Anchorage Daily News

Editor's note: This is the first of three looks inside Anchorage classrooms to see the different approaches some teachers are taking to engage students.

When teacher Art La Rue tells his eighth-grade students to take 10 minutes to read, several gum-smacking teenagers saunter over to a bookshelf and grab tattered copies of Vibe, People and Skateboarder magazines. They plop down at their desks with satisfaction and flip the pages.

Another kid, quiet and sitting by himself on the corner of one of the horseshoe-shaped tables in the classroom, pulls out a book of Edgar Allan Poe stories.

"I don't care what they read. I care that they read," La Rue, a language arts teacher at Nicholas Begich Middle School, later explains.

La Rue's approach is unorthodox, but he's nationally recognized as a teacher who gets things right. Earlier this school year, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings presented him with the American Star of Teaching, given annually to one teacher in each state.

Last year, 100 percent of his students passed the federally mandated proficiency exams. Districtwide, 82 percent did. His numbers are impressive, but even more so considering what kids he was teaching -- some of the poorest in the city. Last year, La Rue taught at Mountain View's Clark Middle School. One hundred percent of his students qualified for free or reduced-cost lunches. In contrast, district-wide, only 37 percent did.

At a time when middle school students are in the volatile transition from children to teenagers, La Rue reaches them by understanding their worlds, and that means it's not just about the textbooks. It is about the magazines they read, the TV shows they watch, and even the McDonald's food they eat. His teaching style is entertaining, sometimes harsh and erratic. He believes in teaching in bursts, moving from one topic to the next quickly to mesh with a teenager's short attention span. Students seem to love it.

Cessilye Williams, La Rue's principal at Clark, which is currently closed for reconstruction, says La Rue delves into their worlds, earns their trust, then simply doesn't allow them to fall behind. "Students see their success because failure is not an option -- and they take that and buckle down."

Teaching is a second career for the 49-year-old La Rue. After 27 years in the Army, he retired as a high-ranking command sergeant major. Little in his first work of deployments to war-torn regions of the world resembles his cramped, brightly colored classroom with grammar tips taped to the walls. He says the two careers are similar, though: "The Army is all about teaching other soldiers what to do."

Now he transfers many of those skills he learned day in and day out while dealing with the 12- and 13-year-olds.

Well before his students had a chance to read their magazines recently in his classroom, La Rue, wearing ripped jeans and a flannel shirt, had begun the day's lesson by raising his voice and barking commands in German.

"Speak in English!" one kid yelled back.

"That's not fair!" said another.

The German, which La Rue learned while stationed abroad, got the kids' attention so he could quickly move to teaching them about sentence and paragraph structure.

BRING IT DOWN TO THEIR LEVEL

To La Rue, language arts means more than reading and writing; it means communication and understanding the thousands of messages that are thrown at a kid each day. He wants to prepare them for life, not just for a test, he says. So he has taken magazine ads and analyzed them. He has taken his granddaughter's McDonald's Happy Meal doll as a prop to talk about gender roles. And he has planned a lesson based on the popular TV show "Survivor" in which the kids have to write to stay in the game.

Bethany Janssen, 15 years old and now a freshman at Bartlett High School, had La Rue for two years while at Clark. She said when she first met him, "I thought he was crazy." He moves around the classroom like a pinball, makes a show of calling parents in the middle of class and is not embarrassed to mimic kids who act out, she said.

After a while, though, he was the reason she kept going to school.

La Rue let her read Nora Roberts romance novels for her assignments.

"He was always laughing," she said. "He inspired me."

In his classroom, with some students, he is soft-spoken and gentle. With others, he kneels down and gets inches away from their faces and speaks to them sternly, threatening to kick them out.

He tells a sassy girl who rolls in just after the bell that she has to leave.

"You are so unfair," she says, exaggerating each word.

"I know. Good luck," he says, and points to the door.

EVERYDAY STRUGGLE

The softer side of La Rue will later bring the same kid back into the classroom and give her a private lesson.

Any student of his may, in fact, spend a lot more time in his classroom than just the hours he is teaching. A kid may come in for after-school help. Or, as about a dozen of them do, join him at lunch to watch a movie. He shows movies in the haven of his classroom so students don't have to deal with the social pressures of the cafeteria.

Recently, as his students were filling out a worksheet identifying complex sentences and clauses, half of them clutching their pens tight and concentrating hard on the answers, La Rue tells them schoolwork is difficult and just because you struggle doesn't mean you can't succeed.

La Rue speaks honestly when he says he understands the kids he is teaching.

"I had summer school every year. I told you that, right?" he says to the class.

"No," several students answer.

"Yeah, every year from the first grade till the 10th grade I had summer school for reading."

"That must suck," one student says.

"I love summer school," La Rue says.

"How'd you become a reading teacher?" another student asks.

"Oh, wow, that's a good question. Is there anybody that can answer that question for me?"

Several students offer a cacophony of answers.

"I'll tell you what I think, but it's only me. It's not the opinion of the district. It's La Rue's opinion," he says. "My opinion is sometimes the best teachers aren't always the ones who had it the easiest in school. Does that make sense?"

"Yep," one kid says. "And you won an award?"

"Yeah. Big deal," he says.

"Sometimes, I think, the best teachers are the ones who had to struggle, who had to struggle every day to get stuff, to understand it. Why?"

"Because they know what we are going through?" one kid answers.

"Because I absolutely understand the look in your face when you say, 'I don't get it.' Because I didn't get it either."

Then he tells them to finish their work.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.

ADVERTISEMENT