Mr. Hart’s Teachable Moment

Gary K. Hart, teaching his ninth-graders about the Sept. 11 attacks, launches into a discussion about state-sponsored terrorism.

Confused looks dart across the classroom as one of Hart’s brightest history students raises her hand. I don’t understand, she says quietly. Are you talking about Nebraska and Wyoming?

No, Hart gently explains, he’s talking about countries suspected of sponsoring terrorism.

It is an eye-opening moment for a man who once virtually presided over California’s public schools -- first in the Legislature as chairman of the Senate Education Committee and then as Gov. Gray Davis’ first education secretary.

At 59, when Hart could cash in on his connections or coast toward retirement, he has come home to the classroom, to the profession he joined fresh out of Stanford and Harvard 35 years ago.

In the last three months, he has discovered that it’s one thing to issue edicts about test scores and academic standards from the Capitol and another thing entirely to motivate 37 fidgety teenagers.

But that’s the challenge. In Room 305 at Sacramento’s Kennedy High School, Hart is testing his ideas about education. Most important, he wants to give average students a shot at tough honors classes and, eventually, college.

And he is testing himself, even if he has some perks that other teachers envy.

“I’m not out trying to change the world. I’m just trying to do my little thing,” he says. “If you can influence a few dozen kids, that’s not small potatoes.”

Hundreds of thousands of other teachers might love to do their “thing,” too. But when he was secretary of education, Hart helped oversee the system that governs how California teachers run their classrooms and what textbooks they use. Now Hart has his own students, and he is finding that he wants freedom to innovate.

He has jettisoned the chronological approach to California and U.S. history in favor of teaching a few choice topics in depth, such as the Civil War and the Cold War. And he has handpicked his students, not so much for their good grades but for the potential he sees in them. “I want to march to my own drummer,” he says.

At the front of his class, Hart is no politician. He comes across as a mild-mannered professor, with bushy gray eyebrows and slightly wrinkled clothes that sometimes clash -- one recent day he wore green pants with a brown belt, blue socks and black shoes.

At nearly 6-foot-4, Hart towers over his students, craning his neck downward when they approach to ask when their assignments are due.

This child of the ‘60s often starts class by playing music from the Beach Boys, John Denver and others. But it is no idle indulgence. He uses songs such as Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” to teach about geography and to psych up his students to learn.

One recent day, after collecting homework, Hart flipped on a CD:

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York island ... .

Some of the students gave singer Trini Lopez a tepid reception. One boy yawned. Two other students went right on talking to each other. Several students paid attention, but no one seemed to notice Hart as he sang quietly along, momentarily unaware of himself:

From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

The song ended and Hart snapped back into teacher mode. He asked one of his students to approach a map of the United States tacked to the wall.

“Can you find the New York island?” he asked.

The girl eyed the map, then shrugged her shoulders.

“The redwood forest? The gulf stream waters?”

The girl stood silent for a moment until another student pointed out the sites.

Later, Hart felt guilty for embarrassing the girl. But the interaction underscored his challenge. Several of his students could not name the vice president of the United States when he asked recently. During a discussion on weapons of mass destruction, one student didn’t know what a nuclear bomb was.

“They’re bright, they’re energetic,” Hart says, “but their cultural and political knowledge is very limited.”

Hart, unlike other teachers, has the part-time help of two college students who read first drafts of the ninth-graders’ essays. Still, he says he is working harder than ever, putting in 80 hours some weeks writing lesson plans, chaperoning field trips, grading papers. An insomniac, he wakes up at 4 a.m. many days and shows up at school before other teachers to prepare his classes.

He rides his students just as hard, assigning up to two hours of homework each night. The readings include newspaper and magazine articles about everything from women’s literacy in Afghanistan to the recent indictment of Sacramento Kings basketball star Chris Webber on perjury charges.

In addition to chapters in the history textbook, each student also has to read at least three novels or nonfiction books over the semester, such as “O Pioneers!,” the story of an immigrant family’s struggle to save their Nebraska farm, or “Fast Food Nation,” an expose of how fast food has transformed America. Two months into the school year, some of Hart’s students are chafing at the pace.

“Oh my God, we have so much homework. It’s a lot of stress,” said Lauren Mirsky. “We always have something going on. It’s my hardest class by far.”

Some think he is stern and monotonous. “I personally don’t like the teacher,” one girl said. “He’s not funny at all.”

But to others, Hart’s unconventional approach is working.

“I know the homework is going to help me,” said Robelle Cuison, 15. “I can’t expect to get less in college.”

Many of Hart’s students vaguely know he was someone important but still aren’t quite sure what to make of him. Hart doesn’t talk much about himself.

“At first I thought he was that guy who ran for president with that sex scandal, but my mom told me he wasn’t,” said Allie Powell, 15.

She is referring to former Colorado Sen. Gary W. Hart, whose 1988 campaign for president was derailed by allegations of an extramarital affair. (For the record, the two Harts share nothing more than a name. The confusion has dogged the Californian for years.)

Stanford, Then Harvard

Gary K. Hart was a star football player at Santa Barbara High School, where he was student body president in his senior year in 1960-61. On a football scholarship to Stanford, he studied history and worked a semester as a congressional intern in Washington, D.C.

After Stanford, Hart earned his master’s degree in teaching from Harvard. He briefly taught humanities at a black college in Mississippi and also taught history and geography for a year at his Santa Barbara alma mater. Hart, an anti-Vietnam War activist, was equally passionate about politics. In 1970 he ran for Congress, unsuccessfully. Two years later, he lost a bid for the state Assembly. Then in 1974, he won that Assembly seat, representing most of Santa Barbara County.

Hart served eight years in the Assembly and 12 years in the state Senate, where he was chairman of the Education Committee the entire time. He wrote laws that established charter schools in California, stiffened high school graduation requirements and introduced a new skills test for teacher candidates.

Hart retired from politics in 1994, saying he needed a change. He founded and ran the Institute for Education Reform, a policy organization at Cal State Sacramento, for about three years.

Davis then appointed Hart state secretary of education. In that job in 1999 and 2000, Hart formulated an education agenda for the governor that included a new school accountability system and a high school exit exam.

But Hart yearned for the classroom. And with a state pension, a wife who is a pediatrician, and their three daughters grown, money was not a problem. He earns $28,000 a year for the four-fifths time teaching position.

“I missed talking about history,” says Hart, who had returned to teaching for short stints over the years, including a semester at Kennedy High a decade ago.

“I just don’t think you can pontificate about education reform without rolling up your sleeves and trying it.”

So he created the Program of America and California Explorations, with the idea of preparing Kennedy High ninth- and 10th-graders -- many with subpar grades and test scores -- for Advanced Placement history and English classes.

Hart’s students would attend a month of summer school to get a jump on ninth grade. They would perform 30 hours of community service during the school year -- tutoring children, cleaning parks, working in food pantries. They would take field trips to historic sites and college campuses -- visiting the Capitol, Yosemite, UC Berkeley, Stanford.

His classes would run not one hour, but two -- an eternity for high school students. And he would team up with an English teacher, taking half of the students in the fall and then trading in the spring.

Hart’s non-chronological exploration of history and current events is different from California’s lock-step standards, which specify what students are supposed to learn each year. Those, he believes, are needed, but have become too confining.

Enforced Standards

Although Hart’s work in government did not create those standards, his and Davis’ emphasis on accountability helped to enforce them. Now, ironically, he works in an educational atmosphere that is more regulated than he would like.

“I think teachers are entitled to have some autonomy,” he says. “A thoughtful teacher can be straight-jacketed in ways that aren’t good.”

Hart’s unusual proposal last year to create his history class won immediate support from Sacramento schools Supt. Jim Sweeney.

“What an opportunity to have a guy like Gary with his experience and his passion,” Sweeney said. “He doesn’t act like an ex-state senator. He just acts like a guy who is teaching kids.”

But Hart isn’t an ordinary teacher. Besides the assistants for reading essays, he has access to top district officials that colleagues can only dream of. If he has to cut through bureaucracy, Hart simply calls Sweeney’s chief of staff. The district hammered out a deal with the teachers union to allow Hart his position without seniority.

“It bothered some teachers,” said Manuel Villarreal, executive director of the Sacramento City Teachers Assn. “I had a couple call me and say they would have liked to teach [the class].”

Some Kennedy colleagues grumble privately about Hart getting special treatment, and a few suspect that he has creamed the best and brightest students for his program.

Hart says it’s not true, that he interviewed 300 eighth-graders last year to recruit a balance of academic high-fliers, average students and even some who perform below grade level.

“I was looking for attitude,” he says. “Kids who had potential and a good work ethic.”

‘This Is Your Shot’

He was looking for students such as 14-year-old Zachary Carter, whose final report card in eighth grade had more Cs than A’s, but who works hard to meet Hart’s demanding expectations.

“Being in this program has made me think about the future,” said Zachary, who talks about attending college in Florida on a golf scholarship even if he isn’t sure about a career.

“This is way different from my other classes,” he says. “It pushes me harder so I can get better grades.”

Zachary’s father, Bill Carter, sees a rare opportunity that his son might otherwise only get in a private school that the family can’t afford.

“I’ve said to Zachary, ‘This is your shot. You’re planting seeds now for a real big harvest later on,’ ” the father said.

Seeing his son hit the books has prompted Carter, a driver for United Parcel Service, to consider returning to college at night to finish his bachelor’s degree. And for that, he thanks Hart. “I can’t say enough good things about the man,” Carter said.

Many Kennedy High teachers share that sentiment.

“We’re lucky to have a person of this caliber,” English teacher Sandy Callaghan said. “He has this tremendous intellectual background and yet he’s very approachable.”

Hart has pledged to stay at Kennedy High for two years, and he envisions his program growing. Still, he’s not sure what his future holds.

Right now, he’s trying to keep up with his own demanding pace. The school year is only 3 months old and his eyes are dark with fatigue from long hours. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.