The Zion Family -- At This Private School, They Shower The Kids With Love And Respect

CUTLINE: BECAUSE SHE MISBEHAVED AT RECESS, CASSANDRA BRUCE TAKES ``TIME OUT'' UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF MARK MITCHELL. THE SCHOOL BEGAN EMPHASIZING THIS KIND OF PUNISHMENT AFTER DECIDING THAT ITS WELL-KNOWN ``SWATS'' WERE NOT TEACHING CHILDREN TO BEHAVE

CUTLINE: PRESCHOOLERS LEARN TO KEEP THE SCHOOL HALLWAYS QUIET BY COVERING THEIR MOUTHS. FROM LEFT ATE DARYL MILLARD, TAY PROCTOR-MILLS, MARKELL JONES AND CHARLES LINWOOD.

CUTLINE: IN DEBIE MOREHEAD'S SECOND-GRADE CLASS, IT'S HANDS-UP DURING A ``CLASS MEETING'' WHEN TIME IS USED TO PASS COMPLIMENTS TO ONE ANOTHER. FROM LEFT ARE SHANE WELLS, DWAYNE MCCLAIN, DARRYL HOLMAN AND JESSE JACKSON

CUTLINE: DEMETRIOUS ORME, A FIRST GRADER, SWEEPS LUNCHROOM DEBRIS AS PUNISHMENT FOR HIS ROWDY BEHAVIOR

CUTLINE: MORE THAN HALF OF ZION'S STUDENTS QUALIFY FOR FEDERALLY FINANCED FREE OR REDUCED-PRICE LUNCHES. MOST TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE BREAKFAST PROGRAM AS WELL.

CUTLINE: COREATHER DRAYTON, WIFE OF THE SCHOOL'S FOUNDER, WORKS IN THE KITCHEN EACH DAY. ZION HAS SEVERAL MARRIED COUPLES WORKING TOGETHER AT THE SCHOOL ZION'S PRINCIPAL SAYS THE SCHOOL OPERATES ON THE ``EXTENDED FAMILY APPROACH.''

CUTLINE: PRESCHOOL STUDENT ANDRE MCCRAY JOINS THE GIRLS IN THE LADIES ROOM. ZION TAKES CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS 2 1/2/ YEARS OLD.

CUTLINE: PRINCIPAL DOUG WHEELER, WHO HOPES ONE DAY TO OPEN A ZION HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE, SAYS HE EXPECTS EVERY STUDENT TO SUCCEED.

Last spring, Ahmed Black failed all of his classes in his final quarter at South Shore Middle School. And he was angry. He cussed at his teachers, and other students, too.

South Shore wanted Ahmed to attend summer school, then advance to the seventh grade. Ahmed's mother, Linda Gordon, wasn't convinced her son could make it in seventh grade. But if he repeated sixth grade, Ahmed would probably have to do so at South Shore.

Disappointed with the public schools, Gordon then did what what hundreds of African American parents of modest income have done since 1982: She signed up her son at Zion Preparatory Academy. Zion is a Christian school, started in 1982 by the Rev. Eugene Drayton, pastor of a Pentecostal church in the Central Area.

``One of the first things I noticed about Ahmed, within the first two or three weeks, is that this child spent a lot of time with his Bible,'' recalls Gordon, a supervisor in the Seattle Municipal Court.

``He read that Bible in the morning, he read it when he came home from school, and he read it before he went to bed.''

Ahmed even wanted to attend Sunday services at Drayton's church, Zion United House of Prayer. So, Gordon took her son to church there. Although she is of the Islamic faith, Gordon doesn't mind her son studying the Bible. She believes in a single God, and feels her son's interests complement her beliefs.

Then there were the other results: In his first semester at Zion, Ahmed is bringing home A's and B's. His attitude about learning and about his abilities has changed. ``I don't even have to fight this boy to get him to do homework anymore,'' Gordon says.

Ahmed, 12, isn't so sure his attitude about school has changed - ``It's just school'' - but he says Zion makes it easier for him to achieve. More is expected of him now.

``These teachers will go more out of their way to help you,'' he says. ``At the other school they didn't. It's more of a challenge than public school. If you don't turn in your homework, there's a penalty for it. In public school, it didn't matter.''

Mark the Gordons as another black family that, after being disillusioned with Seattle Public Schools, has found what it needs at Zion. With deep-felt religious values as its foundation, Zion has quietly built a reputation for providing solid education and a caring but disciplined atmosphere for the children of African American families.

Although it has a few white students, Zion is the state's largest school that primarily serves the African American community. Six children attended classes in a house when the school opened seven years ago. Now, more than 400 children - from age 2 1/2 through the eighth grade - wear Zion's distinctive maroon and gray uniforms. The school convenes at the old St. Mary's school near 20th Avenue South and South Jackson Street.

In an age when corporal punishment is being outlawed in states around the country, Zion still relies on ``swats'' as the ultimate solution to unruly behavior. But more often, misbehaving students are candidates for a probing conversation with Drayton, a mammoth, gravelly voiced man who serves as a sort of school grandfather and sage-in-residence. Drayton is also the elder figure in the extended family of Zion. The staff includes husbands, wives, cousins and children.

The school's often stern discipline is welcomed by many parents, some of whose kids have had social or academic trouble in public schools. ``If they make him sit in the corner and say a prayer, that's OK with me,'' says Irene Cottingham, who has a second-grade son at Zion.

``They're nice, even when you get in trouble,'' says Ahmed Black. ``They'll listen to you when you have a problem, and help you not to do it again.''

Drayton and a few other founders are Pentecostal, and their charismatic Christianity helps to shape a strict atmosphere at Zion. Their congregation forbids social dancing, tobacco, drinking and swearing. Few teachers are church members, but they are asked to start the day with prayer. Daily Bible class and weekly chapel also are mandatory.

The school's spirituality is also evident in a gentility that warms the high-ceilinged halls of St. Mary's. Students are continually reminded to take pride in being a respectful but confident person - in other words, a ``Zion child.'' Students call teachers and other staff members ``Brother'' or ``Sister,'' in the custom of the church that started the school.

Relationships between teachers and students are intentionally intimate. The hugs and kisses are reinforcement for the children to love themselves enough to improve themselves by studying. The close ties are especially useful for children who come from troubled homes.

Says kitchen worker Coreather Drayton - known as ``Mother'' Drayton, the 68-year-old wife of the pastor: ``We know you can love a child into changing.''

Zion could even be providing the Seattle Public Schools with the solution to its well-documented difficulty in lifting black-student achievement. Zion has sent many of its students on to many of the city's most highly regarded private schools, and its students apparently score better than black students in the public schools on standardized tests.

Observers inside and outside of the school agree that high expectations are the key to Zion's academic formula.

``At Zion, we expect every child to succeed,'' says Maryamu Givens-Eltayeb, a second-grade teacher. ``We worry about it. Our jobs depend on it.''

Added Sharon Pitre-Williams, who teaches kindergarten: ``It is a school that the black community needed. They needed an inner-city school where black children can go to a black school with black teachers and they'd be OK.''

Amhed Black bounded into the school's cafeteria recently and approached Elizabeth Wheeler, the financial administrator at Zion and wife of the school's principal. Ahmed joked with a visitor, then quickly hugged Elizabeth. The back of his Zion jacket is emblazoned with ``Saints'' - the school's mascot. Below that, a crucifix hooks into a crown.

``See that cross and crown?'' said Elizabeth, pointing to the boy's jacket. ``He wouldn't have been caught dead in that before.''

``I know it's just one little kid. But it's a miracle to me. It's a miracle. His ideas have been changed. He came here with no pride and trying to identify with somebody, anybody.''

``That's one the gangs won't get,'' she said.

Zion Prep principal Doug Wheeler, 43, has long been a fixture in the community - but not in education. Although he taught briefly at Franklin High School in the 1960s, Wheeler eventually made his name in law enforcement. But even before he took over the school in 1982, Wheeler began to tire of a daily diet of tragedy and death. He had worked as assistant director of the victims' assistance unit of the Seattle Police Department.

In that job, Wheeler walked onto many fresh and bloody crime scenes. He counseled friends and family of the murdered Goldmark family, and those of the victims of the Wah Mee killings. He still runs his own consulting agency - Washington Victims Services.

So, it was no surprise to Wheeler a few weekends ago when a friend asked him to go to the county's juvenile detention center to talk to about 75 young offenders. Some of the kids had been convicted of murder.

He looked around at the roomful of seated boys. A few pairs of feet, he noticed, failed to touch the ground.

``It made me feel like I was dead,'' says Wheeler. He is a buoyant man with affectionate commitment to his work. But this time he did not know what to tell his audience.

``Finally, all I could say was, `I'm sorry,' '' he recalls. ``I'm sorry their teachers failed them, or their mother failed them or their father failed them or their preacher failed them or society failed them.''

``There's just no reason for kids 12 and 13 years old to be locked up in jail for murder. Something's just not right. Somebody's . . . just not . . . doing enough.''

Wheeler's work at Zion is an effort in part to break the cycle of despair that derails so many lives, particularly those of young African Americans. ``I've seen lives snatched so quickly away by the streets,'' he says. ``Now, on that end, there's nothing I can do, and all I'm doing is trying to take the pain away. Here, I can look at a child, and I know I can make a difference. It's an opportunity you have to cherish.''

Zion children do operate in a virtually all-black environment, and some students report that making the adjustment into an integrated high school is not easy. But Zion children are no more isolated than students at Seattle's many private schools that are virtually all white. When in an expansive mood, Wheeler envisions a high school and, eventually, the state's first black college at Zion.

The inspiration for such aspirations began about 20 years ago, when Drayton's Zion United House of Prayer was just a few years old. One day, Drayton realized something was wrong in Sunday school.

When asked to recite from the King James Bible, many of the children could not read.

The church started a tutoring program to help the congregation's youngest members with their schoolwork. But Drayton, a former postman and one-time grocery owner who had lived and worked in Seattle since he left the Army after World War II, had bigger dreams.

He says he sensed then that the community needed something to respond to what he describes as a breakdown of moral standards - children swearing at their elders, young people getting involved in sex and drugs. He also wanted to somehow address the growing rate of black high-school dropouts and expulsions of black students.

``I knew there was a need to get a school where children would be loved and disciplined and taught morality,'' says Drayton, now 69. ``I believe it was the Lord who gave me this vision, not myself, because I am not an educated man. The only degree I have is in theology.''

Drayton speaks carefully, and with a drawl. He grew up on an East Texas farm. He recalls standing on a backyard tree stump as a boy, delivering the Methodist sermons he had heard the Sunday before. His brother would try to replicate the hymns they had heard. ``In my life on Sunday, there was church, just church,'' he says.

His Zion Christian School opened in the fall of 1982, charged $65 in monthly tuition and almost closed two months later. At least church leaders intended to close the school when Drayton called a meeting that first fall.

Then Elizabeth Wheeler - Drayton's stepdaughter - opened her mouth. She argued that the school should remain open for stability's sake, and offered to serve as administrator herself. At the time, Elizabeth was divorced with a 14-year-old, a 12-year-old and a brand new lay-off notice from Continental Can, where she had worked seven years in data entry.

When Doug Wheeler, another congregation member, offered to help, Drayton gave them 90 days to produce. ``The checkbook was at minus $13.62, and we were $900 in debt to the teacher,'' Elizabeth recalls. ``But I hate to lose.''

She and Wheeler - whom she eventually married - quickly set about talking up Zion with anyone who would listen. They also took out newspaper ads, and they held skating parties for the students. The children sold candy. When Zion's second year began, enrollment had climbed to 83.

With about 450 students now, Zion operates on about $700,000 a year. The revenue is in tuition - a lean $145 per month - day-care fees, fund raising, busing costs and some federal dollars for the breakfast and lunch programs. By contrast, the typical Seattle public elementary school, with grades kindergarten through fifth, operates on about $1 million annually.

Teachers at Zion earn $1,350 or $1,550 per month and are guaranteed 10 months' work. No matter what their experience, Zion teachers' salaries place them several thousand dollars below a first-year teacher in the Seattle School District.

The school's budget lends fresh meaning to the phrase ``creative financing.'' One day last month, a teacher approached Doug Wheeler and said she needed a remedial English teacher's guide. Doug took money from the school's soda machine. The teacher got her book.

``Every accountant I talk to says, `You cannot do this, Liz,' '' she says. ``Two fishes and five loaves of bread - that's how we do it.''

Nineteen first-grade children in Room 307 at Zion are reviewing spelling words that have the scrub-the-floor sound. That's the sound a ``j'' makes. A phonetic letter card on the wall has an illustration of a hand scrubbing a sudsy floor.

It's also the sound at the beginning of Janet Jackson's name, teacher Gerald Edwards reminds the three rows of black children. They squeal at the reference and do a sort of squirm-dance in gleeful tribute to the black pop singer. Edwards laughs.

Edwards silences them when he calls on Jawaad Gipson, a small boy with long eyelashes and a sweet smile, in the second row. Jawaad is bright but not always attentive. Edwards asks Jawaad to pronounce the word he has neatly printed on the blackboard.

``Br. . .i. . .dge,'' Jawaad says cautiously.

``Yes, Jawaad, very good,'' Edwards says, with another smile.

Then the children clap for Jawaad.

Edwards, 27, encourages the children to applaud each other when someone in the class does well. Edwards is a former track athlete at Washington State University, and he coaches track at Zion. As a young black male teacher, he is highly valued as a role model at the school.

With gentle gestures, he ``gets personal'' with the students. Once he lifted a little girl's feet to the chalk ledge so she could write on the board. He also has taken some of the male students to college basketball games. He even plays Nintendo with some of his students.

``A lot of of the kids, especially the shy ones, need to feel appreciated,'' he says. ``Some of them just don't get that at home.''

``It's not your average school. Some kids have real problems. One boy told me he didn't want to go home at the end of the day. We try to get personal here.''

Across the hall, in Debbie Morehead's second-grade class, the children are beginning their day with a penmanship exercise. They hunch over their desks and copy the words from the projection screen:

Matt 2:11

Entering the house where the baby and Mary his mother were,

they threw themselves down before him worshipping.

Then they opened their presents and gave him gold, frankencense and

myrrh.

Morehead, 29, is a religious woman who weaves Christian teachings into the curriculum of her classroom. ``What I am trying to bring these children up as are examples of Jesus' life,'' she says.

Down at the end of the hall, Maryamu Givens-Eltayeb drills her second graders in the seven principles of Kwanzaa, an African American holiday. The children yell out the tenets with specific gestures.

``Imani! . . . Faith!'' they proclaim as they clap their hands.

``Kujichagulia . . . Self Determination!'' goes the high-pitched cry. Twenty-seven little fists are punched into the air.

African-American culture and self-determination are of particular interest to Givens-Eltayeb. She lived in the Sudan for five years, and decorates her classroom with portraits of Nelson Mandela and posters of Namibian soldiers, who battled South African forces to liberate the country. She served as as co-chair of the Seattle Coalition Against Apartheid, and worked in the Rainbow Coalition organization. A Norm Rice campaign sign is propped up in one corner. The children do stretching exercises to a tape of Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign ditty, ``Run, Jesse, Run.''

``Doug (Wheeler) allows you to be yourself in the classroom,'' says Givens-Eltayeb, 43. ``As long as I stay within the Christian values and work within our curriculum here, Doug has allowed me a lot of freedom.''

Givens-Eltayeb has taught at Zion only since the beginning of the school year. Although Wheeler checks all teachers' lessons plans once a week, the nitty-gritty educational leadership of the school mostly comes from staff members who have worked at Zion for several years.

No regular evaluations of staff are conducted and some teachers tell of previous years when no agreed-upon curriculum existed for certain grade levels. A lack of regular substitutes also means that when Zion teachers miss a day, their classes are taken over by other Zion teachers. The result, people agree, is that learning time is usually compromised. Computers haven't yet made serious inroads at Zion, as they have at many public schools. Some Zion classrooms have computers, but many are just dust collectors.

But what the school lacks in resources, even organization, it makes up for in clear-eyed focus on its educational mission. Wheeler and about a dozen teachers went five years ago to workshop conducted by Marva Collins, the Chicago schoolteacher who has emphasized self-esteem, high expectations and basic skills to help black students achieve. Collins also stresses reading and students working together on projects - an approach educators call ``cooperative learning.'' If the Bible provides the spiritual foundation of Zion, then the best-selling ``Marva Collins' Way'' serves as the school's intellectual base.

When her book came out in 1982, Marva Collins became for a time the nation's most renowned teacher. Her ideas have been put into place around the country to get students - especially black students - to achieve. Her methods also contribute to the philosophy of the Seattle Public Schools' three-year, $3 million academic achievement project, designed in particular to boost the classroom performance of minority students.

``Certainly the philosophy that all kids can learn - and that some just take a little longer than others - has become our philosophy,'' says Geri Hudson, who teaches eighth grade at Zion.

No Zion children are called ``at risk.'' None is in ``special education'' classes. Such labels, says Wheeler, have become excuses for low achievement. Still, the school has begun to struggle to serve both its brightest and least talented students.

Louise McKinney, an experienced educator who oversees the Seattle Schools achievement project, believes the Collins philosophy is educationally sound and culturally appropriate for African American students. ``The public schools are part of a system that that supports institutional racism,'' says McKinney, who is black. ``Public schools are not necessarily set up for the greater good. We operate on a bell curve - a curve that says 30 percent of the kids are going to fail. My objective has always been to knock that bell-shaped curve in the head.''

McKinney says the intimate atmosphere at Zion should work especially well for black youngsters. ``It's part of our culture,'' she says. ``Children are highly valued, even adored, in Africa. A lot of that has been transferred to our African American culture.'' Even with its rapid growth, Zion has held its class sizes at 20 to 25 students. In the public schools, average class size is about 27 students.

John Morefield, principal at Hawthorne Elementary School, points out that American schools traditionally operate on European values, especially competition. This made some sense when most of the students were of European descent. But it doesn't work out, Morefield says, when so many students are of African or Latin or Central American heritage. Those cultures value cooperation and relationships more than competition, he says.

``The culture of the school needs to reflect the culture of the students,'' he says.

Because of their cultural background, African American children may be more suited to cooperative learning, Morefield says. This is also vintage Marva Collins. She encourages teachers to have students work together, to have the more able students help the less able. Accordingly, Zion students work frequently in small groups - or on entire class projects, especially with the small classes at the higher grades. Collins' emphasis on reading is born out in one class assignment at Zion: The eighth graders read Crime and Punishment.

Former public-school students who transfer into Zion quickly notice a different atmosphere.

``At public school, the white kids go here, the black kids go there, and the Mexican kids go there,'' says Francesca Richards, 15, a Zion graduate who now attends Holy Names Academy. ``At Zion, there's only one big group. It's like a family.''

Melissa Green, 16, another Zion graduate who attends Holy Names, appreciated the individual attention that many Zion students enjoy. ``They take a lot of time with you at Zion,'' Green says. ``Most of the things they teach are above what you need. Right now, some of school is like review for me.''

Says Irene Cottingham, who has a second-grade son at Zion: ``I don't have to worry about the kids getting lost in the shuffle because the classes aren't that big. If there's a problem, I'll know about it that day.''

The school's uniforms do more than save money and bestow a sense of identity on the student body. ``You didn't worry about your clothes - like, if you didn't have a lot of clothes, and you had to wear something twice,'' Richards says.

Nicole Garner, a 14-year-old eighth grader at Zion, attended public school when she was younger. ``The biggest difference at Zion is they deal with our own personalities. They don't deal with us a group.''

Garner wants to become an attorney. She hopes to attend Howard University, perhaps the nation's most prominent black college. She got interested in law when downtown lawyer Mark Wheeler, Doug Wheeler's brother, began teaching a class for Zion eighth-graders.

``Zion cares about you,'' says Garner. ``That's the simple truth.''

The last thing Willie McClain does at Zion each day is drive students home aboard one of the school's three used buses.

During the day, McClain's name is often invoked by teachers as a threat. He is vice principal - and chief disciplinarian. It is his job to administer slaps from the paddle known to students as the Master Blaster.

McClain does that much less frequently than a few years ago. Wheeler says the school backed off on its corporal punishment policies. It wasn't producing better behaved children and it was hurting relationships between staff and students, he says. These days, McClain is more likely to talk out problems with students.

McClain's after-school bus route takes him deep into the Rainier Valley, all the way to the city's border with Renton. The bus rumbles along the windswept and uninspiring Martin Luther King Jr. Way, past the pink and white Paradise Baptist Church near the city's southern border, up into the serpentine little streets above the Rainier Yacht Club's marina.

Along the way, McClain drops off a child at a street-front apartment, another at a whitewashed cinderblock bungalow, another at a towering hilltop home with a sweeping view of Lake Washington. Ninety minutes pass before the last child gets off.

The lengthy bus ride many children endure to Zion each day lends more weight to the argument that parents' desire for their child to be educated is stronger than their their concerns about busing.

McClain doesn't just pound the brakes and dump kids off. He blares the horn of the bus in front of every house where a child gets off. Once, he walked a student across a busy street near the lake shore. Another time, a small girl came crying up the main aisle of the bus as McClain pulled up to her house. She clutched a Christmas decoration - a yellow and red candle made of construction paper, paste and gold glitter.

The sparkly yellow ``flame'' had fallen off.

McClain let the child off and then, pulling way, yelled to an adult emerging from the house: ``Help her glue her candle back together!''

``Oh, OK!'' the woman replied. She smiled and waved.

JOE HABERSTROH IS A SEATTLE TIMES REPORTER.