She liked the results in her classroom when she taught Nintendo-style, but her success wasn't always met with approval. "Oh, and I caught it from the special ed department," recalls Ball. "Oh, good Lord. The resource kids who were in my room wound up being non-special ed. They were dismissed, because I taught them in their strongest learning mode, which was being able to move and have visual associations."
While Ball was a student favorite at the HISD campuses where she taught, teaching relationships proved to be an entirely different matter. "Every school I go to there was animosity," she remembers. "Either they love me or they can't stand me." (Ball's former supervisor, Bastian principal Edward Thompson, thinks Ball is exaggerating. Most of her co-workers at Bastian, he says, respected her as a teacher.)
For whatever reason, although Ball has the test scores to prove her method works, it has not been widely copied in HISD. Teaching specialist Linda McKenzie, an HISD employee and a fan of Ball's, agrees that her style could be used more widely, especially to reach at-risk students.
"I feel the district should have capitalized on it," says Ball. "I've got a gift, I'm trying to give it, and they won't take it."
Ball's gifts have found unusual recipients in other places, however, including the Tanglewood home of Anne Dale Owen, a clothes designer and granddaughter of Robert Lee Blaffer, one of the founders of Humble Oil. Owen took an interest in innovative teaching, and had used her influential connections to promote Erik Cork, an educational consultant who was himself blown away by Ball when he visited Bastian. Cork introduced Owen to Ball, sparking a close relationship between the two.
"If we had more teachers like that, we wouldn't have the problems we've got at schools," enthuses Owen. "She is inspiring to the kids, to the grownups. She's theater. It's performance art, and she's a master."
Owen staged several demonstrations of Ball's talents at her home and invited Houston business people to participate. Owen marvels at the almost surreal results: "She had grown people, bankers and lawyers and everybody standing up and moving and singing and dancing."
Owen also hired Ball to tutor her daughter Abigail, who had been graded unsatisfactory at the end of first grade in private school. Ball began visiting the Owen household after school and weekends to teach the daughter and several classmates.
"Abigail went from nonsatisfactory at the end of last year in first grade to satisfactory in second grade starting off the year," says Owen. "I only had Harriett six days after school last year, and I had her four or five weekends this year, so in 12 sessions she brought my child up to the second-grade level." At a parents' conference in October, Owen says, her daughter's teachers told her they couldn't understand how the girl had been classed unsatisfactory the previous year.
Owen says Ball brought to her daughter something that isn't available for any price in private schools. "I walk through the halls of Kinkaid, I walk through the halls of St. John's, and I don't hear singing anywhere," she observes. "It's interesting that dynamic teaching is not used more. It's probably because you don't have dynamic teachers or because it's not considered viable."
That may change for Ball soon, with a little help from her friends.
Cork introduced her to a wider audience at the National Association of Black School Educators in Reno, Nevada, last month and it didn't take long for word to spread.
"I told people, 'You're in for a treat. You're going to see one of the most sensational teachers in the country.' " Cork says Ball soon had teachers, principals and superintendents singing and swaying.
Watching the interplay between Ball and her students in Galveston, it's hard to believe that a technique so simple and inspiring isn't a part of every teacher's arsenal.
"I want to measure a mountain," shouts Ball. "Tell me which one I'm going to use, meters, liters or grams?"
"Meters!" comes the response.
"Why?" demands Ball.
The kids chant: "Because meters measure how long, how wide, how far."
She pauses to mop away more sweat, and smiles at the guests watching the demonstration. "Do you need to see more?" she asks.
It's the easiest answer of the session. Public education clearly needs more of what Harriett Ball's got to give.
