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Finding Your Dream At Dover School

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By Steve Otto

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 23, 2008

The kid, sitting on the floor with about 79 classmates, asked the last question.

"Was this your dream job?"

It was an unexpected question, one I didn't anticipate from a fifth-grader and one I didn't have one of those ready answers for.

I was at Dover Elementary, a school that the sign out front modestly boasts is the "Greatest School in the World." I truly believe that if you measure all the ingredients, you might not have a problem agreeing with the sign.

I got to know Dover years ago when the late Willis Peters was principal. Peters was an innovator, always trying to find ways to improve his school's attendance and grades. The challenges were and are enormous. The small school sits in the rural community only a few miles outside of Plant City. Nearly 30 percent of its students are children of migrants. Next to it is the Exceptional Center, which offers classes and on-the-job training to children and young adults with special needs. Peters built up a remarkable staff, including national teacher of the year Phoebe Irby.

I drove out there Monday to talk to the students. You take Interstate 4 and get off near Bates RV, off McIntosh Road. It's the place with the Airstream RVs sticking up out of the ground that the county is trying to get rid of. This is the same county that spends thousands hiring out-of-town artists who put up questionable pieces, while at the same time trying to get rid of something quirky, fun, free and the best thing going on that strip of I-4.

Strawberry Fields Forever

You only have to go a few blocks and you are into the country. Dover is a small community, with several churches advertising services in Spanish as well as English. There are still fields where they have U-pick-ums for fresh vegetables and strawberries.

The school itself is as plain as they get, although inside it has the technology of and could be any school in the district. Marie Caracciolla is the principal of the school as well as what is now called the Willis Peters Exceptional Center. She knows the students, and she knows what's going on. I liked her right off. My old friend Andrea Collado is still a team leader and counselor there. She, too, is one of those special teachers who connect with students.

An Unexpected Boost

I thought I would do a typical career day sort of talk, tossing in some thoughts on how our profession and so many jobs are changing in a world that seems to spin a little faster every day.

I'll tell you what. You hear so many bad things about the system and then you go into one of the district's poorer schools and expect to be disappointed and then you meet the Dover fifth-graders. They are polite, attentive and ask questions that go beyond the usual "How much do you make?" or "Are you going to write about us?" that every class asks.

They knew the final three in the presidential race. They knew about facts and opinions. They asked about global warming and endangered animals. They talked about what they wanted in life.

One face looked up from the floor in the library - I suppose we call them media centers now - and wondered if I was optimistic or pessimistic. I didn't know fifth-graders used those words - or more importantly that they cared.

However I might have felt driving out to the Dover school, driving back to Tampa I felt a little more optimistic than before.

Steve Otto's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

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