Learning is the constant in ever-shifting schools

"Ray, is that a Matchbox car?" teacher John Pendry asked one of his regular troublemakers recently. The boy shakes his head, lying.

"Let's see it," Pendry demands, hand outstretched. Ray reluctantly turns over the little red car.

"Next time I ask you, don't lie to me," Pendry says. "I've been playing with Matchbox cars since I was 4. I know the sound of their wheels."

Don't lie. It's one lesson Pendry has taught this year.

Some others:

Take responsibility. Admit to mistakes.

Round 37 up to 40 when rounding to the 10s place.

The plural of moose is moose.

A tiny hole -- an egg pore -- on a crayfish's underbelly means it's female.

Finally: sometimes you lose the people you love.

"I miss you," one pupil wrote Pendry in a letter after the teacher abruptly transferred to another school. "We didn't think you would ever leave."

Pendry's fourth graders at Helen Jydstrup Elementary have learned a lot this year.

After nine months of observations, what have we learned from them?

* The traditional, uninterrupted school day as some adults remember it -- or romanticize it -- has changed.

Students transfer in and out of schools at surprising rates. Roughly six out of 10 children who start the year at Jydstrup will have moved to another school by August.

Some teachers tote their pupils from classroom to classroom every few weeks. In a crowded elementary school, teacher "roving" is a way of life.

Students detour from classwork for a variety of reasons -- to harass substitutes, to rehearse for school plays, to take standardized tests.

"We have to, as much as possible, limit the number of classroom interruptions," Superintendent Brian Cram said. "It's tough to do with a crowded school."

* Children continue to learn -- often at very different rates -- despite the changes that grip their lives inside and outside school.

Pendry's pupils have covered a lot since the school year began in August. They have much to learn in the last two months of fourth grade.

Half of Pendry's students did not know the multiplication tables when the school year started. Now nearly all of them do. In fact, most students can multiply multi-digit numbers.

They need more practice with word problems and long division. They have yet to tackle geometry concepts and metric conversions.

In August, some of Pendry's students read below grade level. They have improved and several are close to reading with their peers. Most in the class can sound out words, but they need practice reading for comprehension.

They have begun cracking open novels.

* Ultimately, the story of a classroom in Clark County is not about policies and programs or studies and statistics. It's a complex tale about individuals -- a teacher and his classroom full of wildly different students. Together they learned and laughed, triumphed and failed, said hellos and goodbyes.

It is a story that takes place every school year in every school.

There is no epilogue, just chapters that come to an end.

After eight months of building a relationship with his pupils, Pendry became an assistant principal at another school. His students are left with a substitute for the rest of the school year.

For both students and teacher, it was an ending and a beginning. Pendry has a new job. His students have a new teacher.

But some things don't change. Ramon still belts out answers without raising his hand. Molly and Karen still conspire and giggle at lunch. Amal, Nick and Ray still test their teacher's patience. And the students are still learning.

Next year all of Pendry's students will move on to fifth grade. Some will still attend Jydstrup; others will transfer to different schools.

After that, middle school. Then high school.

According to district statistics, about 11 percent will drop out before graduation. Roughly 35 percent -- 12 or 13 students -- will attend college.

Pendry is reluctant to predict what will happen to each of the children whose lives he shared for eight months.

"I don't think you can look at a kid and say where he is going to be in eighth grade," Pendry said. "You simply don't know."

Some will be mature enough for middle school, Pendry said. Some won't.

"Kids all develop on their own schedule," Pendry said. "I've had kids in third grade who were real behavior problems, and they come back to you in seventh grade and they've got their act together."

A week after Pendry left Jydstrup he sits in his office, neck-deep in his new assistant principal duties.

These days he is swimming in paperwork. But he has no regrets.

"This is a leadership role," Pendry says. "You can affect change on a broader level. You're the instructional leader of the building. You have a larger say in how kids are taught and what they are learning."

Pendry misses his Jydstrup students.

He also misses "teaching moments" -- congratulating a student who worked a long-division problem correctly on her first try or telling a troublemaker to sit down.

"It's different now," Pendry said. "You're perceived differently by the kids. I miss going to recess. I miss tossing the football around."

Pendry has been talking to other teachers at Jydstrup to get updates on how his students are faring. He doesn't want to interfere with the relationship Patterson is building with them. He doesn't plan any visits just yet.

Pendry predicts the students will do well on their end-of-the year tests.

"I don't have a lot of academic worries for them," Pendry says. "It's just that a lot of those kids come from such a transient background -- dad's not around, they are transferring from school to school -- I hope that my getting up and leaving doesn't have an impact on them socially."

Pendry's thoughts are interrupted by a first grade teacher who is concerned about one of her pupils. The boy wrote a note to a girl in class, calling her "sexy." Pendry says he will call the boy's grandmother, his guardian.

Pendry's new job has pulled him away from his former students. But not completely.

"I'm going to miss them all," Pendry says. "I know I'll miss this set of kids especially, because they were my last."

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