge. She brought teachers every month together.''

Crews usually left those monthly meetings with something practical to use the next day in his classroom, not just another Ivory Tower educational theory.

Disruptive behavior melted away when his students worked on projects they cared about, and they stayed focused, often to the surprise of other teachers.

One day, Sparrow invited Crews to imagine with other like-minded teachers what a problem-centered approach would look like beyond an isolated science class.

What if it became the organizing principle for an entire middle school, down to the physical layout of the building?

Sparrow and the district's math curriculum specialist, Steve Miller, led a group of 20 Akron math and science teachers who recommended an inquiry approach.

''The focus was more on kids doing science,'' Sparrow said. ''Not that there's no direct instruction with that, but definitely not the lecture, read-the-book, lecture, answer-the-questions mode. That was a given.''

And just as their students at the new school will be working in groups, so will the teachers — under one roof.

''They have in a microcosm right there in one place what we tried to do pulling them in from all over the district,'' Sparrow said. ''Just think how much more fruitful that's going to be when they're working together and feeding off each other's ideas and creating more ideas.''

Crews would never describe himself or his fellow teachers as revolutionaries. Nevertheless, five years later, their revolutionary vision is about to become reality.

Teachers excited|

The teachers at the new middle school closed out the last school year by packing up their classrooms for the move to temporary quarters at 400 W. Market St., where they will spend the first year of the school.

One day in May, their principal, Traci Buckner, had a treat for them.

They were going to tour the multimillion-dollar building under construction on South Broadway, which wouldn't be ready until they started the second year of the school.

Channeling Rocky

First, however, she had something else in mind.

She cued math teacher Crews to hit the play button and the familiar trumpet fanfare of the Rocky soundtrack filled the classroom at 400 W. Market St.

''I just wanted to take a few moments and let you know that we didn't forget this is Teacher Appreciation Week,'' Buckner said.

She called each teacher's name and acknowledged him or her with pins and certificates.

The Rocky theme resonated among the teachers.

Just as the boxer in the movie was an underdog going into the fight of his life, the teachers will face the fight of their careers: engaging students in math and science and keeping them engaged through the critical middle-school years and beyond.

Campbell feels like she's prepared all of her career for the opportunity.

''There's days to me it's like a dream. You spend your whole career preparing yourself for something really big and you really don't know what the something really big is,'' she said. ''It just makes me feel like I've been in school for 20 years and now I get a chance to graduate and try some of the skills that I've learned over the years.''

John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.