THE MOST VIVID RECORD of what went on during the first year of KIPP is an amateurish but revealing eighteen-minute and twelve-second video shot by classroom aide Lisa Medina sometime in late 1994 or early 1995. The video was designed to give future KIPP teachers, parents, students, and financial supporters a look at what Feinberg and Levin were doing. It shows Feinberg, Levin, and forty-seven students chanting and singing and moving about despite being stuffed into a classroom that would ordinarily hold half as many people. With the two-person desks pushed together and students sitting side by side, there was just enough room for the students to do their work and the teachers to move around the classroom.
In the middle of the gray-carpeted room were four rows of desks, five students in the front row, six in each of the next two rows, and seven in the back row. That made twenty-four students, all of them facing the long blackboard at the front. Along the right side of the classroom, from the perspective of a teacher standing at the front blackboard, were two more rows of desks, perpendicular to the rows in the middle. Eight students were in the row against the right wall, and six students in the row in front of them, all facing the middle of the classroom. Along the left side was a single long row of desks, behind which sat eight students, also facing the middle of the room.
That made forty-six students. The forty-seventh student in the video, a lean boy, sat in a chair behind a desk at the back of the room in an empty space between a pillar and a bookcase. Above his desk a large sign said THE PORCH.
Medina’s camera showed the students bent over their desks, working on an assignment. There was no noise, no chatter. The two teachers were no longer in the suits they wore the first days of summer school. Feinberg, wearing jeans and a white KIPP T-shirt, with “Knowledge Is Power” on the back and “KIPP” on a blackboard on the front, sat in a chair in the front of the classroom near the doorway. Levin, also in denim and an identical T-shirt, was crouching next to him. The two were having a whispered conversation.
There were several large windows along the right side of the classroom, from the teachers’ perspective. All of the shades were drawn. Some of the shades were covered with more posters and slogans. Some, but not all, of the students were wearing KIPP T-shirts identical to the ones their teachers had on.
In the video, the students finished working and began to run through several Ball chants and songs, with a great deal of waving of arms, pounding of desks, and snapping of fingers. At one point, several rows of students stood on their chairs and desks and kicked their feet into the air in time with a chant about the seven continents.
Feinberg paced in front of the class, shouting, “What room is this?”
All of the students shouted back:
This is the room
That has the kids
Who want to learn
To read more books
To build a bet-ter
To-mor-row!
Feinberg, still moving, smiled and said, “Give me the beat!”
The students began to slap their desks with their hands. Slap, slap, slap! Slap, slap, slap! They sang Ball’s song:
You gotta read, baby, read.
Feinberg and Levin walked around the classroom, keeping the rhythm with two slaps on their thighs and a loud clap of their hands. They were still using the original Ball lyrics, for practical-minded fifth graders.
The more you read, the more you know.
Knowledge is power,
Power is money, and
I want it.
You gotta read, baby, read.
You gotta read, baby, read.
No need to hope for a good-paying job.
With your first-grade skills you’ll do nothing but rob.
You gotta read, baby, read.
You gotta read, baby, read.
You’ll rob your momma, you’ll rob your friends.
Don’t you know you can learn?
Don’t you know you can win?
You gotta read, baby, read.
You gotta read, baby, read.
High on the right wall was the slogan: IF YOU CAN’T RUN WITH THE BIG DOGS, STAY ON THE PORCH. On the wall in front, above the blackboard and below the clock, was another slogan in large capital letters: ALL OF US WILL LEARN. All of the words were in black except “will,” which was in red. On the back wall was a large drawing of Humpty Dumpty and an accompanying rewrite of his nursery rhyme: HE READ SO MANY BOOKS / HE FORGOT TO FALL.
The class rolled its nines, then its eights, then its sevens. Feinberg cupped his hand over his right ear, as if he couldn’t hear them clearly. Much louder, they rolled their sixes.
“Excuse me, sonny,” shouted Feinberg, standing in front of the class. “Does anyone know where I can find some” — he paused for dramatic effect — “big dogs?”
“Whoop! Here we are!” the students shouted back. They switched to state capitals, prompted by Feinberg.
“Austin?”
“Texas!”
“Santa Fe?”
“New Mexico!”
“Sacramento?”
“California!”
“Olympia?”
“Washington!”
“Juneau?”
“I know!”
“What do you know?”
“Alaska!”
He asked about Lincoln and got a weak reaction. He tried again and got a stronger “Nebraska!” Jackson stumped many of the students. Feinberg had to do it twice before they came back with a loud “Mississippi!” The lesson kept going, a festival of mnemonic devices. Levin took over as lead cheerleader by shouting, “How many ounces in a cup?”
“Eight!”
“How many ounces in a cup?”
“Eight!”
“Drink it up!” Each student pretended to drain a drinking glass. Levin did the same as he walked up the aisle. Everyone counted to eight. “A cup of soup I ate” — the memory key was there. “Eight ounces in a cup!”
Both teachers walked up and down the aisles, making the same hand gestures as the students. “On your feet, please!” said Feinberg. Many stood on their chairs. In most classrooms that would be a no-no, but no one told them to get down. Some students did not have enough floor space to stand anywhere else.
“How many continents are there?”
“There are seven! There are seven!”
They named them in succession, raising their arms, jumping into the air, and kicking their legs to the side. It looked dangerous, but no one fell.
Almost as quickly, after a review of the number of cups and quarts and gallons, too fast and complicated for an inexperienced ear to follow, the rush of chants ended.
“The number is five, you will be sitting down,” Feinberg said. “One, two, three, four, five.”
Levin was at the blackboard. “Eyes up, please,” he said. He took them through a long-division problem using Ball code words for each stage of the arithmetic process — “at the door,” “pull down the shade.” Then Feinberg wrote a huge number on the board—thirty digits. Feinberg asked them to help him mark off each group of three digits by chanting, “One, ten, hundred, hook it!”
“Very good job,” said Feinberg. “In order to read a number, Try Big Mac Tonight—trillion, billion, million, thousand.”
They read it off as the teacher pointed to each group of digits. They took deep breaths as they prepared to shout out the correct name of each three-digit group. They went much higher: “Say what you see, say the comma’s name: Quarked, Quastar, Sexy, September, October, November, December” — the mnemonics for quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion. There was little time in the short video to show the teaching. It was one disposable crutch after another, but the teamwork was evident. They were hemmed into a small classroom with too many classmates, but they were acting as one. On the jerky video, which sometimes bumped up and down to the sound of their singing, they seemed happy to be doing so.