An innovative teacher turns kids into writers

"I was like, 'I've never done this before!' But she made us want to talk about the book and seriously think about it.... It made us all feel kind of like, 'Oh wow, we're actually learning something,'" Brian says.

Barile had always wanted to be a teacher, but she became a paralegal instead, partly to please her father, she says. When she went to night school to change careers, her student-teaching brought her to Revere. A year later, after working with high school dropouts, a position opened up and she grabbed it.

"I'm always thinking about, 'How can I make this more interesting for the kids?' " she says. Then she channels that interest into skills: demanding they include literary evidence, such as direct quotes, to back up their essays, for instance.

Mr. O'Brien says the students respect Barile because they know she holds them to high standards. She fills their papers with comments and has them redo their work if it's not good enough.

"This is a community where some people will have lower expectations," he says, but Barile tries to connect with everyone, whether it's a pregnant teen or a gang member. "A lot of kids rise to that when they see, 'Oh, she's not going to let me put my head down in class.... She knows I'm better than this.' "

"I'm still trying to save the world," Barile says with a tired smile and the acknowledgment that it sometimes wears her down.

That's partly why she calls her recent award "a career highlight" and "the gift that keeps on giving." At the ceremony, she was amazed to see 1,000 people give her a standing ovation. She even gets congratulated in the grocery store.

But for now, it's just another day to cruise around the classroom, keeping her kids writing as she nudges and praises them.

"Excellent. You've got great stuff there," she says after reading over a boy's shoulder. "Keep your verb tense the same," she calls out to the class. And then, pausing over another story in progress, she exclaims with genuine delight: "Slurped! Slurped is a great onomatopoeia!"

For Merzudin Ibric, grades 1 to 3 were a casualty of war in Bosnia. Grades 11 and 12 would have gone up in smoke, too, if not for the intervention of English teacher Nancy Barile.

An immigrant to the United States at age 12, Merzudin's English was fluent by the time he reached Ms. Barile's class as a sophomore at Revere High School. All too often, he had his head down on his desk, but even then he'd manage to toss out some sophisticated comments that gave his teacher glimmers of hope.

"Finally, I pulled him aside, and I was like, 'Look. What is your deal?' " Barile says. He confided that he planned to drop out and get a job as soon as he turned 16.

"She told me that she would not let me drop out ... because she thought I was smart, and she wanted me to graduate, and she told me that I was going to go to college," he says in a phone interview.

Barile knew he was a fast runner, so she paired up with the track coach to persuade Merzudin to pull his grades up in the three classes he was failing so he could compete. He went on to become a state and regional champion.

Currently on scholarship for a postgraduate year at Phillips Academy in nearby Andover, he'll attend Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., next fall. "I'm glad that I listened," Merzudin says.

Barile also urged him to write a book about his experiences as a child in Bosnia and his transition here. He listened to that, too. Now his teachers at Andover are helping him try to get it published.

"She's just an amazing person, and I'm ever thankful to her for helping me out," he says of the woman who befriended his whole family. "If I need advice on something, she's always there; she does not hesitate at all."

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