How educator Gloria Jean Merriex used dance, drills and devotion to turn around a failing elementary school in a year

Movement was an essential part of Gloria Merriex’s lessons at Duval Elementary School in Gainesville, Fla. Courtesy of Boaz Dvir by Boaz Dvir, Penn State When Duval Elementary – a school that served mostly Black and poor students in East Gainesville, Florida – failed the state’s high-stakes standardized test in 2002, district leaders pressured the school’s educators to more closely follow the curriculum. But Gloria Jean Merriex, who taught third and fourth grade reading and fifth grade math, wasn’t interested. She argued that doing more of the same would yield more of the same results. She rebelled by creating a customized curriculum and going out of sequence, teaching the hardest units first. Opting for a more kinetic approach to learning, she introduced music and movement. She revamped math and reading instruction by infusing the lessons with hip-hop, dance and other innovations. And she got results, leading Duval from an F to an A in 2003 and maintaining that academic excellence until she died of a diabetic stroke in 2008. Her students achieved the greatest gains in math among all of Florida’s fifth graders. As one who has spent years researching Merriex’s career for “Class of Her Own,” a documentary set...