The Story of a School:

Rewriting the Formula for Academic Success

by Betsey Russell

Wood Smethurst,Ed.D.'70, founder and headmaster of Ben Franklin Academy (All photos: Billy Howard, Billy Howard Photography)

If it weren't for the sign out front, you'd never realize that Ben Franklin Academy is a school. it looks more like a couple of comfortable, well-cared-for homes, a place where you'd feel comfortable and cared-for, too. it's completely unlike a traditional school. And that, according to founder and headmaster Wood Smethurst, Ed.D.'70, is exactly the reason for its success.

"Whatever it Takes"

Ben Franklin Academy is a place where students who are failing or simply not fitting into ordinary high schools can catch up, excel, and graduate with an eye toward college or a meaningful career. Smethurst and his colleague, Martha Burdette, established the school in 1987, after working for years with students of all ages--especially those who had fallen behind in traditional classroom settings.

"About one-third of kids can make it easily in typical American schools," says the 71-year-old Smethurst, whom faculty and students affectionately refer to as "Doc." "Another third learn with some difficulty, and the other third just don't get it. instead, they're learning that they're stupid and they can't [do the work] and that college is out of their reach."

Smethurst and Burdette both recognized the very real need for a "safety net" school for this last group of students--a school that took into account each child's individual goals, learning style, emotional and mental state, family dynamic, and any other factor that can have an impact on learning.

Ben Franklin seeks all kinds of students. Some are "A" students at other schools who would like more of a challenge or the flexibility of the school's half-day program to pursue training in arts, dance, music, or sport. Others have fallen behind academically due to serious injury or prolonged illnesses. Many have learning disabilities that don't mesh well with traditional instruction. Some have simply moved and changed schools too often to keep up. Others may have emotional or substance abuse problems that have made attending traditional high school impossible.

"We believe there's nothing in the curriculum of the American high school system that's beyond the reach of most students. But they must be taught appropriately and well. I've never seen a kid who wanted to learn [whom] we couldn't teach," says Smethurst.

At Ben Franklin, these students are met by a cadre of caring, dedicated teachers and professional staff who will do "whatever it takes" to help them set and meet their goals for graduation.

The faculty consists of former attorneys, artists, theater directors, and career teachers. The school is accredited by both the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and by the Southern Association of Independent Schools. The curriculum is college-prep with a wide range of electives. Core curriculum includes English, mathematics, American and world history, foreign language, science, and computer science. Elective courses of study include philosophy, fine art, art history, psychology, additional foreign languages, upper-level science, and more.

All of this learning takes place in a setting that most of us would be happy to call home. The main house dates back to 1931, and Burdette and Smethurst have worked vigorously to renovate and restore the 8,000-square-foot building to its original grace and personality while turning it into a state-of-theart learning facility. "It's a combination of homey character with fiber optics," Smethurst jokes. A second house isn't as grand but is just as inviting and comfortable. Both houses are surrounded by open spaces and flowering gardens with blooms chosen under the watchful eye of Smethurst, who is also a master gardener. Three resident cats, Yoda, Lewis, and Clark, keep watch.

You have to bespeak joy and hope in your surroundings," says Smethurst. "The character of a space tells the child what you think of them. We have beautiful furnishings, and we take good care of them. The inference is unmistakable--this is a caring place."

Justin Rowley, a senior, came to Ben Franklin as a junior when hospital stays and the need for daily attention for his juvenile diabetes made it impossible to keep up with his traditional studies. "I came just to catch up for six months, but I loved the one-on-one teaching, so I stayed. The teachers all really care about you as a person and what your life is like outside of school. The first thing Martha [Burdette] asks me every morning isn't 'Where's your homework?' It's 'How are you feeling?'"

The school is intentionally small, reaching only 150 students during top enrollment periods. "We want everybody to know everybody," says Smethurst.

"We teach kids how to take tests, how to study well," Smethurst continues. "We help each kid find out exactly what it is he or she wants to do. We try to build a community of learners who care about each other, to cushion the hard places of growing up."

A teacher working with a student at Ben Franklin Academy

Discovering a Love for Catch-Up Teaching

Smethurst admits that his desire to serve youth that have trouble fitting in comes from experiences during his own childhood and adolescence. He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and his father, managing editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, died when he was eight years old. His mother raised Smethurst, an only child, while working as the editor of the newspaper's women's section.

"As a youth, I wanted friends so badly, but the ones looking to make friends were the 'no-good-nicks.' I became a card-carrying 'no-good-nick' myself, so I can relate to the kids here who've gotten into trouble. I was constantly in trouble, too, but I was also a good test-taker," says Smethurst, who received scholarships to Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill for undergraduate study. "I wouldn't have fit into Harvard then," he laughs. "Chapel Hill knocked the rough edges off me."

After graduating in 1955 and serving a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy, Smethurst and his wife, Lucy, moved to Atlanta in 1959, where he went to work at an insurance company. "My boss sent me to a speed-reading course, and I really grooved on it. I started moonlighting as a speed-reading teacher, and then they offered me a full-time job."

From there, a love of teaching led him into the master of education program at Emory University in 1965. During that time, Smethurst also gained teaching experience through a graduate internship as one of the first white teachers at E.A. Ware Elementary School in Atlanta during the 1966–67 academic year. "I wanted to teach kindergarten, but the closest they had was fifth grade. I was shocked and horrified at the segregated Atlanta school system," says Smethurst, who realized that there must be better alternatives.

He also discovered a reading clinic and catch-up school on the Emory campus, where he became involved with students and "fell in love with catch-up teaching."

In 1967, Smethurst won a $10,000 scholarship to Harvard's doctoral program in reading, which he completed in 1970, after receiving an NDEA fellowship.

During his graduate studies, Smethurst developed a relationship with an educator named Elliott Galloway, known today as the grandfather of independent education in Atlanta. After teaching kindergarten briefly under Galloway's administration at Holy Innocents School in Atlanta, Smethurst signed on to help open the Galloway School in 1968, and then the Paideia School in 1971.

In 1973 he moved to a teaching post at Emory's reading clinic and catch-up school and became its director in 1975. Then, in 1987, Smethurst learned that Emory wanted to get out of the catch-up school business and focus only on Emory students. "Over coffee at a local deli, Dr. Burdette and I decided to take over the business and start a new school," Smethurst remembers. "We parted with Emory as friends, and they were and have been very generous." Both Smethurst and Burdette are research associates in the area of narrative skills development among adolescents at the MARIAL Center at Emory's department of anthropology, continuing Burdette's postdoctoral research, which was funded by the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Foundation.

"Narrative is a major part of our curriculum," Smethurst explains. "Kids start by writing an educational autobiography. It helps them take ownership of their education. This ownership of education, the time invested and choices made, is key to what we do."

The Antithesis of Carnegie

Inside the buildings at Ben Franklin, no two students are engaged in the same activity. One reads world history at a table in one of the big, open, family-style rooms. At the other end of the table, a teacher discusses Beowulf with a student, while another teacher and student review vocabulary words. At a different table, Burdette helps a student organize his weekly plans and review his accomplishments. In some of the smaller rooms, students are quietly reading by themselves, taking tests, or talking in intimate groups with an economics teacher.

"The Carnegie concept of awarding credit for classroom seat hours doesn't fit us," says Smethurst. "Many kids have no aptitude for that and can't sit still. We have cats, kitchens, and flower gardens. Kids can get up and do what they need to do. But they know they must also do the work."

Smethurst admits that calling Ben Franklin Academy a Montessori high school isn't that much of a stretch. He was chairman of the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Montessori School, which his two sons attended while he was an Ed School student, and has adopted many of the same principles for Ben Franklin. "My envy of Montessori grew daily because of the order, the process, and the four key elements that are essential for any school setting: the use of time, the space, access to quality materials, and the expectations for students and teachers." Ben Franklin Academy's Dean of Students Martha Burdette

In addition to being deeply influenced by the Montessori principles, Smethurst also credits former Harvard professor Jeanne Chall and psychologist Jerome Bruner with much of his own philosophy.

"Jeanne was the most wonderful woman in the world and a brilliant reading specialist. She taught me courage. She was 200 percent in favor of children and wanted them all to have a great reading education."

Bruner, whom Smethurst considers the father of cognitive pyschology, "was very much concerned with how people learn through their own explorations and discovery, rather than just being told. He is our guru, and comes occasionally to visit us. The kids love him."

With a student teacher ratio of 2.5 to 1, and nearly 90 percent of its 700 graduates completing or enrolled in college, Smethurst points to the relationship between teachers and students as the most important key to success. "It's the quality of the relationship between the kid and the teacher that really matters. until you've got that relationship, you don't have anything."

Ben Franklin uses a half-day program of three-and-a-half hours. Students enroll either in the morning or afternoon session and are expected to hold work-study jobs as well. Every student has three advisors--an academic advisor, a work-study advisor, and a co-advisor who fills in as needed. All advisors are also teachers. The academic advisor meets with students at the beginning of every day to check in on their emotional state and plan for the day, making sure that they are ready to learn and helping them resolve any issues that stand in the way. The advisor also meets with them once or twice more before they leave for the day.

In addition to the day program, the school also offers a clinic from four to five o'clock each weekday afternoon to help with reading or learning difficulty. Some students just come to the clinic. Others may interact with the school faculty online in the extended study program.

Rand Wise was teacher of the year at an Atlanta public high school, but has enjoyed a closer connection with his students since joining the Ben Franklin faculty in 1997. "There is a huge difference in the way teaching is implemented," he explains. "Students learn at their own pace, and we tailor that pace and our delivery methods depending on that student's strengths and weaknesses. We fill in a lot of holes before students can move forward."

But move forward they do, because Ben Franklin's approach is based on a mastery system that measures student accomplishment in every subject. Students may take as long as they need to master a concept or idea, but they must essentially earn an "A" (90 percent on a test) before they can move forward.

For students like Claire Cruickshank, working at her own pace is a godsend. At the large private school she formerly attended, she was "burned out in class hearing the same things over and over. Here, as soon as I learn something, I can move on. I ask a lot of questions, and I can pursue my interests. My old school was a miserable daily grind. Now I look forward to school every day."

"It's great in that it's a different school for every individual student," says senior Nathaniel Goldman, who started at the school as a freshman because he knew that his learning disability would make it hard to function in a traditional school. "They teach to how each student needs to be taught." Today, Goldman is supplementing his day at Ben Franklin with an accounting course at a local community college and hopes to study business administration in college.

A great deal of time is spent on helping students understand time management and organizational skills. "Time is the stuff of learning and life," says Smethurst. "For many of these kids, tonight is the distant future. They live in the here and now. They have rudimentary time management, planning, and organizational skills. We teach these skills directly and by inference and through demonstration."

Each student has individual monthly, weekly, and daily plans for working his or her way toward graduation, developed under the watchful eye of Burdette. "Many kids call from college for weekly planning sheets," she says. "They'll tell us the most important thing they learn here is how to manage their time."

Expectations play a key role. "How we behave in any setting has a lot to do with our expectations and the institution's," says Smethurst. "Kids come to us with many different expectations. Our four rules make our expectations clear."

Paraphrased, the rules are:

• Do your work and respect the rest of us who are working around you.
• Do what your teachers tell you.
• No fighting, weapons, hate speech, or drugs.
• Don't let the cats out.

"We remove some of the limits and provide more choices to encourage [our students'] independence," Smethurst explains. "There are special accommodations that are provided on a college level, but not typically in high schools, such as extra time on tests, quiet testing areas, use of note-takers, tutoring, or preferential seating. We teach kids to ask for those accommodations when they get to college, to be their own advocates."

Ben Franklin Academy students studying

Is this approach coddling? Smethurst equates it to a nurse giving extra attention to patients in the intensive care unit. "We seek out what the kid doesn't know and teach it to him or her. To do so, we must take the kid out of the flood of immediate pressures of ordinary school."

The Challenges of Starting from Scratch

In starting Ben Franklin Academy, Smethurst took one key lesson from his experiences with Galloway and the new schools movement of the 1960s and '70s: Always operate in the black. "Money is the first obstacle," he says. "If you want to be bold and creative, you must be fiscally conservative."

For Smethurst and Burdette, there was also the added challenge of little credibility. "We wanted to rent our first building and needed a deposit in advance, which was really difficult to come up with," Smethurst recounts. "The banks were uncooperative. They couldn't fathom my leaving a job at Emory to start a 'school for dropouts.'"

The school didn't yet have its 501(c)(3) designation from the internal revenue Service, so it couldn't pursue foundation or individual tax-deductible donations.

As is often the case, the first financial commitment came from within. "We found a parent to help us borrow $5,000," says Smethurst. "We started with 18 kids that first term. We were able to pay off our loan and never look back. Now we operate in the black, we have an endowment and very little debt."

"Another credibility challenge was getting people to believe we would do what we said we'd do," Smethurst continues. "The Harvard cachet was helpful, of course, but the catch-up school was small, and enthusiastic proponents were a small group. So, we operated with restraint and were careful never to overpromise."

This included balancing the finances with the desires of those involved, such as parents and teachers, and always focusing on the purpose at hand--delivering an excellent education to the kids.

Drugs have been another challenge, and the school takes a caring but hard line through its wellness program. "We believe that you have to treat addiction as an illness," says Smethurst. "Only about 10 to 15 percent of our kids are from rehab programs, so this is not a 'druggy' school." Kids who can't stay sober, even after many rounds of caring intervention, are asked to leave. "We are not a rehab program. The cynicism of drug users erodes our community of trust."

Other challenges include dealing with building codes for fire, safety, health, and more in order to bring former residential buildings up to standards. But Smethurst and Burdette meet all of these challenges with the same philosophy that guides their teaching--whatever it takes, they'll find a way.

"We owe a debt to Ted and Nancy Sizer," adds Smethurst. "Ted was a former dean of the Ed School and founded the Coalition of Essential Schools, of which Ben Franklin Academy is a member. His hope, and ours, is [for schools to be able] to express more of our individuality and ideas."

Spreading the Word

As Ben Franklin moves forward, both Smethurst and Burdette, who will assume the headmaster position when Smethurst one day retires, want to increase their commitment to research, writing, and outreach. Smethurst has authored several books about reading and learning, including Teaching Young Children to Read at Home, Study Power, and The Reading Pilgrimage. With excitement, the pair talks of hosting workshops and internships for teachers, conducting more outreach, forming more partnerships, and getting important information published. "Our multiplier effect is in helping other schools, not in making this one bigger," says Burdette.

To that end, Ben Franklin Academy has just entered into an agreement with the nearby Decatur City Schools to accept 25 students who have fallen behind into co-enrollment in the Ben Franklin half-day program. This new program, called Back on Track, is the first step toward establishing a learning center within the Decatur City Schools.

"The implications of what we do for policy change are profound," states Smethurst. "Too many students are missed in traditional school. We're throwing those kids away. That's a suicidal trip for our society. What doesn't fit in America is the way we teach at-risk students. They need learning-friendly schools, and that's what we want to give them.

"No single school has all the answers, but we have some of them and we want to share."

About the Article
A version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2005 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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