Seeking challenge, she engineers school In search of challenge,student engineers a school
In eighth grade in Jamaica, Alafia Spencer designed a catapult that propelled golf balls across her physics classroom, dissected a chicken, and analyzed the bones of a decomposing lizard.
Two years later, as a 10th-grader at Boston's Hyde Park High School, she sat through biology and geometry lectures about subjects she had long ago mastered. Bored, the aspiring aerospace engineer worried that the school wasn't challenging enough for her or her classmates.
So last spring, when Boston school Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant sought ideas from students, teachers, and principals for themed high schools, the teenager raised her hand. The only student to do so, Spencer suggested an engineering school that would offer advanced classes in physics, chemistry, and computer science and let students take classes at nearby universities.
Some teachers balked at Spencer's idea, which competed against their own proposals. But the girl who captains the track team, serves on the citywide student council, and regularly makes the honor roll didn't give up.
''She's one dynamo," said Kathi Mullin, director of Boston's high school overhaul efforts, who supported Spencer's idea. ''She came right up to me and said, 'I want to have a school.' "
The School Committee approved Spencer's proposal last fall as part of Payzant's plan to break the city's large, impersonal high schools into several autonomous schools.
In September, The Engineering School will open in Hyde Park -- which has one of the city's most struggling high schools -- exposing Boston public school students for the first time to civil engineering and architecture, computer-integrated manufacturing, and biotechnical engineering.
''There aren't a lot of women in the engineering field, so I want to challenge myself to do it," said Spencer, who has repaired radios, CD players, and Game Boys for family members since second grade.
The new school will enroll about 350 students, a third of the size of Hyde Park High, in grades 9-12; Hyde Park's other students will be divided among two other themed schools, also approved last fall. Students choose the themed school they want; upperclassmen seats for The Engineering School are already full. The themed schools have no admission requirements.
About $22 million in grants, primarily from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, helped pay for creating Boston's smaller high schools. The school district also is chipping in money to hire additional headmasters. Class sizes at Spencer's school will drop from about 30 to about 20 students.
Each themed school sets up its own rules. For example, to graduate from Hyde Park's new engineering school, students will be required to take four years of science and math, instead of three.
''That engineering school would not have taken shape had it not been for her persistence," Payzant said. ''She's got enormous determination and staying power."
Spencer, 17 and now a high school junior, said she's used to taking charge amid challenges.
She was raised by her single mother in Kingston, Jamaica's capital, but also is close to her father, who lived in the same neighborhood. Neither parent graduated from high school.
When students complained about their Jamaican school's bathroom in the sixth grade, Spencer persuaded her peers to sign a petition. Within two weeks, the bathroom was fixed. Her leadership and grades earned her the title of sixth-grade valedictorian.
Spencer said she inherited her determination from her mother, Rebecca Knowles, who started a youth group for teenage girls after a 13-year-old was raped and hanged from a school roof by neighborhood boys.
Knowles moved to the United States in 2000, while her daughter stayed in Jamaica to attend her competitive all-girls school. In the summer of 2003, Spencer joined her mother, moving into a two-bedroom Dorchester apartment. Knowles works as a baby sitter; her daughter handles the cleaning at home every Saturday.
''She cooks, she cleans, she washes, she dusts," Knowles said. ''Then she sits at that computer, playing music and studying with all that loud noise. She's a homework fanatic."
To challenge herself, Spencer often skips two chapters ahead in her chemistry book.
''Or sometimes I'll practice math," she said. ''I'll practice it and practice it until I can do it quicker."
At Hyde Park, Spencer grew frustrated with apathetic classmates. About half of her sophomore class flunked the math and English MCAS tests last year. The school has one of the lowest attendance rates and highest dropout rates in the school system.
''You have a lot of students who come to class, they behave, they do their work, they also pass," Spencer said. ''But they don't interact with teachers. They sit on a back bench through high school."
She needed those peers to accomplish her goal for Hyde Park High. She persuaded students, parents, even representatives of universities and engineering companies to join her effort. She chatted with students before and after school, between classes, in class, during lunch.
Her friends call her a ''cool nerd."
The slim teen, who anchors the 100- and 200-meter relays on her track team, wears gold hoop earrings and colorful Adidas,
''She sets an example for us," said Kemar White, a senior who plans to study computer engineering in college. ''She has a cool side and she has a side where she takes her school work serious."
But on the day Spencer had to present the idea for the engineering school to the superintendent, she still had not persuaded any Hyde Park teachers to support her proposal. Many of them had already committed to other teams led by colleagues, who wanted schools that focused on such subjects as social justice, business, and health. Several discouraged Spencer, advising her to join their teams because hers would not make the cut. One told her that teachers, not students, should be driving the proposals because teachers would be affected most by the changes.
''Her telling me that, that only pushed me more," Spencer said.
With the help of her principal and Mullin, a school system administrator, Spencer finally recruited nine teachers to support the engineering school.
But tensions with teachers continued even after her theme was one of three chosen. A teacher questioned her qualifications during a committee meeting to select the school's new headmaster. The incident upset her so much her legs trembled, but she bit her lip and stayed calm.
Spencer asked some of the toughest questions, grilling headmaster candidates on how they would improve MCAS scores, boost college acceptance rates, increase attendance, and reduce suspensions, Mullin said.
''She was just like, 'It's about us. I'm just letting you know it. The teachers already have their degrees. I want to know what you're going to do to help us go to college,' " Mullin said.
Now, the school is searching for an engineering teacher who can help students make the most of the underused state-of-the-art engineering lab in Hyde Park's basement.
''For her peers to see the school come to fruition, I think it really helps them believe in themselves," said Christine Copeland, the English teacher who first encouraged Spencer to get involved at school. ''It's kind of doing the unthinkable."
Spencer plans to take calculus and AP physics next year and already has an idea for a graduation project -- comparing how the engines and designs of fighter jets affect their speeds.
Her next goal: getting accepted to MIT.
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.
