Teaching as Though Life Hangs in the Balance

Seattle’s Central Area, noted lately for its crack houses and gang wars, is not the easiest place for a kid to get an education. Inner-city dropout and youth-unemployment rates are staggering. Less than half of Seattle’s black students receive a grade-point average of C-minus or higher. For a child, it is a blueprint for disaster.

But Zion Christian School manages to beat the odds. Zion’s 1988 eighth-grade graduates have been accepted by some of the city’s highly ranked prep schools, whose alumni include the state governor and captains of industry.

Six years ago, Zion began with six kids and 30 dollars. Now it serves 420 students from preschool through eighth grade. Eighty-five more swell the waiting list, and plans are in the works to move to a new, seven-acre campus. The school is thriving.

The warm Christian atmosphere of Zion stands in stark contrast to the drug deals and the turf wars between the Los Angeles—based Crips and Bloods on the streets outside. Gang graffiti are even scrawled on the the big wooden sign out front that announces “Zion Christian School.” But on the inside, the sound of young voices—chattering, laughing, and shouting—tell the visitor that it is lunch hour. Black children stream by the office door in neat, maroon uniform sweaters and crisp, white shirts, giggling, bantering, and brightening the dim hallway.

A Principal’S Pride And Joy

Principal Doug Wheeler is a robust, fortyish man with the powerful shoulders of a linebacker, the glad-handing skills of a preacher, and the thoughtful countenance of a committed educator. He has experience in education, but also as a probation officer. He knows his turf well. “Zion Prep” is Doug Wheeler’s baby, his pride and joy.

A string of fourth-graders skips by in the narrow hall. A little girl slaps Wheeler a “high five” as she hurries by. “Hi, Brother Doug,” she sings. Wheeler greets the children by name as they slap his palm, completely attuned to his students as he explains to his visitor the origins of the school and its mission.

As the kids disappear into a classroom, he laughs, “I guess you noticed that this is a sorry, raggedy old building.” It is indeed. A monolithic brick structure perhaps 60 years old, the building once housed a Catholic school for a white, working-class parish. The floors creak. The paint is faded. Yet no litter clutters the halls and no graffiti mark the walls. After meeting Doug Wheeler and his staff, it is easy to see why.

Suddenly, when an argument breaks out between two eighth-graders on the floor above, Wheeler bolts up the stairs and lays a firm hand on the shoulders of two girls. “What’s the problem, ladies?” he asks in a surprisingly polite voice. Wheeler always refers to his students as young ladies and young men, the visitor learns. The girls begin to blame one another, then sheepishly, and with some gentle prodding from Wheeler, make up and apologize. They hurry on their way and Wheeler resumes his tour.

In a third-grade classroom, 33 children work busily at their seats while Sister Mona, a tall, attractive woman in the ubiquitous maroon sweater, works patiently with students seated at her desk. Despite the sudden, unannounced arrival of the principal and a guest, she continues tutoring her charges.

The kids are curious. Some wave and whisper, “Hello, Brother Doug.”A cursory glance reveals penmanship of remarkably high quality. If a kid starts to act up, the omniscient Sister Mona speaks to him from her desk. Her tone is polite but firm, and she gets immediate results. Like Wheeler, she seems able to perform several tasks at once.

In a fifth-grade class, a girl stands at the blackboard, pointer in hand. Again, Wheeler enters unannounced. She is teaching phonics to her classmates. “We teach kids to lead others,” Wheeler explains. “A key element of Christian education, any education, ought to be a sense of service and community.”

Despite the apparent camaraderie, smiling faces, and sparkling uniforms, Zion Christian School is a serious place, as though letting up would spell immediate failure. One wonders how these teachers can keep up the pace, teaching every moment as though life itself hung in the balance. But Wheeler and his staff are painfully aware of the chaos that awaits their young scholars on the streets outside.

When Serving Is The Reward

Teachers’ salaries are low. “We start a teacher out at $1,200 a month,” Wheeler says. “That’s not much money, especially when you consider the large classes and the long hours. But teachers here are serving the Lord. Most of us are members of the same church, Zion United House of Prayer, and a lot of us are related.”

Back in Sister Mona’s class, Sherwin Williams compares Zion to his old public school. “I like it a lot,” he says, “but it’s harder than my other school.”

“Yeah,” his friend echoes. “If you don’t have your homework done, you get in trouble. And if you’re bad, they can spank you on your butt!” They giggle and exchange nodding grins.

In the hallway, Brother Gerald leads his first-graders to another room. Each student carries a chair. A Disney movie is being screened on the VCR, and the first-graders are learning about bears in Yellowstone Park. The room is packed with squirming, bouncing six-year-olds. Sister Janet reminds them that they don’t talk during the movie, and they quiet down. As the title rolls up on the screen she asks them to read it aloud. A storm of eager voices responds. Brother Gerald and another teacher watch over the kids while Sister Janet returns to an adjacent room, where a handful of recalcitrant students is sitting out the movie.

Sister Janet talks to them about privileges and then launches into a lesson. Using colored chalks, she writes a Scripture verse on the blackboard and asks the children to sound it out phonetically. Like everything at Zion, the work is intense.

Each phoneme is in a different color, and Sister Janet, with the precision of a linguist and the oratorical power of an evangelist, coaxes her little scholars on until everyone has read the verse, a proverb about foolishness and correction.

“Discipline is very important here,” Wheeler later explains. “When we get these kids from the public school, we have to sit on them pretty hard just to get them to where they can be still and learn. After they’ve been here awhile, we can lighten up on them.”

When asked about the problems of black students in the public schools, Wheeler replies, “So much of education is about labeling.” The pain in his eyes shows that the question has hit a raw nerve. “Kids are diagnosed as learning disabled, hyperactive, at risk. Then they’re treated accordingly and they live up to the expectations. The spotlight tends to be trained on misbehavior.

“We believe in spotlighting. But instead of spotlighting bad behavior—which tells a kid to act up if he wants attention—we find out what he’s good at and spotlight that. We try to find the child’s level of success. Once we’ve identified that we’re on our way.”

Soon mothers begin arriving to pick up their kids. Doug Wheeler stands sprinkling sand on the sloped driveway, warning parents and students to stay off. “Grease trap got blocked up,” he says, pointing to a greasy puddle flowing from a sewer grate.

Wheeler and his staff will be there until five o’clock, and most of them will be back on campus at six the next morning. In a raggedy old building in a tough neighborhood, these underpaid, overworked, Christian educators have mounted a Herculean effort on behalf of kids who might otherwise fall through the cracks of an indifferent society.

By Stefan Ulstein, chairman of the English department, Bellevue (Wash.) Christian School.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.