Math Camp in a Barn: Intensive Instruction, No-Nonsense Discipline

Math Camp in a Barn: Intensive Instruction, No-Nonsense Discipline

 

In North Carolina's poorest county, Indian children get the equivalent of a year's schooling in three weeks.

 

By Naomi Schaefer Riley in the Wall Street Journal

Lumberton, N.C.

When her grandmother dropped Anaiya Holman at Ben Chavis's farm the second week in June, the young girl was not happy. School had let out for the summer the day before and the soon to be sixth grader did not want to be stuck in a classroom learning math until July. She screamed and cried and kicked Mr. Chavis, who was unfazed, according to other students. Anaiya had softened up by the following week. "I want to be a vet," she told me. And when Friday afternoon came around, she asked Mr. Chavis if she could stay for the weekend.

This is the fourth year that Mr. Chavis, a member of the Lumbee Indian tribe, has invited children from Robeson County in grades 5 to 9 to learn math for three weeks at his 200-acre cattle farm in a barn converted into five air-conditioned classrooms. Most of the 50 or so children are also Lumbees—the county is 40% Indian—though he also has a few who identify as black or Hispanic.

Robeson County is North Carolina's poorest—close to half the children live in families below the poverty line, most in households headed by single mothers. Those children are the lucky ones. Several students at math camp are living in group homes, and their parents are often incarcerated or too strung out on drugs to care, says Mr. Chavis.

Amazingly, the Lumbee Indians are actually better off than most tribes. According to federally collected data, Native Americans have the highest rate of poverty, alcoholism and gang involvement of any racial group in the country. Suicide is the leading cause of death among Native American boys ages 10-14. At a time when the rest of the country thinks about American Indians mainly for offending team nicknames, Mr. Chavis is addressing their real problems.

While a few families pay the $300 tuition at math camp, most pay nothing. Mr. Chavis either pays the teachers out of his own pocket or helps them out with paying for college, and other camp expenses are on his dime. Some of the mothers offer to cook dinner for the teachers in exchange for their children's attendance. The math teachers include two graduates of the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, Calif., where Mr. Chavis was the principal; he also served as executive director of three American Indian schools until 2012.

One young woman, a Mexican immigrant, is now studying to be a civil engineer at Sacramento State and the other, who grew up in a home where bullets from rival gangs whizzed through her yard, is studying marine biology at the University of Hawaii. The students seem to adore their teachers.

If Mr. Chavis provided only a disciplined, safe environment every day, it would be a public service. But this camp is so much more. From 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday the children learn math, interspersed with some reading, physical education and lunch. Each gets 120 hours of instruction during the three weeks, equivalent to what they would get in a year at a typical public school.

The public schools nearby seem hopelessly inadequate. In 2012 only 11% of high-school juniors in Robeson County met the state's standards for passing the math portion of the ACT text (which is similar to the SAT). Students and parents told me that even if students received Ds and Fs on their report cards they were sent to the next grade. One fifth-grade student I saw was stumped by problems like 11-6=?

On Mr. Chavis's farm students don't switch classrooms during the day; the rooms all have restrooms and water fountains. Teachers drill math concepts over and over. They use flashcards, ask children to do problems on the dry-erase boards and to compete with one another to get answers right.

The closest thing these classrooms have to technology is an electric pencil sharpener. Students are given about two hours of homework each night. Detention (which can involve anything from washing windows and emptying the garbage to shoveling manure) is given for infractions such as tardiness, talking back to teachers or failing to turn in homework.

The method, as old-fashioned as it sounds, works. In 2001 Mr. Chavis took over the failing American Indian Public Charter School. His strict standards and no-nonsense attitude earned him the ire of many school administrators but also the respect of low-income neighborhood parents. During Mr. Chavis's tenure as principal, the charter became one of the highest-performing schools in California.

For two years it has been No. 1 on the Washington Post's ranking of high schools in America, with 100% of its students passing at least one advanced placement test. More than three-quarters of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, but all of its students are accepted to college. Mr. Chavis helps some of them pay tuition.

Ben Chavis grew up in Robeson County, the only one of six siblings to have finished high school. He earned a track scholarship to Oklahoma City College, earned a doctorate at the University of Arizona, and went on to make a small fortune in California real estate. He remembers being in high school running down the street where his farm is now and dreaming of being wealthy enough to own a house here. He recently bought his parents that home for $30,000.

Perhaps the biggest sign of Mr. Chavis's confidence in his teaching method is that his own three children attend the charter school in Oakland and math camp in Lumberton. "I want them to know they're not better than these people here. They just have more opportunities," he says.

In the fall of 2016, Mr. Chavis plans to open a charter school on the farm. He shows me another barn and explains how it could easily be converted to a school building: "I design these things for the future." It's hard to argue with that.

Ms. Riley is the author of "Got Religion: How Churches, Mosques and Synagogues Can Bring Young People Back," just out from Templeton Press.