Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 3, 1993 TAG: 9306030438
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Those headed for the Center for Instructionally Talented Youth in the fall of 1982 wondered just what it was they were getting into. A little more than a decade later - as the CITY School releases into the world its 11th group of gifted students - the pioneers who paved the way for them reflect on how this educational experiment shaped their lives.
CITY School turned one average Patrick Henry student into cum laude material, said Roanoke School Board member C. Nelson Harris.
He was talking about himself.
"It wasn't that I didn't have the capacity to make good grades," said Harris, who almost failed to get into the program for gifted seniors because he was doing poorly in French and math. "I was bored academically. I had essentially lost interest in school."
CITY School taught him, "You're going to be challenged and expected to rise to that challenge," Harris said. "That turned me around academically."
He credits the program with enabling him to graduate cum laude from Radford University.
"Folks like me, I think CITY School gave them an opportunity in which they saw others believing in them," he said.
The primary "other" who never stopped rooting for the Patrick Henry and William Fleming seniors under her guidance is director Nancy Patterson.
Student after student praise her as an inspiration and a pillar of support.
Some remembered her creative-writing lessons, in which she would turn on classical music and ask them to jot thoughts into a journal. Others remembered her no-nonsense editing, red pencil lines driven like stakes through their prose.
But some recalled lessons of a different nature. The kind of things teachers don't always impart to the students under their tutelage.
Lessons in hope, in self-esteem, in positive thinking.
Patterson convinced 1985 graduate Kelly Mason that she could gain acceptance to Yale. She did.
"She really kept up with what I was doing the whole time I was there," said Mason, who recently earned a full scholarship to the College of William and Mary, where she will work toward a doctorate in American studies.
Patterson "takes a big interest in how we're doing," said Melissa Amos Young, class of 1984, now a lawyer for the Roanoke firm of Gentry, Locke, Rakes & Moore. "Not just me, all of us. We're like her children. It makes you feel special."
Young and Mason recently returned the favor, appearing as speakers before this year's CITY School class. Young talked about bankruptcy law. Mason took the students on a tour of the Harrison Museum of African American Culture, where several of her black-and-white, pen-and-ink abstracts were on display.
An artist by hobby, a would-be writer and educator by trade, Mason said she enjoyed being on the other side of the note pad.
"I met a lot of students who reminded me so much of myself," she said.
The CITY School graduates remembered the speakers who frequented their downtown classroom as one of the most exciting parts of the program.
"I just remember being so impressed that these business people would come down to talk to us," Young said.
Former Mayor Noel Taylor. Black poet Nikki Giovanni. Children's writer Lou Kassem. Nationally known poet Gwendolyn Brooks.
Commonwealth's attorneys, bank managers, doctors. An endless stream of professionals flowed through Patterson's classes, depositing their knowledge and influence upon the impressionable minds of CITY School students.
Some of it stuck.
"CITY School is what made me decide to be a civil engineer," said David Anderson, class of 1983.
Now working for the Richmond firm of J.K. Timmons and Associates, Anderson said he learned not only from the speakers, but also from a 100-hour internship he was required to do. He did his with the city engineer's office.
"By the standards of what I'm doing now, it was just running copies and things," he said. "But I was exposed to it. I saw that I wanted to go into it."
Sometimes the program worked in the reverse, he said. A friend who interned with him decided not to go into engineering.
There was a time, said Patterson, when people had little faith that ventures such as the internship and speakers programs would work.
Brainchild of Superintendent Frank Tota, the CITY School was not without critics in its infancy, she said. Some wondered whether students would complete their internships, whether anyone would show up to speak to the students.
"The first year you ever do anything, there are always doubters," Patterson said.
Over time, she developed a syllabus for the class that included trips to New York (and later to London), classes in writing plays and field trips to City Council chambers. No two classes are alike at CITY School, where about 60 students spend the second half of each day of their senior year of high school.
Patterson remains the only constant, although others assist her in teaching English and government. Some are members of the local community, others may be visiting poets or writers.
All leave their mark.
From William Hauser, who taught English and government during the program's first several years, Anderson said he learned that, "You can achieve anything. I looked up to him more than he'd ever know."
That upbeat attitude gave Anderson the confidence to launch an annual golf directory with a co-worker several years ago that details public golf courses in Central Virginia.
He knew nothing about putting together a magazine, said Anderson. Nor writing a novel, another project he recently dived into.
"Instead of assuming that it's beyond reach, I went ahead and tried it," he said.
Thus defines the philosophy of CITY School.
It prompted Harris to apply himself, gave Young the confidence to follow her dreams to law school and pushed Mason into dropping her Yale application into the mail slot.
"Take a risk and grab at the things that interest you," Mason said she learned during that final year of high school, "no matter how bizarre they may seem."
by CNB