During the four years she taught first- and second-graders at Maree Garnett Farring Elementary School, Rhonda Friedman noticed her students showed no interest in learning.
Curious, she soon learned some of these children came from single-parent homes, often run by women too stressed after a day's work to sit down and play.
Some of the mothers didn't even have a high school diploma and couldn't help their children with homework.
Ms. Friedman's solution was to create the Farring Family Learning Center at Farring Elementary School, in the 300 block of Pontiac Ave. The center is an inspiring place for parents and their children in a community beset by poverty and substance abuse, and a lack of social services.
"We're turning this school into a support system," said Ms. Friedman, who spent a year making the center a reality. "We just found that some mothers were so overwhelmed that they'd just sit the kid in the corner."
The center offers a range of child development classes, infant and toddler classes, developmental gymnastics, family computer classes, math and reading readiness, and General Equivalency Diploma (GED) and adult literacy programs. Eventually, job skill classes for parents may be added.
"We don't just teach children. We teach everybody. The parents, grandparents," said Ms. Friedman, noting that an 84-year-old woman is using the center to learn how to read.
More than 70 families have enrolled in the center, which was designed by a coalition of educators, businesses, community health care facilities, civic organizations and parents.
It received a one-time, start-up grant from the Baltimore Community Foundation and has received a three-year $216,000 grant from Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.
Ms. Friedman credits Farring Elementary's Principal Shirley Zongker for allowing her to start the center.
"You have to let people run with an idea. We have too many good people here for [me] just to run point and be in charge all the time," Ms. Zongker said. "We needed to do something to address the needs of the younger children. We needed to reach out."
Terry Highfield, 34, and a mother of four, is learning math and spelling in the center's adult basic education class. She was kicked out of a Baltimore City school in the eighth grade when, she said, she tried to punch a boy who had been harassing her, but ended up accidentally hitting the principal. She never went back to school.
Her day of reckoning came when her children asked her for help with their spelling. She couldn't help them. Instead, they helped her sound out words.
"I was embarrassed," said Mrs. Highfield, who helps the center with day care and has two children attending Farring.
Things are getting better. Mrs. Highfield puts difficult words in her sentences, and writes down words until they are committed to memory. Eventually, she wants to take her GED.
Progress hasn't come easy. At first she feared she would be the oldest person in class. Ms. Friedman prowled the halls and made sure she went to class. Sometimes, Ms. Friedman found her hiding outside, smoking a cigarette.
"I make them come to class because they would rather stay out there and talk and chat," said Ms. Friedman. "No one likes to go where the work is hard."
On a recent day, Ms. Friedman sat on the floor with mothers and grandmothers who balanced children on their laps. It was the day to learn the letter "C." There were paper C's, cutouts of cats pasted onto ice cream sticks. Everyone wore a hat in the shape of a cat as Ms. Friedman read aloud from "The Good Bad Cat."
"The cat ran over the game," she said, making her ice cream stick cat leap into the air. "Make your cat go over, up high. Make him go up over your head."
Some children smiled, others just giggled.
Later, Jackie Juratovac, 52, watched her grandson, Luke Chaney, 2, paint watercolor pictures of things that began with the letter "C." Young Chaney was waiting for the "C" he had rolled from biscuit dough to finish baking.
Ms. Juratovac brings her grandson to the center while his mother, Angela, 30, a single parent, works two jobs to support him and his brother, Zachary, 5, a student at Farring. Ms. Juratovac says she sees improvements in her grandson everyday, little things such as socialization and independence.
"He thinks about things and he's finding out what he likes."