On the morning last week that Park Century School — which serves learning disabled students — threw a party for itself on its sparkling new Culver City campus, Arthur Hoyle, the Director of Development, was leading a tour of the lily-white, open-air two-story building.
Besides offering probably the sunniest grounds in Culver City, inside and out, several imaginative policies distinguish Park Century from many other schools.
Informality is the rule at Park Century, the better to put the 75 special-attention children in grades two through eight fully at ease.
Teachers, for example, are called by their first names.
What Is in a Name?
In the cases of Arpi Tamzarian and Meryl Kesten Podgur, for example, you might agree that is a good idea. In the former case, the children could be in the next grade before they master pronunciation. In the latter, the question arises of whether she should be addressed by her very last name or both last names?
Since customs and preferences vary, Park Century eliminated the dilemma.
Even in easy cases, such as that of Jon Hay, where the surname does not present barriers, Mr. Hay is known to the students, comfortably, as “Jon.”
“This is done,” Mr. Hoyle explained, “to make the kids feel as if they are at home.”
To crystallize the daily learning experience, every Park Centuery student is treated to 20 private minutes, every single day, with a tutor.
In Week Four of their first term on massively rehabilitated Landmark Street in Culver City, students still are recovering from the shock of shifting from a matchbox-sized building in West L.A. to grounds so large and open that you almost can see Texas from the upper floor.
As Mr. Hoyle’s blow-by-blow tour arrived upstairs, he casually mentioned that the tidy-sized room on the right, jammed with children’s books, was the landing spot for reading specialist Sharon McCawley.
Tea Time
By the way, Mr. Hoyle mentioned that Ms. McCawley serves tea to each student who sits across the desk from her.
You don’t say.
At least until tea tantalizingly was mentioned, Mr. Hoyle’s audience went something like “hmph.”
The tour guest was attempting to disguise whether or not he was impressed with the setting, when, of all people, Ms. McCawley happened along.
It seems that her official title is a little spiffier — Arts Program Coordinator, which sounds like a desirable promotion from “reading specialist.”
Since culture often precedes academics, Ms. McCawley first was asked why she serves tea.
Behind the Scenes
“It’s very relaxing for the students,” she answered softly.
“It puts them in a very formal and attentive mood.
“It calms them down. And it’s a great honor to have their tea.”
Already, Ms. McCawley raised numerous touchstones.
Clearly this is not your father’s schooldays routine of decades ago when a student was summoned to the office and nobody seemed to worry about helping him enter an attentive mood.
But, the present case is not, of course, punitive.
As Ms. McCawley noted, it is an honor for a student to assume a chair in her special space.
To Each His Own
Smiling welcomely, “I have my proper tea set,” she said proudly. “Each student has his or her own cup.”
Tea with Ms. McCawley, it turns out, has a history — from the former campus.
“One year I had a student who came here at a young age. He was having great difficulty with reading and writing. We did the research, and he compiled his own guide to tea.
“We had all of the ingredients, including a testing scale.
“This experience really increased his vocabulary because some teas are vegital. Some are tangy, some bitter, and bitter is not necessarily a pejorative.
“So it really gave him confidence.
“We even copyrighted it.”
The Format
In a further illustration of the daily accent on individual attention, Ms. McCawley explained that 20 minutes are devoted to “intense individual instruction” followed by a 20- to 40-minute exercise to “hone their independent skills.”
Every September, Ms. McCawley establishes a new theme, and last year’s theme for seventh grade boys was:
“The difference between law and morality,” she said. “What is necessarily legal is not necessarily right.
“We read a book called ‘Monster’ about a 15- or 16-year-old boy who is accused of a crime that resulted in murder. It was about premeditation and degrees of guilt.
“As they were reading, they had to become part of the jury and make a decision. By analyzing the points of view, they realized that the characters of the jury all had certain information but we, as readers, had more information. Like some evidence was not admitted. So what about the decisions that the jury came to?
“We also did ‘And Then There Were None,’ the classic mystery novel by Agatha Christie in which you had 10 different people accused of crimes and, literally, got away with murder. We had to decide who was the most cuplable, and how should that person be punished. The law exonerated them, but that wasn’t right.”
The Roles of Women
Ms. McCawley spoke of a separate assignment with girl students in the upper classes, their analysis of women authors “their positions in different societies and the meaning of those roles.
“What amazed them the most was when we were reading Jane Eyre, we talked about how Charlotte Bronte deliberately did not get married until quite late in her life, just a few years before her death, because, legally, she would have had to give up all of her rights to her books to her husband because she was a legal non-entity.”
This year’s theme is “Survival.”
Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” is on the reading list along with Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.”
By way of introduction, she mentioned “a wonderful book called ‘Noughts and Crosses,’” a 300-pager that kept Ms. McCawley up all night to complete.
Survival also will call for a study of the intriguing, and sometimes confusing, highly social habits of ants and of bees.
It was easy to see why Ms. McCawley serves tea to her students — given the quality and demanding parameters of her stimulating private presentations.