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On the south side of Seattle, yellow school buses move against a colorful backdrop of urban life. Kids wearing backpacks spill off the buses, kicking at autumn leaves and jostling for sidewalk position as they head for home. Murals in vibrant hues celebrate everything from baseball to music to ethnic heritage. Open-for-business signs advertise goods and services in many languages. Vietnamese, Spanish, English, Somalian-all are spoken here in the Rainer Valley, a hilly neighborhood tucked between Interstate 5 and Lake Washington. To many local residents, the area is better known as the South End, one of Seattle's poorest and most racially diverse neighborhoods. This isn't a face of Seattle most visitors will recognize. You can't see the Space Needle from here. Cappuccino vendors don't camp on every street corner. The glass and chrome sky- scrapers of the downtown are visible from only a few vantage points along Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and seem a world apart from this area's low-slung commercial architecture. Most of the neighborhood homes are modest, although they get grander along the streets that line Lake Washington. It takes an inside view to appreciate what's really going on in this neighborhood. At the local branch library, for instance, two South End mothers strike up a conversation about why they live where they live. "My friends in the suburbs are always asking me, why do you want to stay in that inner city?" one says to the other. Then she answers her own question, leaving her friend to nod in agreement. "In the suburbs, can kids take after-school classes right in their own neighborhood? Can parents take computer classes at night? Are there adults tutoring first-graders, making sure they really learn to read? Do they live in a place where, thank goodness, not everybody looks the same?" Swinging her arms wide to take in the whole, lively, urban scene, she practically exclaims, "Look at everything we have right here." Pride is definitely in the air these days in the Rainier Valley, and for good reason. A grassroots effort to uplift the whole community has taken hold here, and is succeeding in a most powerful way. The story begins back in 1990 when a handful of folks got together to talk about their neighborhood. Greg Tuke remembers those initial conversations. "We were people who knew each other informally, from potluck suppers and kids' soccer games," he says. "Because our children attended different schools, we knew that each school had different strengths. One was great at teaching environmental science, but had no computers. Another had computers, but no environmental science program. How could we use those individual strengths, and draw on the diversity of this neighborhood, to make all the local schools great?" From the beginning, Tuke says, the idea was to use the community's own resources to create "world-class schools." Coincidentally, a few elementary school principals had been having a similar conversation. Physically, their schools were in good repair. Three of the four neighborhood schools had been newly renovated or rebuilt. But because of poverty and family pressures, many students were not thriving. Nearly two-thirds of the children in this neighborhood qualify for free or reduced-price lunch programs. About a quarter are the first in their families to attend school in this country. How could the principals work together to help these children and their families break out of a cycle of poverty and underachievement? Those early, isolated conversations led to a meeting that drew about a dozen parents, educators, and other community members who weren't connected to the schools. The group clicked. They developed a vision with three ambitious goals:
Before long, the group had a name, a plan of action, and some seed money from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods. In 1991, Powerful Schools was launched as a coalition of four elementary schools and two community organizations. Tuke soon left his job in the private sector, where he worked in community relations and grant management for a savings and loan, to direct the new nonprofit organization. Today, Powerful Schools is praised as a model of school-community collaboration. Hundreds of local residents of all ages take advantage of community education classes offered at four elementary schools. A reading enrichment program is so successful at raising students' test scores that it has been adopted as a "best practices" model by the state superintendent's office. Hundreds of families attend "Family Fun Nights," where they share a meal, participate in educational programs, and strengthen the bond between home and school. "A Night at the Rap," an annual event that showcases the neighborhood's artists and performers, draws an enthusiastic audience of about 800. A handbook describing the Powerful Schools approach has been distributed to more than 200 other communities. From the perspective of the school district, Powerful Schools looks like "a very useful model," says Sharon Green, Chief Academic Officer of Seattle Public Schools. "It envelops the student and staff in a support web. This cannot help but affect academic achievement and enhance self-esteem." Powerful Schools, Green believes, "changes how students feel about themselves and how the community feels about schools." Yet even as the program has grown and evolved, Powerful Schools hasn't lost sight of its three initial goals. Helping kids, helping the community, and sharing with others-those continue to be the stars by which this program navigates.  HELPING KIDS
Serving a mixed community, including many low-income and single-parent families as well as middle-class and even a few wealthy families, Powerful Schools provides the support that makes it easier for all parents to walk into the classroom. Day care is provided so that parents with young children can volunteer their time. Training is provided so that parents who are unsure of their own skills can develop self-confidence. If money is an obstacle to participation, Powerful Schools will even hire parents as tutors. And for parents who may have unpleasant memories of their own school days, Powerful Schools makes sure these interactions are positive. One morning in October, for instance, about 30 parents, grandparents, and even one great-grandmother attended a training session on the fundamentals of reading. For the rest of the school year, they will use these skills while tutoring first-graders in a program Powerful Schools calls its Reading Club. The one-to-one approach is time intensive. Participating first-graders receive daily individual attention, 30 minutes per session. But the rewards have been significant. Achievement levels have increased among youngsters identified as being the most at risk of academic failure. According to their parents, the children's attitudes about learning have soared along with their test scores. Val Wells, a veteran tutor and neighborhood parent, says she has seen "remarkable results" from the Reading Club program. Many children need emotional support as much as academic help. "Sometimes they just need extra mother love," Wells says. "They have a lot of stuff going on in their lives. So we give them a hug, but we also give them firm and consistent rules." The one-to-one approach creates a bond between tutor and child, and also a chance to catch problems that might be missed in a group setting. Tutors might notice which students need eye exams, hearing tests, or speech therapy, for instance. They talk regularly with classroom teachers. "We work as a whole team to help each child succeed," Wells explains. Last year, she watched one little boy become the first in his family to master the fundamentals of reading. His older siblings had failed in school, "but he made it. By the end of the year, he could read." Another tutor said she watched one student evolve from "a chronic behavior problem into a budding rocket scientist. He just took off," she said, over the course of the school year. A number of other Powerful Schools programs support students' academic success in different ways. Powerful Writers, for instance, brings published authors into the classroom to teach writing skills and give classroom teachers fresh ideas about how to enhance literacy. Powerful Buddies matches volunteer mentors with students who need another caring, consistent adult in their lives. Powerful Arts brings professional artists into the schools for residencies and performances. Rather than being add-ons, however, each new program is introduced with care so that it connects school and community in a deliberate way. Every year, Tuke believes, the program gets "more focused, more specific" in its approach to helping students succeed. HELPING THE COMMUNITY
"All the resources are right here in this community," says Tuke. After seven years of running the program, he stresses, "That's the biggest lesson I've learned. What's often perceived as a poor community is actually very rich with talents and skills." When Powerful Schools was just getting off the ground, the program founders walked the neighborhood to conduct a door-to-door survey. They asked, "What would you like the schools to offer you? And what could you offer the schools?" Some people just wanted to be able to use the gym at night. Others had more specific requests, such as access to computers or after-school programs for their kids that would be more enriching than day care. And many seemed downright flattered when asked what skills and talents they had to share with their neighbors. Rather than housing all the community education classes in one location, Powerful Schools moves the site each day. That way, people get past local school boundaries and mix with neighbors from throughout the community. By providing training to volunteers, Powerful Schools also uplifts the confidence and self-esteem of the whole community. A mom named Yuriko Ueda, who moved to Seattle from her native Japan, said volunteering her time "taught me how things work" within the culture of American schools. She no longer feels like an outsider in her new community. Many parents who begin as volunteers develop skills that lead to new jobs and brighter futures. Adds Ueda, who was recently hired as an office aide: "I've learned alongside my children. We've all been in school together."  SHARING WITH OTHERS When asked by other communities about the lessons that have been learned in Seattle, Tuke offers these highlights:
Why should these lessons matter to community members who don't happen to have children attending school? Nancy Rawles is a playwright and novelist. Her first novel, Love Like Gumbo (Fjord Press) won the 1998 American Book Award and a 1998 Governor's Writers Award for Washington State. She happens to live in the Rainier Valley. She has a two-year-old daughter, too young to be enrolled in school just yet. Rawles has participated in many writer-in-residence programs, but usually with older students. She decided to become involved with Powerful Schools, she says, "because these are my neighborhood kids." So on a recent autumn afternoon, she was walking around the desks in a fourth-grade classroom, coaxing 10-year-old writers to bring all their senses into their stories. She pulled out images they didn't know they owned: the crunch of popcorn underfoot in a movie house, or the way freshly cut grass smells to a football player who's just been tackled. She showed them how to use these images to make their writing come alive. Through one of her own characters in a play called The Assassination of Edwin T. Pratt, Rawles speaks about the importance of collaboration. Pratt, a leader in the fight for equal opportunity, was executive director of Seattle's Urban League during the 1960s. He was gunned down in the doorway of his Seattle home in 1969. In the play, a character speaks these lines: Doors are opening. Doors are opening but they won't stay open long. All you need to do is get your foot in. All you need to do is get your foot in the door. You get in and then you can open the door for somebody else. Eventually. Eventually, we'll be able to keep the doors open. Eventually, if enough people get in, we'll be able to keep all the doors open all the time. On the south side of Seattle, doors are opening wide in a most powerful way.  T
i Locke knows how to move in many different worlds. She's
comfortable in the class- room because she's a former a teacher. She's at home in the professional world, where she now works in public broadcasting. She knows how to talk to computer people because she's one herself. And she knows her way around Seattle's Rainier Valley because it's home. "I'm a Northwest native,"
she says.
Through a grassroots program she calls the Great Computer Giveaway, Locke has been building bridges between these different-and usually separate -worlds. She convinces large companies that are upgrading equipment to donate their used computers to her program. With the help of nonprofit partners such as Powerful Schools, she finds local families who are eager to join the information age but can't afford to buy the expensive hardware. She also matches families with technology experts in their own neighborhoods who can help them understand the lingo of the computer culture. "I'll say, you know so-and-so, your neighbor? He has this microbusiness where he works with computers, and he'll help you."
Locke calls the grassroots technology program "a gentle way to operate."
"It loops around nicely," she says. "The computers are free to the families who need them, but I suggest they do some community service. They can contribute whatever they do best."
The first families to receive computers were veteran volunteers from Powerful Schools. "It was a nice way to say thank you for their time," Locke says. Now, five years later, she has given away more than 300 computers.
The program is deliberately free of red tape and rules. "I don't operate with a lot of criteria," Locke explains. "If people have time to give, maybe they can help me haul equipment. This is the way friends help
one another."
One woman, Locke says with a grin, has earned her way up to a Pentium "by making the world's best greens and corn- bread" for community gatherings.
Instead of just giving computers away, Locke takes the program one step further. Families also receive training so they know how to load software, use the Internet, and understand the jargon that can be confusing, if not downright intimidating, to nontechies. Before long, parents and children are talking the talk themselves. Powerful Schools provides additional classroom support through its community education program, using computer labs in local elementary schools.
What motivates this community member to give her time
so freely? Locke first became acquainted with the concept of "giveaways" when she was a girl. Because of her father's government job, her family often lived on reservations. There, she saw many such exchanges take place between tribal members. "The idea is, you give freely and you don't expect anything in return. But you keep your mind open
to receive. That appeals to me." And although there's no monetary compensation, the personal rewards are enormous, she says. "This is way fun." 
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This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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During the 1997-98 school year, 650 children and adults participated in more than 75 community education classes offered by Powerful Schools at its four elementary school sites. Where did they find instructors for everything from Web-page design to bicycle repair to hip hop?
