It seems almost inevitable for the first day of school in a kindergarten classroom. Metz Elementary teacher Janice Lowry has a little boy who is crying. A yellow button pinned to his shirt reads “Joseph.” His fellow pupils don’t much notice Joseph; they knock past him excitedly to explore the games, books, and toys in Lowry’s room. She crouches to his five-year-old height and tenderly wraps her arms around his tiny body to console him. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she says, as kindly as a kindergarten teacher should. Joseph stops bawling and begins to trust this stranger, and doesn’t stray from her side for the rest of the long day. What Joseph doesn’t realize is that he is part of a great piece of Austin history. Metz Elementary is one of AISD’s oldest schools, established in 1916 on Willow Street in East Austin, before the building was razed and a new one erected on the same site in 1992. It was high time; the old building had gotten so run-down and spooky that ghost stories about the place still live on. The new version of the school continues to anchor the neighborhood (sans ghosts). The reason: Many parents of Metz students attended Metz themselves, lending both generations a sense of pride. While Metz parents sometimes don’t have the leisure to be as active at their school as their more well-off counterparts in other areas of town, principal Celia Martinez says she has a core group of “quality” parent volunteers, who do such things as run the school store every day. “The participation is never what you want it to be,” she says. “Sometimes parents are just intimidated because they don’t know what they can do.”
Metz suffered a terrible blow to its image four years ago when the campus was identified as “low-performing” because of its scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. “That was very discouraging to everybody,” Martinez says, chalking it up to first-year jitters. “We were so distracted that this was the first new school in East Austin,” she says, “and it had a new principal — me.” By the next year, Metz had lifted itself to an “acceptable” rating, and expects to remain there this year as well (because Metz is one of a dozen year-round schools, its “report card” won’t come out until some time in September).
In addition to operating on a year-round calendar, campus leaders have implemented other programs to meet families’ needs. Because a significant portion of the population isn’t fluent in English, Metz is now in the second year of a dual-language curriculum, so children learn in both English and Spanish. Not every Metz teacher is bilingual. For example, Lowry isn’t, but her teaching partner Graciela Ramirez (a 26-year veteran of Metz) is. They plan their lessons together, compare notes, and will instruct each other’s classes. Most classrooms at Metz are also multi-age; Lowry and Ramirez have both kindergartners and first graders in their classes. It’s a very popular method these days, and teachers and parents like it a lot. “You teach to the first grade, and then the older ones help the younger ones,” Ramirez says.
Other changes lie ahead — Metz is one of two schools taking on children this year who have been displaced from Linder Elementary, while that campus undergoes massive renovation and reconstruction under the 1996 bond issue. (If Linder families feel centered at Metz, they may remain there even after the Linder renovations are complete.) In fact, principal Martinez has spent much of the day registering some 50 new students who just walked up to the school (“Oh, why do they wait until the first day?” she muses).
She is now sailing down the halls out of breath, camera in hand, trying to snap smiling first-day photos of every class before the dismissal bell rings. When she reaches Lowry’s classroom door, a young couple is nervously peering inside on tip-toe, hoping to get a glimpse of their child. They turn out to be the parents of the weeping Joseph, and he is their first child. Martinez greets them cheerily, and explains, yes, well, school is going to let out in 25 minutes, but she’ll check with Lowry first to see if it’s okay if they go in. She pops inside. “Oh, I wonder if he ate his lunch,” frets the mother. (As a matter of fact, Joseph did not — he had a crying relapse at lunch time and did not even drink his chocolate milk.)
Martinez emerges a moment later, and explains regretfully that Joseph just now seems to be settling in so Mom and Dad will have to wait until the bell. When school is dismissed a while later, Joseph strides off confidently holding his father’s hand. Hey, whadda ya think he is, a baby? “This was the best first day ever,” beams Lowry, watching them go.
This article appears in August 22 • 1997 and August 22 • 1997 (Cover).