“The state ran this program really openly and really well, though,” Huger
said. “What the state hadone with the charter schools is really
incredible.”
Ed Drozdowski, Lafayette’s chief administrative officer, said
the school is a work in progress as the school year continues.
“Each day we’re getting closer to our goal of being a top
school,” Drozdowski said. “We’re still not fully there
but we’re getting close.”
“We want to be an A-plus school,” Huger said. “Right
now I’d say we are a B-minus, B school, but the dust is still settling.”
One key is Lafayette’s Paragon curriculum, a set of courses created
in 1997 by Atlanta-based Mosaica Education Inc. Used by more than 11,000
students in 40 schools nationwide, the Paragon curriculum is designed
to draw students into studying history.
“Paragon is a totally integrated social studies and history program,” Drozdowski
said. “It allows them to study history through different eras of
life. We have what we call Paragon Nights every few weeks where parents
can come to the school and get involved in what their children have been
studying.”
For the first Paragon night, first-grade teacher Belinda Walters had
her students study different time periods and create things people of
each era might have created. It was Walters’ idea to build the
prehistoric cave.
“The children go into the cave and read different books about
the Stone Age,” Walters said. “It’s great because it
gives them incentive to be good. They also created timelines that their
parents can flip through and they can flip through as well, to see what
other children did and get fresh ideas.
“Paragon is a very hands-on program, which the children love.
I like it because it shows them how we started and how we have progressed
to where we are today.”
Learning outside the classroom is just as important as absorbing lessons
inside the school’s walls, Drozdowski said, which is where the
school’s new playground comes in.
“When I came down here in May, the first thing I saw was that
we didn’t have a playground,” he said. “These kids
have to have a life outside of school.”
To construct the 2,340-square-foot, $150,000-playground, the Choice
Foundation partnered with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and
Kaboom, a nonprofit dedicated to building 100 playgrounds across the
Gulf Coast by 2007.
“We have also raised $250,000 so far for the school and we are
just getting started,” Huger said. “Community and parent
involvement is key to the success of this school. Forever and a day,
people viewed New Orleans Public Schools at a distance. It’s time
for them to get involved. Lafayette Academy is a good example of that
involvement paying off.”• |
