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J.P. Tarbath hooks students with what he calls serious fun.

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

It's fifth period on a Thursday and J.P. Tarbath takes his accustomed place in front of his English class.

He flashes a few puzzles on the overhead projector -- riddles to which the teenagers, from a cross-country-ski champion to a punk wearing all black, blurt out possible answers as they unpack books and pens from backpacks to begin class.

Tarbath, an English and economics teacher at Service High's alternative Seminar School, believes in what he calls serious fun for his classroom. To him, this means engaging kids in the enjoyment of learning, then, once they are on board, pushing them as far as he can. His goal is to foster an atmosphere of "creative tension."

The puzzles are a way to have fun. "It gets the kids involved. It gets them talking. ... They enjoy that kind of trickery," he says. In a minute, the students will be racking their brains over grammar, but for now, Tarbath throws out clues when he sees they aren't getting the answer to the last puzzle. The answer has something to do with a fish and a mat. He tells them to think of a flounder. He tells them because they're American they may not know this type of fish. It's not often on menus in Alaska.

"Come on?" he says in his Australian brogue. "Anyone??"

Some teenagers bite on their pens. Others purse their lips. The kids are edging closer and closer from the glee of the game toward frustration.

"Plaice," he says, telling them the fish's name.

The kids erupt in oohs, ahhs and at least one says, "Who's ever heard of that fish?"

Then, he lets them finish: "Placemat."

GOOD -- IN AN EVIL WAY

Tarbath is luckier than most of the district's 3,400 teachers because he works in the select Seminar School, a 200-student alternative program that draws the motivated and academically ambitious. The kids in Tarbath's classroom are among the more privileged in the Anchorage public school system: Few drop out and nearly all graduate on time. Almost all go on to college, compared to the city's average of just 66 percent.

But even with that, his students boast that he's the one for whom they will always do their homework, for whom they will never show up late, for whom they work the hardest. He is, by some students accounts, the hardest teacher at the school.

"I have students who come to me after the first few weeks of school asking to get out of his class," said Seminar counselor Jane Erkmann. "I never let them. Then, two weeks later, they come back and say he's their favorite teacher."

"He's the teacher that students who have graduated always come back to visit," she said.

One feisty teenager sitting in his classroom said, "He's good, in an evil kind of way."

Students who never thought about taking college-level AP economics enroll because he takes them aside and tells them they are up for it. One parent boasted how Tarbath turned his son on to Thomas Aquinas. Student Esther Kennedy, 16, said: "If you write well and start to plateau, he'll raise the bar. So you are constantly having to prove yourself to get a good grade."

As is often typical for exemplary teachers, Tarbath teaches beyond the classroom. For students who want to try the AP English exam, he holds weekend tutorials at a South Anchorage coffee shop for six weeks before the test. His students often do as well, if not better, than students who have taken a year of instruction leading up to the exam, said Erkmann.

Principal Lou Pondolfino said, "He has the art and science of teaching. He has the gift."

DEMANDING THE BEST

Tarbath, 42, is from Canberra, Australia, where he met his American wife, who was studying abroad. After a brief stint in San Francisco, they moved to Alaska in the mid-1990s. Shortly thereafter, he began teaching at the Seminar School.

Exactly what separates the master pedagogue from the average teacher is not well understood. Some experts on teaching say it's a combination of knowing the subject, good classroom management and organization skills, and an ability to think in a variety of ways to illustrate a concept or topic -- through analogies, demonstrations or simulations.

Deborah Stipek, a dean at the School of Education at Stanford University and an expert on motivating kids, said adolescents tend to like teachers and learn best from them when they are challenged.

"Teachers who are just nice and joke a lot and develop good relationships with the kids. ... Kids like them but won't necessarily work hard for them," she said. "Kids work hard and respect the teachers who teach them something, hold them to high but realistic standards."

"(Adolescents) are not impressed by easy teachers," she said. "You have to set a high bar."

Tarbath agreed. "For whatever reason in school, we don't always challenge kids to be their best. ... The goal here is to be critical thinkers and take good risk and be comfortable taking risk and to push themselves."

DISCOVERING FOR THEMSELVES

Back in the classroom, Tarbath hands out a worksheet with a paragraph in which the students must insert punctuation. Then less than a minute later, it's vocabulary. He goes through a list of SAT-sounding words and asks kids for answers. Spurious. Esoteric. Salient.

He tells them there will be a vocabulary quiz tomorrow and he expects their essays to be done also by then.

Some kids sigh and let out exaggerated moans.

Tarbath then hands out the assignment for the period, a Robert Frost poem, "Mending Wall," and the students divide into groups. When the entire class, about 30 students, reconvenes after half an hour they re-arrange the tables to form a circle. Students take their places sitting on desks or chairs. Some, including Tarbath, turn chairs around and straddle them backwards. Tarbath begins the discussion about the poem, which tells the story of a man and his neighbor building a fence. The students quickly take over.

The teens challenge each other, politely poking holes in each other's theories, and branching into analogies. "It's like the fence being built between the United States and Mexico," says one student. "Is it really doing any good?"

"Why do we put up that barrier?" asks another.

Minutes later, Tarbath prods the students, "OK. I'm not understanding you. Why doesn't he like his neighbor?"

For the most part, Tarbath lets the kids lead the discussion. "(The students) were exactly right about the text," he later explained about his sitting-back approach. "And they were learning and discovering that for themselves. That's exactly what we remember in education. Not the teacher droning on."

When the class bell rings, the student speaking continues her thought. No one moves while the hallway outside fills with the cacophony of bustling teenagers.

Tarbath said he teaches his students that the bell only means the conversation must wrap up quickly -- it's not a signal to drop everything and go.

"We are respecting the conversation and respecting each other," he said.

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

TEACHERS IN THIS SERIES

MONDAY: Art La Rue, language arts teacher at Nicholas Begich Middle School.

TUESDAY: Michael Warren, science teacher at Central Middle School.

TODAY: J.P. Tarbath, English and economics teacher at Service High School.

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