Teachers tour neighborhood

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 4, 2009 - Page: 1B

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Glen Oaks Middle School teachers crowded into a hot school bus Monday and set off to see the world their students live in every day.

Along the way they saw places unfamiliar to them, locales such as Zion City and Sharon Hills, and browsed the clothes racks at Sam’s Men’s Fashions.

“This is a field trip for our teachers,” explained Principal Averil Sanders Jr.

Sanders wants Glen Oaks Middle teachers to have some of the same experiences as the students when they arrive  Monday for the school’s first day of school.

“You can smell it, you can feel it, you can taste it,” he said.

The tour was one of five conducted Monday by schools operated by the nonprofit group, Advance Baton Rouge, or ABR. The tours followed morning-long diversity training session for all five faculties.

The four ABR schools in Baton Rouge, and the group’s lone school in Pointe Coupee Parish, draw from some of the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the area.

After a series of changes in leadership and teachers and low standardized test scores, the state took Glen Oaks Middle over in spring 2008 and handed it over to ABR.

Most of the school’s teachers are new to the school, which had a troubled first year as a charter school. Many are also new to Baton Rouge, new to teaching, or both.

Sanders himself is a newcomer. A New Orleans native, Sanders was the principal last year at McDonough 32, a K-8 elementary school that is part of the Algiers Charter School Association.

Sanders, however, said he has often visited college fraternity brothers who live in north Baton Rouge and has come to know the area over the summer.

Two of the teachers on the Glen Oaks tour — Edmund Greenup and Larry Minor — grew up near the middle school and served as unofficial guides through the 80-minute excursion. A few returning teachers also added some local expertise.

“That’s the Cadillac Street (public housing) project,” Minor said as the bus drove by a set of nondescript homes.