Gauging Success as School Year Ends : Education: A dedicated teacher feels pride as she realizes her fifth-graders have met her high expectations and are ready for middle school in the fall.

Always around this time of the school year, doubt creeps in. For nearly nine months, Mary Elsenbaumer has shaped and molded the 28 students in her fifth-grade class at Lincoln School in Ventura. She has pushed them to explore the world outside of their downtown elementary school and challenged them to get excited about learning.

She has invested untold energy into preparing them for the transition to middle school, and for the years beyond.

But there comes a time, usually around early June when there are only a few days left in the school year, when the demons of self-doubt start whispering in her ear.

What have your students really learned? they tease. What have you taught them that’s going to carry them through the tough times? they demand to know. How will you know if their fifth-grade year, or their fifth-grade teacher, made any difference at all?

“I question myself,” Elsenbaumer said after an especially hectic day with students who already have cut the cord with her, their minds wandering ahead to the rapidly advancing days of summer.

“I know I put an incredible amount of emotional energy into this, and this is the time of year it just gets to me,” she continued. “What I do know is that everybody is walking away with something. What I know is that I put a lot into this year, and if they get as much out of it as I put into it, they’ll be OK.”

As the school year comes to a close, Elsenbaumer and the students in Room 8 are on the brink of separation.

No one will fail fifth grade. On Thursday, without so much as a graduation ceremony, all of Elsenbaumer’s students will be dispatched from the security of elementary school to the more free-wheeling environment of middle school, in the fall.

“It seems like I just put my daughter in kindergarten,” said Michael Coenen, whose 11-year-old daughter Alicia is a top student in Elsenbaumer’s class.

“But we are really comfortable with where she is at academically, and we are very comfortable with where she is at socially,” he said. “I think they did a real good job at Lincoln preparing her to go on.”

The transition to middle school is something the students have anticipated since Day 1, when Elsenbaumer first told the fidgeting youngsters that her goal was to stimulate their natural curiosity.

Shunning traditional teaching methods that lean heavily on tests and textbooks, she divided the students into groups and encouraged them to work together to solve problems.

As the year progressed, enrollment fluctuated at the tiny campus of about 290 children. The school is known as much for its transiency and troubles as for its innovative teaching methods.

Lincoln School draws its students from some of the poorest pockets of the city and from the upscale hillside communities above downtown. Perhaps as many as two dozen are homeless, and many more come from families struggling to make ends meet.

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Three fifth-graders were suspended during the year for breaking into the school cafeteria and spraying the room with a fire extinguisher. One student was suspended for taking a swing at Elsenbaumer.

Since January, Lincoln has enrolled more than 60 new students while nearly that many have left the school. Room 8 has seen its share of newcomers, including 11-year-old Tanya Bloxsom, who showed up last month.

But through it all, Elsenbaumer’s students pushed on.

Some who fumbled with multiplication at the start of the year have now mastered division and decimals, and are dabbling in geometry. Some who struggled to write a complete sentence are now composing three-paragraph essays and writing in a variety of styles.

Most are more excited about reading, having devoted countless hours to good literature assigned by Elsenbaumer. And most regularly use capital letters to start sentences and periods to end them, sprinkling commas and other punctuation in between.

The fifth-graders have embraced the scientific process, learning about sea and space by undertaking projects such as figuring out the best way to sop up an oil spill.

“Mrs. E has prepared us,” said Joey Madrid, 11, calling Elsenbaumer by the name most students use. “She wants everyone to have a good year next year and not get real frustrated. She has given us a lot of freedom this year so we can learn our own way.”

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The students even learned the basics of human sexuality and reproduction in a one-day program aimed at getting them to feel more comfortable about the changes happening to their bodies and their emotions.

Elsenbaumer said she has never had a better year.

“I think this has been my best class yet,” said the seven-year teaching veteran. “I’m a better teacher this year, I have my act more together. And this group of kids has been extremely rewarding to me.”

Beyond the classic measurements of learning, Elsenbaumer has set higher goals that are harder to measure.

She knows this is a pivotal year for her students academically and socially, and that some are trying to decide how important school is to them.

So she has tried to boost their confidence by injecting fun into learning. She has tried to give them experiences that will prove meaningful next year and down the road. And she has tried to turn them on to education, planting seeds of knowledge that she fully expects will bloom one day.

“I want them to feel eager, I want them to feel like they are good at something,” she said. “My greatest fear is that they’ll stop trying, that the pressure out there will be too much. I’m completely idealistic: I want them to feel they can do anything they want to do.”

Much of the end of the year is spent tying up loose ends, and Elsenbaumer found herself pushing her students to complete projects.

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While competing against the siren song of summer, however, she found herself struggling just to keep the kids focused.

One recent afternoon, she wanted the students to play a dice game called 99.9, designed to hone their knowledge of decimals.

They wanted to do something else. Anything else. Some crouched on the floor, shaking the dice in their fists and flinging them into the wall.

When the noise level reached a crescendo, Elsenbaumer pulled out her trusty rain stick, a tool she has used since the first day of school to bring instant quiet.

She twirled the stick once--its contents flowing to one side and making a sound like rain--and nothing happened. She tried it again with the same result.

“What does the rain stick mean?” she said in a voice just below a shout. “It’s almost the last week of school; you learned this on the first day. Come on, guys.”

But there has always been some degree of controlled chaos in Elsenbaumer’s classroom.

She calls it “structured freedom,” where students cluster in noisy groups rather than quiet rows to work on problem-solving together. Youngsters work with each other as often as with the teacher, and the more capable students serve as models for their less-confident peers.

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But beneath the surface, Elsenbaumer said, there is structure. And there is learning.

Kaicy MacLeod, 11, is a straight-A student who said she was able to learn despite the buzz of energy.

“Usually at my old school if you got out of your seat, you were in deep trouble,” Kaicy said. “But it’s different here. We were able to still learn a lot, but in a different way. And our teacher was nice and understanding.”

For Chris Newman, an 11-year-old boy with a lot of potential but a penchant for getting in trouble, Elsenbaumer’s class gave him the freedom to find his own way.

As a result, he maintains a B average and has more confidence about his schooling than when the year started.

“Other teachers wouldn’t give me help,” he said. “Mrs. E is different. She talks to me and tries to understand. She’s the best teacher I’ve ever had.”

On the day that Linda Gaines brought her son, Colby, to Elsenbaumer’s class, she wondered how he would learn. The 10-year-old transferred from an Oxnard school to Lincoln in March, and on the day he arrived, the desks were being rearranged and all of the students were out of their seats and chattering.

Elsenbaumer’s non-traditional teaching style took some getting used to, Gaines admitted.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it, but for them it works,” she said. “Colby’s done pretty well, he gets into it. It just felt really good for him to end up here.”

Added Michael Coenen: “It’s controlled chaos, but the results speak for themselves.”

Parents say they believe their children are well-prepared academically to make the transition to middle school. More important, they are prepared socially for that change.

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It is a big step, if not a giant leap for many of the fifth-graders. Next year, they will go from one-room instruction to changing classes several times a day.

And they will go from being the oldest and biggest kids on campus to being the youngest and smallest.

“It’s going to be different,” said Steven Tracy, 11, an avid reader. “I worry a little bit about the sixth- and seventh-graders. I wonder if they’ll beat me up or anything.”

Joey Madrid said he too worries a little about the move to Cabrillo Middle School, where the bulk of Lincoln’s fifth-graders will end up next year.

“I’m kind of nervous,” he admitted. “I heard there’s a lot of big, bad people.”

Even Alicia Coenen, a straight-A student and top athlete at Lincoln, said she has some apprehension about next year.

“It’s kind of exciting, but kind of scary,” said Alicia, who dreams of playing World Cup soccer or running in the Olympics. “If I can’t get into sports later, I’d love to be a teacher. I’d like to be like Mrs. E, because the way she teaches us, the way she’s involved, shows how much she loves us.”

For Alicia, Steven, Joey and all the others, Elsenbaumer is more than a teacher. During the year, she has at once served as friend and mother, counselor and confidant.

Her role is in keeping with the philosophy at Lincoln, where the school represents more than an institution of learning.

For the first time, Lincoln this year offered parenting classes. Halfway through the school year, Lincoln hired a full-time counselor to help students build self-esteem and help them deal with problems at home.

Even the one-day sex education program is an extension of Lincoln’s far-reaching philosophy.

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After watching two informational videos, the students fired a wide range of questions at Elsenbaumer and Principal Paul Jablonowski. Is it OK to adopt? How do you have twins? Does it hurt when a baby is ready to come out? Does the sperm whale have anything to do with reproduction?

All questions were answered except a couple dealing with abortion and same-sex relations. Teachers told the students to ask their parents about those thorny issues.

“That’s one of the goals of our district, to reach out to the community, find out what its needs are and try to have the schools reflect that,” Jablonowski said. “Our feeling is that we are really proud of our program here.”

No one is prouder than Elsenbaumer. Down deep, in places the demons of self-doubt can’t reach, she knows that Lincoln School, and her classroom, provide a safe and nurturing environment where students learn and gain confidence that carries them into sixth-grade and beyond.

“Parents want their children to be ready for middle school,” she said. “But they also want them to have a really rich, last year in elementary school. It goes both ways, so I try to do both.”

So even when she stops, just for a minute, to reflect on what her students have learned this year, she knows the answers even before she can ask herself the questions.

She knows she could not have tried any harder to motivate her students, and that each will take away something valuable from this school year. She knows that in addition to knowing more math and science, they are also more excited about learning.

And she knows that if they don’t remember anything else, they will remember that she poured her heart into making this a good year for them.

“I hope I touched some people, moved some people, bridged some gaps for some people,” she said. “The most important thing is that they give a care about what they are doing. Unless they are interested, they are just going through the motions.

“Your expectations are so crucial. Whether they are really high or really low, it makes all the difference in the world. I just have these high expectations for them and I expect them to rise to the occasion.”