Dacula teachers boldly go to great lengths for students

The captain stood squarely on the bridge of the USS Innerpride with a glint of fear in her eyes.

Her young crew had seen their share of combat as they criss-crossed the galaxy in search of mind-molding adventures, but were they prepared for this?

Enlarge this image

Vino Wong/vwong@ajc.com

Celisa ‘Ce-ce’ Edwards says her mission is to challenge her students.

• Photos

Recent headlines:

[an error occurred while processing this directive]    • Gwinnett County news

Commander Celisa “Ce-ce” Edwards, 42, in her librarian updo and old-school Star Trek uniform, paced anxiously as cadets closed ranks awaiting her command. The starship was surrounded by enemy fire.

To save the Innerpride from Cardassians and Mathonians — scaly-faced foes of the Starfleet Institute of the Sciences — seventh-graders at Dacula Middle School would have to beat the clock solving a series of algebraic equations.

“The Cardassians and the Mathonians are out to seek and destroy all seventh graders,” Edwards said to her anxious starfighters. “They get inside your brain and try to make it hard for you to understand math. We must defeat them. Are you with me?”

Pencils raced across notebooks accepting the challenge. Students recited algebraic rules confidently as a Cardassian barbarian mean-mugged overhead on a projector screen. Edwards eyed her computerized Interwrite Tablet waiting for the damage report - an electronic tally of answers beamed in by students using clicker remote controls.

At first glance, the 40 cadets of Starfleet Institute could easily be dismissed as the gifted techno-geek squad of Dacula Middle. Their classroom, twice the size of most, is equipped with rows of flat-screen workstations.But these “cadets” once struggled way below standards on the math or science portion of the state curriculum exam, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.

Now a turnaround is occurring on the final frontier under the guidance of co-commanders, Edwards and Jayne Lawson, 53, who both wear a collection of Star Trek uniforms to work. Everyday.

“We thought it might bridge the generation gap,” Lawson said.

Edwards and Lawsons’ methods — teach, touch, tutor, test and reteach — reform struggling students. Using the iconic television and movie science fiction series as a backdrop, complete with props, has served to motivate, inspire and entertain students all in one. Last year’s cadets boasted gains of 28-to-77 points on the math and science CRCT exams.

“Several students went from the does not meet standards to the exceeds standards category,” Edwards said. “We are talking going from a score of 773 to 850. That’s huge!”

Sabrina Baida, 12, enlisted in the 2008-09 Starfleet program to improve her reading comprehension skills. “I can read, but answering the questions afterwards is what I needed help with,” the seventh grade cadet said. “When I got things wrong, it made me feel like I didn’t understand anything.”

Like all cadets, Baida received a personal invitation to enlist. Edwards and Lawson analyze CRCT scores and show up on the doorstep of students promising a year of engaging lessons and, of course, adventure. Starfleet’s mission statement says cadets will “seek out new worlds of knowledge … and boldly go where no student has gone before.”

Frankly, Baida’s mom was a little concerned at first . She wasn’t exactly a Trekkie. “I was kind of skeptical,” said Amal Baida. “Sabrina is very soft-spoken, sweet and smiley. They were commanders. I was worried that they were going to be hard on her.”

Still, the family found the opportunity intriguing.

The Starfleet classroom is a shrine to all things Star Trek. Photos of starship captains hang on the wall including Edwards and Lawson. Replicas of the Enterprise — the flagship launched in the 1960s television series — are perched on cabinets. A life size cut out of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek - Voyager) stands with arms crossed in a corner. Cadets must agree to moral codes like “Respect Terran & Alien Cultures” (Be kind to one another).

Students are evaluated on their learning styles so they understand them. Those who prefer reading, hearing or touching material so they can remember it find work that excites them.

“I saw a change in the first couple of months,” Amal Baida said of her daughter, Sabrina. “The teachers are wonderful.”

Edwards, a former banker, and Lawson, a nurse, have more than 30 years of classroom experience between them. They developed their tag-team theme in California and won national awards and media exposure. Edwards picked up another accolade last month for using technology in the classroom — a vital ingredient in every cadet mission and the Star Trek series.

“Rote learning is only remembered for a short period of time, technology gives you an opportunity to engage kids in a meaningful way ,” said Patti Ralabate, a senior policy analyst with the National Education Association. “They can manipulate the information and get excited about it.”

For example, on a recent day Lawson lectured about the dwindling water supply in Africa. She read from a textbook, showed a video, passed out a water bottle to get cadets thinking about what they waste and assigned a computer collage about the region they had studied.

“We teach them how they learn best,” explained Lawson. “This is an active group. We have an arsenal of tools.”

Cadet Ebony Holland, 13, says some of her peers envy her days in Starfleet, which teaches all the core subjects. “You don’t have to carry your books from place to place. When you need help there is always a teacher available.”

Other students don’t quite understand it. “Some of them think we are ‘special’,” said Tommy Perceval, 13, who has watched his grades go from average to mostly As and Bs since August. “I don’t care what people think. We have a lot of fun.”