Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Tuscaloosa and Northport!
Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
The Capitol School with Director Barbara Rountree
Ever wondered how a school can go beyond traditional education to stimulate all aspects of a child's brain? Our latest episode with Barbara Rountree, the director of The Capitol School in Tuscaloosa, offers a glimpse into this innovative approach. Rountree's dedication to holistic learning shines through as she discusses the school's individual instruction model, catering to each child's strengths rather than just patching deficiencies. Additionally, the school's effort to teach multiple languages like Spanish and German adds a fascinating layer to their curriculum. You'll be intrigued by Rountree's journey from a University of Alabama professor to leading this pioneer educational institution.
Now, imagine the atmosphere of a school that instills joy and curiosity at every corner. In the second half of our conversation, Rountree opens up about the vibrant environment at The The Capitol School and her personal interests and travels. She also bravely discusses a significant setback—their inability to transition to a charter school due to a lack of storm shelter funding. Yet, her unwavering commitment to offer quality education to students of all ages, from infants to high school graduates, is inspiring. We conclude the episode with ways to get in touch with The Capitol School. So buckle up and join us on this enlightening journey into the realm of non-traditional education. #GNPNorthport #TheCapitolSchool #Nursery #Kindergarten #Preschool #Elementary #UpperSchool #Language #Music #MultipleIntelligences
This is the Good Neighbor podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor podcast. I'm your host, Patricia Blondheim, and today we have Good Neighbor Barbara Roundtree. Barbara is the director of the capitol school here in Tuscaloosa. Barbara, how are you this morning?
Speaker 3:I'm really well. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually not morning, it's afternoon right now. But tell me about your business, tell me about capitol school.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. We are just in our 31st year here down at capitol park. We have seven buildings on our campus that surround this area. That was really the original city here in Tuscaloosa. The capitol was here from 1846 to 66, and it burned in 1923 after the capitol had been moved to Montgomery. It was a women's college because of course the University of Alabama was all male cadets.
Speaker 3:So we come from a place here this location that's had a lot of legislative and then educational activity, and we were founded in 1993. We're a multiple intelligence school, meaning that our school teaches all of the capacities that a child has in their head to learn and not just the mathematical and English or linguistic abilities, because when you and I were children we thought that that was the two hemispheres of the brain and everybody was just smart in those two ways. Even our tests that we took to get into college gave us a mathematical score and a linguistic score, and we thought at that time that maybe the people who were artists and musicians and architects, that they were just gifted in that way. It turns out from all the medical research in the last 30 or 40 years that all of us have abilities that are just untapped. So we're trying to offer all of those opportunities to kids.
Speaker 2:And that is so unique in the educational world. So not only do you have multi-linguistic, you also have you address every single style of learning that you can identify inside of the school. So there it used to be. You would go to school and you would either be thriving or you would be held back. But you've enabled children to escape that classification by identifying their strengths.
Speaker 3:We really try to, because if you just focus on what you're not doing well especially, children get very discouraged and they just shut down. So we try to focus on their strengths while working on all those things that are deficiencies. But it's an individualized approach and we don't have grade levels. We report to parents what grade level your child is reading on or doing math or whatever, but the child is in an age cluster and that is usually a two to three age range and that also kind of counteracts birth order, which is a very important influence. The kids who are oldest in each grade generally do better. So one year you get to be the oldest and then one year you're you get to be in the younger group. So it gives them a different place in the classroom and what we're finding is that the more individualized you make your instruction, then the further the child can go.
Speaker 3:So we may have children who are nine or ten reading on 11th grade reading, or you might have a 10th grader working on eighth grade math, because that's something that they struggle with. So we try to meet them where they are and then give them the opportunity to set goals, because I think that's very important, because usually you know, when you got a B or a C in school you didn't really know why, you just knew you weren't a nice student. So we give the kids help and trying to help them understand what would it take to earn a higher grade and how much work will it take to earn that. And so that can be a long and slow process because most kids haven't yet developed that internal or intrapersonal intelligence to help them understand how do I learn and how long is it going to take me?
Speaker 2:Right. So they're not focusing on what I call the red pen right, which is an indication of what what they're doing wrong or what they're deficient in, or what we need to. You know, what is below the level of the assignment. What you're doing is you're building strengths inside of all of these individuals. If you look at a flower, the way it opens it's not one petal at a time, right, it's very individual. It opens sometimes slowly, it opens sometimes very quickly, it opens sometimes only halfway, and then the other side, it's very. But treating children like that is, I think, revolutionary, barbara, and it's something that I would love people to learn more about, because, in addition to that, you're also cultivating their linguistic skills by teaching more than one language, correct?
Speaker 3:That's right. We have Spanish every single day for our children starting at one month old, and then we add German when they're two and a half and they have that. And then we've had Mandarin up until the pandemic, and now, sadly, we're not offering Mandarin anymore, so we're trying to add that back, maybe in a summer class. We have a huge summer program called Summer Explorations and this is our 31st summer to run it and that gives kids and opportunities to come to capital school, possibly just for two weeks, but it's a morning and afternoon program and it fits parents work schedules, so we go 10 weeks across the summer in five sessions. So that's an opportunity for kids to come and experience this kind of a learning environment.
Speaker 2:I think that's wonderful. We'll tell our listeners about your journey, Barbara. How did you end up here at the capital school?
Speaker 3:I moved to Tuscaloosa for a job as a brand new professor at the University of Alabama in 1977 and came from Nashville where I just graduated with my doctorate from Vanderbilt University and George Peabody College. So I came to the university and was fortunate enough to be hired by the College of Education and I taught there for 25 years helping trained teachers. I taught science, education and it was a very I think it's a very important part of the curriculum that often gets neglected because we're so focused on reading and math. So I was there for 25 years and had the opportunity to do a lot of consulting work all over the world with international schools and just was so impressed by what I was seeing. And I got to do some post grad work at Harvard and met Dr Howard Gardner, one of the professors there, who wrote a book called Multiple Intelligences, intelligence reframed, and he summarizes the medical research to show that all of us have ability. I mean I have. Parents all the time say, oh, I'm not artistic, I can't draw a straight line. Well, if you'd had art, do you think that you might have developed that ability? Because your brain if you're born with a normal brain, your brain has the capacity to do that? I mean, research says that children in Europe often grow up speaking five languages and they have the ability to speak more because that's a time period when you're growing up, that languages is being developed and learned in your brain. So it's possible. It's just that I didn't have that opportunity. I didn't go to a school that taught any other languages. My high school didn't even teach Spanish when I graduated. So we all have these multiple capacities within our brain to learn, and you know, think about it. If you'd been born in Costa Rica, you would have grown up speaking Spanish. If your parents had moved there when you were, you know, one month old, you would have have learned that language as a mother tongue. So it was the opportunity, not your level of intelligence, that determined whether or not you could do it.
Speaker 3:Our children all take violin here, starting at age three I mean third grade, the age of third grade, eight. So they start taking violin. So people often see us playing somewhere and they go oh, what gifted students you have. Well, gee, all of our kids learned to play violin, and it's kind of a peer pressure thing, because you know your friends are playing violin and you try it too.
Speaker 3:It may not be the thing you love to do, but we did have a family that moved here for three years while the mom was getting a doctorate and she said, oh no, my boys aren't musical, they don't need to take music. And I said, well, it's included, let them try it. And her youngest son was in middle school and in the three years they were here he became our most proficient violin player ever in the history of the school. They lived in an apartment and he go home and practice in the stairwell. He loved it, loved it, loved it. So she was blown away that he had this musical ability. But once again he had the opportunity to develop it. And that's the big difference. You know, if you never have the opportunity, that's going to be a latent part of your brain that never got developed.
Speaker 2:How wonderful that kids can go here and they can exceed everyone's expectations just by being themselves.
Speaker 3:Where else does?
Speaker 2:that happen, Barbara.
Speaker 3:Well, it's a joyful place to be, that's for sure, because you do get to see these little milestones and achievements and every single day, you know some kid is delighted. Maybe they are very bodily anesthetic, and today's the day they got to go to gymnastics or swimming or volleyball or do one of the activities that they love. We have a great PE teacher and she has developed a running culture at our school so that the kids wake up and go oh, tuesday is running day, and so we have a huge cross-country team and more kids from our school a higher percentage from our school attend the children's Mercedes Marathon every February in Birmingham than any other school in Alabama, because they love to run, not because somebody made them do it. And gosh, what a great lifelong skill to have to learn to run and enjoy it. That's going to help their you know physical development the rest of their life.
Speaker 3:It was certainly I never learned to do I guess I could have gone running by myself, but to have the whole class and she rewards them with little feet when they've gone so and they run a mile a week and after 26 weeks, gee, you've won the. You know, you've run the distance of a marathon.
Speaker 2:Well, I was taught not to run and to sit quietly in my seat.
Speaker 3:There you go, there you go. Read was an appropriate thing.
Speaker 2:You could read quietly, that's right, read quietly in your seat and then put your head down. That's what I was taught to do, but that tells my age, doesn't it? Well, we pretty much. I mean, we battered a lot of misconceptions about education away, but is are there any misconceptions that stand out to you that you would like to put to?
Speaker 3:bear. Because people call and say I've heard about your school or know somebody who goes there and I know it's the school for gifted children. So I'd like to know where do I go to get my child tested for giftedness so that we can apply and I go? No, no, there's no criteria. You may see some of the evidence of an artist or musician or athlete that you think you know. Certainly that child is displaying giftedness in that area.
Speaker 3:But you don't have to be labeled to come to this school. And often we have kids who come because another school is not meeting their needs and they need to be taught on their ability level. But we also have kids who come to us who are not doing well in another school setting and the parents hope that we can give them that foundation that will allow them to do better. And I think that we have really worked on meeting these children's needs if they were failing in one subject or another. So I think it's kind of ironic that parents think we are, you know, the school for only those who've been identified gifted when we have, you know, we hope we'll find some of your kids, kids, talents and strengths, but it's not that you've got to have that label and I really kind of cringe when we label children so young, because the potential is there for so much more than just that label.
Speaker 2:I think, as a result and I've been to the Capitol School during class change time and the, the hallways and the property rings with happiness these are children who are happy because they are being, they are being strengthened by the educational process and and the individual natures of the people inside of Capitol School, who who want to create the best human being, not necessarily the best student, but to find what, what the essence of that little human being is. And you can tell.
Speaker 3:They do say they have to come to school. I mean, parents report to us that the little ones cry on Saturday that they don't get to come and I heard a little boy just yesterday say yeah, I get to be the last one to leave at 5.30 because we do have after school. So they are happy most days to be here and we are so fortunate that we have attracted the kind of faculty that we have attracted over these years. We are the highest paying private school in the state of Alabama with all the benefits that teachers should get, including IRAs and retirement benefits. So we are doing our best to support our teachers because guess what, when you have capable teachers who love to teach their subject and their children, then the kids know that and they can feel that and it makes all the difference in the world to have that person in the classroom. And we have teachers with teaching certificates and master's and PhD degrees. It's going to focus on their teaching ability and we have such a great faculty.
Speaker 3:I think I sent to you I meant to the ALcom report last month of the 25 top rated high schools in Alabama and those are private schools and we are thrilled to be on that list of the top 25 in the state of Alabama. We ranked ninth and we are the only one on that whole 25 list from our county. So we are thrilled. But the way you get the best high school is to have the best kindergarten and the best elementary school and the strongest middle school that you can have. Because then by the time they get to high school they can perform at a much higher level and all of our children by the time they're 15, participate in the dual enrollment program either in early college at the University of Alabama or at Shelton State Community College. So when they graduate from high school they can have 15, up to 31 hours of college finished. So that is a tremendous boost in their confidence that they know they can handle those college and career courses and be successful.
Speaker 2:That may have the skills to create their goals and to follow them. I'm sure that affects them the rest of their life. Like I said, capital school it's a fun place to be and kids are happy and you're happy and everyone's happy. But you've got to be doing something for fun. When you're not doing this, Barbara, what do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:Well, I love to read, so that to me is the greatest enjoyment to get to read. I love getting. We have three grandchildren now so I get to play with them. I've become much more familiar with Thomas the Train and American Girl Dolls over the last couple of years. And then I'm very fortunate that my husband has the world's best job he teaches. He's the artist in residence for a couple of different cruise lines, so the past few years I've gotten to go with him on these wonderful trips that a teacher could not afford normally, and be with him when he's teaching art and getting to be on these cruises around the world. So I get to add travel to my list now in a way that I didn't when I was in the classroom.
Speaker 2:Oh, how marvelous that is a dream job it is. It is Now let's. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about a hardship, maybe something that you've gone through that has made you a better person, a stronger person.
Speaker 3:Well, I have a sad story to tell and it is the biggest professional disappointment of my life, and that is when the school was started in 1993, we were started as a private school and all of our taglines was that we were poised to become the state's first charter school, and that was in 1977, we thought it might just take two or three years for the state to pass the charter school legislation. It took the state 23 years to pass the charter school legislation. So we applied to be a charter school. We didn't make make it as the first one, we didn't make it as the second one, but we were granted our charter and we would be the third charter school in the state of Alabama. It would have enabled us to serve about 368 students, k through 12. It would have allowed our teachers to be on the state payroll and get state retirement and insurance and it would have been a permanent school, although the funding is just for five years. But after five years you have to show that they are doing as well as the median schools in Alabama. We thought we could probably do that without any difficulty. So indeed the state awarded us a charter, gave us five years of funding and a nurse and librarian and it was so wonderful and we were ecstatic and we met every criteria for the state Department of Education.
Speaker 3:And then the Alabama Building Commission called and said and where is your bomb shelter, hurricane, tornado shelter, your storm shelter? It must house all of the students and 55 kids and 55 teachers. And we went what? The first charter school doesn't have one. They're just in a strip mall in Mobile. The second charter doesn't have one. And they said, yes, we grandfathered them in, but all new public schools in Alabama must have a storm shelter. Well, the way the charter school legislation is written, it doesn't allow charter schools to access school bonds. And so MacDonald Hughes has a beautiful new storm shelter just a few miles from us that costs $1.2 million. So where were we going to borrow $1.2 million for a storm shelter? So to say to you that I was devastated is it can't, because this was the goal we'd work for for 23 years. So on March 20th 2020, I gave back the charter that we'd worked so hard for. So we are not a charter school, we're still a private school and we are doing the best that we can.
Speaker 2:That's horrible and that's shameful.
Speaker 3:Pretty disappointing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty disappointing because if I can't think of any other institution that would be a better charter school than capital school, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been a hard deal to say.
Speaker 2:Well, what's the one thing? Let's end on a happy note. Let's give our listeners the one thing that you want people to take away about capital school.
Speaker 3:Well, I hope that they know that we are a group of very caring and competent teachers and that we start at age one month and go all the way through high school graduation, and that we teach almost every day of the year, that we've got that 10 weeks of summer explorations that I told you about. So we're always here and we're open 730 to 530. So if parents want to learn more about us, we're always here.
Speaker 2:Well, how can they, how can they reach you? What's the best way to get a hold of capital? School?
Speaker 3:They can email contact at the capital school or they can call us at 205-758-2828.
Speaker 2:Barbara, it's. It's always a joy to sit down and talk to you. Thank you for coming by the studio.
Speaker 3:I'm delighted to be included.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast Northport. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gmpnorthportcom or call 205-809-4910.