Tuesday, Jul. 05, 2011

The United Students of Jarrett

Teacher wins national award for classroom 'city'concept

Cindy Jarrett's fifth-grade class has an 11-year-old mayor, a 12-year-old city manager and a cadre of defense attorneys to contest fraudulent claims of talking in the hallway.

Jarrett oversees the classroom, but students police the aisles, write the bylaws and plan the shindigs.

Welcome to the United Students of Jarrett, Durant Road Elementary's city-within-a-school.

"This is very real to them," Jarrett said. "I let them go as far as they can take it."

In an age of standardized tests and micro-managed curriculum, Jarrett has developed an award-winning teaching system that integrates mandated subject matter into a real-world system that teaches responsibility, confidence and an insider's practical knowledge of civics alongside math and reading. This school year, she was one of three educators nationwide to receive the American Civics Education Teacher Award, recognizing exemplary work preparing students to become "informed and engaged citizens."

"Sometimes in a school system, they tell you that you have to teach it this way, in a box," Jarrett said. "Well, I've never been able to fit in that box."

In Jarrett's classroom each year, students elect a mayor and a city council who draw up rules that the rest of the class votes into "law." Lawyers, police officers, a park commissioner and other "city staff" are hired to make the classroom run smoothly.

A missed homework assignment means a trial before a judge, who consults "the Constitution" - Jarrett - before taking action. Sentences can be mild - just make up the homework and don't let it happen again - or severe, like the time a past mayor threw a ketchup packet out the bus window on a school field trip. The city council removed him from office for a month.

City Manager De'Sean Davis, 12, was responsible for meeting with the city council and helping make proposals - like a last-day-of-school cook-out -a reality. It was not easy, De'Sean said. He had to learn to be fair, rather than just nice.

"When I first started, I was all nice-nice-nice all the time, but then I really started cracking down on people, telling them, 'You can't be doing this. Ms. Jarrett and everybody worked really hard and you're messing it up,'" De'Sean said.

Jarrett started the system as a young teacher looking for a creative way to handle classroom responsibilities and integrate subject matter. Lessons in math, writing and public speaking slip in effortlessly as students handle the city's "accounts" and pen proposals to present to the city council. As a bonus, they're introduced to the often bureaucratic workings of the adult world they will one day have to navigate.

Parents clamor to get their kids in Jarrett's class. Her methods are unorthodox, but her test scores are good, and kids come home excited about school. As mom to last year's class defense attorney, Lisa Rabon is more than satisfied with her daughter Taylor's experience.

"I wouldn't trade the year Taylor's had for anything," Rabon said. "I'm sure Ms. Jarrett has truly shaped these kids in the direction they will go in the rest of their lives."

Jarrett credits dedicated parent volunteers for helping the city run smoothly, and lauds a supportive school administration for allowing her the freedom to teach as she chooses.

"Many times in education ... they ask teachers to stand in line and blindly follow a path that may not specifically work for that teacher's personality or style," Jarrett said. "I understand that there are many who need that guided path and are very successful that way, but there are many of us who need the creative freedom to reach children."

After more than two decades of overseeing a kid-led municipality, Jarrett believes the real world would be very different if it was run by kids - and not necessarily in an "aww, how cute" kind of way.

Like the time a city manager sent an undercover agent to infiltrate the police force and investigate charges of corruption. Sure enough, officers were found to be talking in the hallway themselves but pinning the blame on other students. Justice was swift. The perps were summarily demoted or kicked out of office.

"Children are much harsher with punishments," Jarrett said. "They are really into 'fair.'"