Escuela Tlatelolco's Angelita Guerrero with two kindergarteners.

Jacqueline Padilla pauses in front of Claribel De La Torre and holds up a stone bowl smoking with the fragrant fumes of copal, a tree resin used by Mesoamerican cultures as incense.

Claribel waves the smoke gently toward herself with both hands, and then Jacqueline moves on to the next high school student, and the next, slowly working her way along the line of more than 50 students who circle the outer edge of the cafeteria.

This "smudging," using a stone bowl or conch shell with the fumes of sage, copal or cedar, is a part of the regular "talking circles" that start each day at Escuela Tlatelolco Centro de Studios, a unique community-based independent school in the heavily Latino near-west side of Denver, Colorado.

Mestizo Meets Montessori

The "talking circle" is a ceremony common to indigenous cultures of the Americas. Students at the school can also participate in the Lakota drum group. And the school's board of directors includes prominent American Indian activist Glenn Morris.

"The majority of our kids are Latino, but we do recognize our indigenous side at this school, the mestizo people that we are, of Spanish and Indian descent," says Angelita Guerrero, one of Escuela Tlatelolco's family service workers.

"The talking circle is a time to get yourself in a positive mode so you can get through the day, get things off your chest," says Guerrero.

Morning talking circles are also an institution of the Montessori method, and from preschool through sixth grade, Escuela Tlatelolco follows Montessori methods. The preschool classes operate as a Head Start program. From first through sixth grades, students pay tuition to attend, with partial scholarships based on family income and household size.

In grades 7 through 12, the school continues to pursue non-traditional methods of teaching and learning. The middle and high school grades operate under contract to Denver Public Schools, so no tuition is charged.

Bilingual to the Core

All of Escuela's teachers are bilingual, and by graduation day, so are many of the students. Spanish-speaking students are taught in Spanish, with English as a second language. English speaking students are taught in English, with Spanish as a second language.

"The school is culturally diverse," says senior Estevan Sandoval, 17, who has attended Escuela since middle school. "We participate in things like Aztec dancing. We learn more about the history of our culture. In public school, they don't teach a whole lot about the Aztecs or Mayans."

At Escuela, students from different grades mix in the classrooms. The curriculum includes all the core elements, but instruction is organized thematically, with a block of time each day focusing on a single topic. For instance, if the topic is rivers, a student might study a particular river through the lenses of social studies, science, math and language arts.

The school also develops personalized learning plans for each student, so they can learn at their own pace. Not only are different students studying different things in the same classroom at the same time, but instruction is taking place in two languages.

Personal Attention

The level of personal contact required by Escuela's approach is made possible by having 10 full-time and six part-time teachers (along with other supporting staff for art, dance, after-school and other programs) for the school's 147 students.

Debbie Perea, who teaches 4th and 5th grade students, came to Escuela from Denver Public Schools just this year. "I was wanting to leave DPS," she says. "With 30 students every day there, without an assistant, it would get out of control. This school provides children an opportunity to learn in a small-group setting with much more teacher attention."

The school's unorthodox approach has met success. Latinos and Native Americans comprise 53 percent of the students in the Denver Public Schools, yet in 2004 they had a graduation rate of just 71.4 for Latinos and 71.8 percent for American Indians. Escuela Tlatelolco, by contrast, claims a 90 percent graduation rate.

Escuela also reports that 61 percent of its students have gone on to achieve an undergraduate college degree, with 20 percent earning graduate degrees. By contrast, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that nationally in 2004, just 12.1 percent of Latinos 25 years and older had achieved a bachelor's degree or higher, and the figure was 14.2 percent for American Indians.

The School-Community Connection

Perhaps most notable about Escuela Tlatelolco is its emphasis on connecting the school and the community through parent involvement and student community service.

Each student must put in a minimum of 360 hours of community service to graduate, and parents are required to do ten hours of community service each month. These services range from classroom and playground cleanup and volunteering in the after-school program to the school's annual celebration of Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Parents contribute flowers and candles, children make altars, everyone brings something to eat, and the school families take part in a neighborhood procession.

Assembly at Escuela Tlatelolco.

This year, students and parents took part in a bottled-water drive for Hurricane Katrina victims, and they regularly volunteer in the "Peace Garden," a nearby garden started by a local woman whose son was killed in a drive-by shooting. "It's giving them a sense of community and a knowledge that there are people in the world who need help," says Guerrero.

The thing to remember about Escuela Tlatelolco, says Nita Gonzales, the school's president and CEO, is that it's more than a school. "It has been central to our community around various social issues that are critical for us, a central player and a place where many other community groups come together," she says. "It's what I think schools need to be. A school should belong to the neighborhood and the community."

Several different community organizations even have their own keys and key codes to the school so they can hold meetings there after school hours.

"I've always, as a teacher and then an administrator, believed that an education should be about empowering people, and that doesn't always happen," Gonzales says. "About 20 percent of your life curriculum happens within your school, and the other 80 percent of it happens out there. There's got to be a connection."

Roots in ‘60's Activism

Gonzales is the daughter of Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, who started the school with his wife Geraldine in 1970. He died this year. The school is named after an infamous 1968 massacre in Mexico City, when police and soldiers broke up a massive protest against social and economic conditions in the country. The massacre took place at the Plaza de Las Tres Culuras, also called "the Tlatelolco," after the ancient city that was a center of education and fine arts for the Aztec empire, and the place where the Aztecs made their last stand against the Spanish invaders.

Corky Gonzales, born in Denver to a Mexican immigrant father, gained early recognition as one of the world's top featherweight boxers. He was the author of "Yo Soy Juaquin," which has been called the first epic poem in Chicano literature; and a prominent social activist both in Denver and nationwide. He was a founder in the mid-‘60s of the Crusade for Justice, an urban civil rights and cultural movement still closely associated with the school.

"They were part of a group of people who said we needed a school that would provide a learning environment where children can succeed academically and also use that education in a way that can assure that the community has social justice," says Nita Gonzales.

Birth, Growth, Decline...and Resurrection

Teacher and students in the elementary school.

Incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in 1971, the school developed a full spectrum of services from early childhood education through high school, and an onsite, four-year college program accredited through Goddard College. In 1982, finances forced the closure of all elements except the high school. In 1994 Escuela started rebuilding and in 1995 purchased its present site in the former St. Dominic's elementary school, where the building's exterior and halls and classrooms are now splashed with the colorful murals in themes of Mesoamerican and Latino culture.

Since that time, Escuela has grown from 55 students to nearly 150. A fundraising and marketing program that draws money from foundation grants, public agencies and businesses ranging from Qwest Communications and Wells Fargo to Mile High United Way and the Denver Broncos.

Escuela Tlatelolco is a year-round school, operating on a quarter system with two-week breaks between quarters and a three-week break in August. At the start of every quarter, high school students go on "retreats," hiking in Colorado Springs, for example, or river rafting, or taking short trips to places like the Great Sand Dunes.

In summer, the class day is shortened to end at 1 p.m., and more ambitious trips are scheduled. "Last summer we went to Mexico City and learned about our culture," says Estevan Sandoval. "We went to the pyramids, learned how Aztecs and Toltecs built their structures. We went there to get a feel of what Mexico was and is now." Such trips are preceded by study of the region to be visited, and require journaling during the trip.

As a family service worker, Guerrero's focus is on helping families. She assists them in accessing health and dental care, medical insurance, food, clothing, counseling and Christmas gifts. She helps them develop plans to meet their needs and works with them to make sure those needs are met.

"Healthy living is one of our cornerstones," says Guerrero, who, by the way, is Corky Gonzales' granddaughter and attended Escuela Tlatelolco herself as a child. "It goes along with our belief in the school helping the whole family," she says.

Learn more about Escuela Tlatelco.

Robert Ebisch is a freelance writer in Denver, Colorado.