A Wish and a Prayer
by Katherine Romano, Associate Editor

Joy Warner is a woman on a mission. She graciously offered to personally escort us from our hotel to her school, Children's Community School in Huntersville, North Carolina, and was worried about being late. As we cruised through the still-quiet streets of Huntersville, we surreptitiously checked our watches and wondered what we could possibly encounter on a less-than-10-minute drive that could make us tardy -- after all, school didn't start for another 20 minutes. Joy breathlessly explained that one of her most cherished responsibilities as director of Children's Community School is that every day, she personally greets every CCS student in the morning carpool (there are no buses), helps each one out of his or her parent's car, and then gets him or her on their way to their classroom.

"Every kid?" we asked from the back seat.

"Every kid," she nodded.

We hadn't even made it out of the car yet, but we knew that once again, we were in for one heck of a story.

Sleepless nights. Children's Community School, Joy told us, was born almost four years ago out of many fretful, sleepless nights. The time had come to send her daughter to kindergarten, and Joy was faced with a tough decision. She had attended a mass-parent session at her local public school, where she learned her five-year-old would, among other practices Joy disagreed with, be changing classes. A teacher herself at the time, Joy knew that, above all, children need to feel safe and secure -- especially when first starting school. "I've been in public education my entire career," she told us. "I had always planned on sending my daughter to public school. Both my husband and I believe in public school, but I couldn't put her in there."

Joy next visited private schools and was unhappy with the uninspired teaching she witnessed. "I woke my husband in the middle of the night and said, 'You know that school I wanted to open a few years down the road? I think we're going to have to do it now,'".

To her surprise, her straight-as-an-arrow husband (he's an attorney) agreed, and Joy has been forging ahead toward her dream at full speed ever since.

A major milestone. Since that fateful night, Joy Warner has been doing a lot of hoping and praying. From getting the idea of the school out of her head and into its initial planning stages, to hiring her first -- and only, for that first year -- teacher, to convincing 18 families to write checks for tuition, she has achieved her goals for CCS with determined aplomb. Recently, Joy crossed a major milestone off her list -- the school, which incorporates the Basic School philosophy, achieved charter status and opened its doors for the 2004-2005 school year, tuition free.

Almost from the first moment that CCS secured its location in the Lake Norman Baptist Church (soon they're moving to a nearby existing location where upfit construction has just begun), parents have been determined to find a way to get their kids into its classrooms. Joy conducts several open houses a year (parents are required to attend a session before submitting an application) and can't stress enough that CCS may not be for everyone. She talks to parents about their "non-negotiables" and peppers her presentation with if-then statements such as, "If you want your child to do worksheets, then this isn't the school for you," and "If you don't think trips to a nursing home are a good use of your child's academic time, then this isn't the school for you," and "If you're not comfortable with your child playing chess, then this isn't the school for you." It's a tactic that works like a charm -- with 296 available spaces for next year, Joy has received 600 applications and has waiting lists that increase daily at every grade level. All students for 2004-2005 were selected via a lottery.

Joy has also been inundated with teacher and assistant-teacher applications (she has placed no advertising -- this is all via word of mouth). "I think that these teachers want to teach in a place that honors children, learning, and the profession of teaching," she said.

And that's not all -- every year, a new milestone will be reached. Joy designed the charter so that a grade will be added every year until CCS hits K-5 in 2006 and will eventually serve 450 students. Classes will remain at 18 students per class (grades 3-5 will have 20 students each), and each will have a full-time lead teacher and a full-time assistant teacher.

Two different journeys. The road to becoming a charter school was a rocky one, Joy admits, and there were times she worried that increasing the school's size could be detrimental to the close-knit family community that she and CCS's teachers worked so hard to create. After talking to a good friend who had written a charter for a local middle school, she quickly changed her tune. "He said to me, 'Joy, you can go on one of two different journeys with your school. You can keep it a wonderful private school that will ultimately make the world a better place for about 250 children. Or you can convert to a charter school of 450 and make the world better for those 450. Also, there are five elementary schools that are near you and are public education entities that are losing students and teachers to you. You can provide the impetus to make them look at improving what they're doing, and then you change the world for about 4,000 children.' Now, how could I have argued with that?" she said.

On good behavior. Among the many wonderful aspects of this school where positive reinforcement is the uncontested name of the game, we found it interesting that there is no set reward system in place. Joy admitted that every so often there is conflict (which CCS considers as opportunities for life lessons), but it's dealt with privately or in class meetings or by role playing. "Any teacher who yells at a child will be gone that day," Joy stated. She was quick to mention, however, that her teachers are a carefully selected group of educators and her main objective in their hiring was to get teachers she would want teaching her own children. "So, I'm very picky," she laughed.

The whole child. As an alternative option to public education, CCS centers on the total development of each child -- we saw students sewing, singing, and dancing and also learned that yoga and tai chi are taught in gym class. "One thing we are constantly trying to say at our school is that you can be rigorous without being rigid," Joy said. "In fact, I believe we are more rigorous than many schools because our students' instruction is so individualized that we better meet their needs."

One influential way that CCS's teachers work to celebrate the whole child is by having a daily "standing ovation" that takes place in every classroom. A child will select someone in class to bestow this honor upon and will stand up and state his or her reasoning to the class. "I like you because you are nice to everyone," one second-grade boy told another.

Not only are they cultivating their students to be bright, sensitive, community-minded individuals, CCS's teachers are also careful to celebrate and keep what's unique about each student at the forefront. "One of the parents last year wrote a note to her child's teacher and said, 'Thank you for letting my daughter live in her world of magic flying lions,'" Joy recounted. "This child is truly her own person and has since evolved into another developmental stage. But no teacher here ever said, 'No, there are no flying lions.' She was allowed to go through that stage at her own pace." A small incident, it's true, but one that illustratives well the type of magical and inspired teaching that's going on at CCS.

So there are no competitions, no prizes, no letter grades, no workbooks, no winners, and no losers. What CCS does have, however, are some of the happiest, well-rounded students we've ever seen. Much more than that, it's a place for children where magic flying lions will most certainly always exist.