The Science of Sweetness

Originally Published in the Washington Post - Style: April 6, 2012

Winnette McIntosh Ambrose does double duty at Sweet Lobby bakery and NIH lab

On a perfect day, Winnette McIntosh Ambrose would be in the kitchen of the Sweet Lobby, the pastry shop on Barracks Row she owns with her brother, by 6 a.m., in her National Institutes of Health lab by 10 a.m. and home by 8 p.m.

But not every day is perfect.

On this day, Ambrose is in the throes of training a new baker, which makes her a little late to Building 6 on the NIH campus, where she dons a white lab coat and peers through a microscope at mouse retinal cells. The cells are being cultured on a new biomaterial that Ambrose hopes will provide them with a better living environment than regular substrate. She would like to see, someday, sections of this biomaterial transplanted into degenerating retinas to restore vision.

Usually, her two lives — one as a creator of fine pastries and the other as a biochemical engineer — dovetail in a strange kind of harmony. Ambrose has a simple explanation why. “A lot of what we do in the lab involves a protocol of some kind,” Ambrose says. “You figure out how to plan an experiment in order to test the hypothesis. When you do an experiment, there are proportions — so this idea of following recipes to get a desired result is very much innate to me. When it comes to the kitchen, it’s kind of a similar thing. It was just a natural fit for me.”

The fit proved so natural that in February, just seven months after opening its doors on Capitol Hill, the Sweet Lobby won Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars.” Ambrose, incidentally, has never taken a cooking class.

Any cook knows that science has its place in the kitchen — it thickens sauces, raises souffles and enables other seemingly magical transformations. But Ambrose understands the marriage of sugar and butter just as she understands the link between tissue and substrate.

And there’s something more in the way this 36-year-old has dedicated her energies and expertise toward healing the most essential parts of the human body — the eye, the heart and the insatiable sweet tooth inside each of us. She is a perfectionist — tempered with a gift for madly creative improvisation. The same commitment to trial and error that is evident in her design of a cardiovascular stent (Ambrose holds a patent for the first Food and Drug Administration-approved carotid stenting device) is evident in her colorful macarons, which sit in mouth-watering rows in the Sweet Lobby’s custom-designed cases.

Fascination with science

As a young girl, growing up in a middle-class family on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Ambrose exhibited a highly motivated and ambitious nature. She always had a fascination with science, as well as an interest in languages.

“I knew from a fairly early age that there was this place called MIT, where you studied engineering, and you had to work really hard to get there. It was my goal from very early on.” At that point in her life, she’d had little exposure to things culinary. “What I did do,” she says happily, “was eat a lot of really tasty food.”

At 19, she entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on scholarship, beginning a double major in chemical engineering and French language and literature. “So having this kind of dual mind-set is something I’ve been comfortable with for a long time,” Ambrose says.

Almost immediately, she met fellow Trinidadian Ricardo Ambrose, a Computer Science major, and fell in love. They were married six days after graduation.

The food at MIT was ghastly, she says, so under Ricardo’s direction — he was an accomplished cook — they began preparing and freezing a month’s supply of meals. Soon, they were entertaining friends — he cooking the main courses, she the appetizers and desserts.

During a semester at the Sorbonne in Paris, Ambrose discovered French patisserie, particularly the macaron, that whimsically colored and filled almond meringue. Her admiration was based strictly looks — on a student budget, she couldn’t afford them. Only years later would she taste one, but she was determined to learn how to make them.

‘A global perspective’

It was after graduate school in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins University when Ambrose began her methodical experimentation with making the technically precise macaron.

“It was about finding existing recipes, figuring out how to modify them and making them my own, combining my technical background with what I call a global perspective.” She laughs and says, “A lot of trial and error, too.”

Jennifer Elisseeff, Ambrose’s adviser at Johns Hopkins, says that she was good at bringing different things together. “She was the one to bridge all the people she had to work with. In science, you don’t usually see people with such social skills,” Elisseeff says.

After Ambrose obtained her doctorate in 2009 and eight months after accepting a job at the NIH’s National Eye Institute, she decided the time had come to put her culinary ingenuity to the test and open a boutique bakery with her younger brother (and fellow MIT graduate), Timothy McIntosh. He moved to Capitol Hill, where Ambrose trained him in the techniques she had taught herself.

It took 10 months to convert a 100-year-old former hair salon to the sleek storefront that is the Sweet Lobby. Ambrose was involved in every detail, from the high-capacity commercial kitchen to the color palette. The boxes, labels, even the tags were hers from concept to creation.

Creativity in science can progress at a glacial pace. “I think that the gratification you get from the life in pastry is a lot more immediate. I can come in with an idea for something I think would be amazing today and see it tomorrow. There are loads of opportunities for being inventive in science — that’s what it’s all about — but knowing whether or not your inventiveness plays out to impact people is a very delayed process,” Ambrose says.

Keeping both worlds aloft is a Herculean task. “It has segmented my life in two,” she says. Until she won “Cupcake Wars,” she never told anyone at NIH — not even her boss — about her “other” life at the Sweet Lobby.

“I feel that when you’re in one sphere, it’s important to focus on that sphere,” she says. “Unnecessary distractions can detract from the integrity of what you’re doing in that space.”

But if she had to choose? “I really don’t like thinking about it,” she says, frowning. “Most of the time, I am at peace, but I would not be entirely truthful if I said I didn’t feel conflict at times. But it’s my choice.” She smiles.

“At the end of the day, too, we have to be careful not to take ourselves too seriously.”

Because when you live in two worlds, every day cannot be a perfect day.

You, Too, Have Been Rejected

Originally Published in the Philadelphia Inquirer Op Ed pages March 28, 2010

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Grass-Roots Teaching

Originally published in the Washington Post Magazine: April 15, 2007

Can a public school program empower the surrounding community? That's the goal of Linkages to Learning in Montgomery County.

"Trevon, can I see your board, honey?"

The fourth-graders seated on the rug in front of Jacqueline Filiault are still young enough to accept endearments: sweetie, precious, mi amor. A teacher could fall in love with such polite, hardworking children, and it seems Filiault has fallen hard, as she gently pushes her students along. On a winter afternoon, there are about 17 children in this classroom at Broad Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring, and there are almost as many levels of ability.

An assistant teacher leans toward Trevon, a slight boy with curling lashes, whose head is bent low over his white board. Most of the other kids have already held up correct answers to the math problem and are wiping off the dry-erase marks with their sleeves, ready to go again.

The assistant watches as Trevon writes barely legible numbers onto his board.

"Are you done? Okay, show her."

He flips his board around so Filiault can confirm his correct answer, and the class goes on to the next problem. This time, Trevon is one of the first to get it done. Filiault beams at him, and he smiles, his face twitching slightly. The boy's psychiatrist of three years, David Zwerdling -- Dr. Z, as he is known here at Broad Acres -- is still adjusting his medication. Zwerdling is trying to make sure Trevon has enough to stay focused despite his Attention Deficit Hyper-activity Disorder, but not so much that the medication's side effects overtake him.

For a boy who just a couple of years ago wouldn't talk and was described as "unresponsive to redirection," Trevon is making good progress, Zwerdling says. And though the boy's file reports possible below-average intelligence, Zwerdling believes this probably underestimates Trevon's abilities, which could be masked by his other deficits.

In 1991, the Montgomery County Council concluded that issues such as poor health, emotional problems, language barriers and a general fear of an unfamiliar system were preventing low-income and immigrant families from seeking out services that were available to them. Often, by the time the families found the services, their problems had worsened and were more difficult to resolve. And even then, parents and children often missed appointments because they lacked transportation or child care. To improve accessibility, the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services, the Montgomery public school system and various social service providers launched Linkages to Learning in 1993, an innovative program that brings everything under the school roof.

"Instead of having to deal with urgent needs, you could do prevention; you could help people as things come up," says Sharon Strauss, who manages the program for Montgomery County. At Broad Acres, Linkages offices are housed in a portable building attached to the school. If children don't show up for a counseling appointment, Linkages staff members can simply fetch them from class, or call or visit them at home.

The Broad Acres program was the third to come on board, in September 1997, and there are now 28 Linkages sites serving 3,500 children and their parents at county elementary and middle schools, with an overall budget of about $6 million. About $5 million comes from the county, which contracts with community-based nonprofits such as YMCA Youth and Family Services, which employ the school-based staff. Grants, faith groups and other community organizations and businesses provide the rest of the funds. All students and their parents at Linkages schools may use the services, which are free, except for minimal mental health fees charged for some children in the state insurance program. "Tons of research and data shows positive results for this kind of approach," says Anne Vor der Bruegge, who manages the Carlin Springs Community School model in Arlington, a pilot program similar to Linkages. "All the things a family might need, you address in a coordinated way."

At Broad Acres, 89 percent of the school's roughly 500 children qualify for Federally Assisted and Reduced Price Meals (FARMS). A majority are also from immigrant families, most of them Hispanic. As at other Linkages sites, new families learn about the program through back-to-school activities, parent-teacher conferences, health fairs and other community events. Children can also be referred to Linkages by the principal, teachers, parents and guidance counselors.

When a new family comes to Broad Acres, school nurse Ladys Lux is usually the first to see them. She checks their immunization records, enrolls them in the health center and schedules a physical at the school clinic. She'll determine whether the family has medical insurance, and if not, she'll help with their applications to the state program.

Next, if Lux thinks the family requires additional services, she walks them to the Linkages offices so the staff can evaluate their need for shelter, food, clothing and psychotherapy. Parents may receive referrals to English, computer and other skill-building classes. The clinic will also set up what is often the child's first visit to a dentist.

An immigrant from Ecuador, Lux understands the challenges of dealing with a bureaucracy in a strange country. Sympathetic but firm, she pushes the parents to become self-reliant. Phones, she knows, are particularly challenging, and some parents hang up when they hear a recording in English. Lux reassures them that they'll hear the message in Spanish if they are patient. She says she tells them, "If you don't advocate for your child, then nobody's going to do it."

On a much larger scale, the program also aims to make the surrounding community more self-reliant, by helping parents become more resourceful and gain the skills to give back, says Bob Evert, the founder of the Linkages program at Broad Acres.

"A service is only empowering as long as the person can do it for themselves," says Evert, who now works at YMCA Youth and Family Services and has a private psychology practice.

At a recent afternoon meeting of Linkages personnel, Evert stood at a white board in the trailer that houses the school's program and drew circles and arrows in an attempt to explain the program's sociological complexities. Then he paused in mid-scribble, smiled wryly, and tried to sum up the goal.

"Cut through [the red tape], and make it happen for the families," he said.

Lorna Hogan, now 45, sits at a desk in the small, newly refurbished offices of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a nonprofit in Adams Morgan that helps low-income families with substance abuse issues and provides support for women who are trying to regain custody of their children after having been incarcerated. Lorna is associate director of a parents advocacy group for the nonprofit, where she has worked since 2003. On the wall is a framed photo of Lorna, arms around her son Trevon and her three other children. They are all smiling happily.

It's hard to imagine that, just a few years ago, this woman with such lively eyes was skimming the bottom. Raised by her grandmother in Prince George's County, Lorna fell into an abusive relationship at age 14 with a senior at her high school. By age 25, she had graduated from marijuana and alcohol to crack cocaine. A high school dropout, she couldn't hold down a job or care for the children she had begun having, relying on her grandmother to raise them. She tried several short-term treatment programs without success. Then, at 39 , she was arrested for possession of crack cocaine and jailed for three months. With her grandmother in a nursing home, three of Lorna's four children were put in foster care. The oldest, Danté, then 9, was placed separately, and Trevon, 4, was put in a group home with his 7-year-old sister, Tiana. Four-month-old Anthony stayed with his father. Upon her release in 2001, Lorna was referred to an in-patient program where she could bring Anthony with her. Slowly, she began to see her other three children, and, after 18 months of increasingly long supervised visits, a judge awarded her full custody. When she was reunited with Trevon in 2002, his hyperactive behavior overwhelmed her. She sought help at a mental health center in Southeast Washington, where they diagnosed Trevon with ADHD and put him on medication. In 2003, she moved her family from the District to Silver Spring, hoping for a new start and attracted by the reputation of Montgomery County schools.

Lorna learned about Linkages to Learning after confiding her family's difficulties to Jody Leleck, the Broad Acres principal at the time. Aside from Trevon's ADHD, Trevon's speech was unclear, and he was having trouble reading, Lorna noticed. While Zwerdling and the Linkages psychologists assessed Trevon's treatment needs, Lorna, whose public assistance had not yet been transferred to Maryland, was provided with gift cards to grocery stores, as well as clothing, pull-ups for Anthony and referrals for her family's other needs. Zwerdling supplied her with free samples of Trevon's medication, and Trevon began receiving regular psychotherapy, family therapy, speech and occupational therapy, and a variety of academic services, all of which took place at Broad Acres during school hours.

Lorna was, she says, amazed that a school could serve so many needs. "A person who's in recovery from substance abuse, when people find that out, you get this judgmental thing," Lorna says. "I have not felt that since I've been here."

Shortly before a session with Trevon in early December, Zwerdling held the boy's thick case record in his hands and thumbed through the pages. The record told of difficult times early on, both at home and at school, and revealed the boy's history of emotional outbursts and anxiety, especially during the transitions to and from foster care, and the time when his mother reentered his life. His verbal skills were so poor that he tended to express himself physically instead.

In March 2004, the file records showed a defiant child who would suddenly dart down the school hallway when upset. Unable to relate to the other children, he talked to himself. In his notes at the time, Zwerdling described Trevon as talking out of turn and very distracted. He switched the boy's medications, and a few pages later, reports from teachers note that Trevon was doing much better, receiving 100 percent on a math paper. Turning more pages, to fall 2004 and beyond, we learn that Lorna was hospitalized for four months with acute pancreatitis and that afterward she'd had to go to a nursing home for rehabilitation while her then-boyfriend stayed with her children. Once more, teachers reported uneven behavior, and observed that Trevon's tics were becoming more frequent. Again, Zwerdling adjusted the medication, then deduced that with Trevon's mother still in the hospital and her boyfriend unfamiliar with the routine, Trevon was not taking his medicine regularly.

During those months, Lorna says, the staff at Linkages made sure her children had the food, clothing and academic help they needed. She grins when she recalls the way the counselors hugged her when she was able to come home. She'd left well before her doctors advised and was in a wheelchair at first and had to be fed through a tube, but she wanted to finish convalescing with her children. "I am a very strong and determined person," she says, her dark eyes flashing.

Just months after Lorna's recovery, in 2005, the county's department of social services referred Lorna to an office skills program at Montgomery College to help her progress in her job. Linkage's employees cheered her on and even gave her school supplies.

"Just like the kids!" Lorna recalls. "And, as I was getting more and more help with school, and as I was learning and I was doing it, I would go share what happened with me this week, and I always had an open ear there . . . They encouraged me that I could do this, that I was capable of doing it. And I did it."

Throughout 2005 and 2006, Trevon's report card noted that he was listening and learning better and was more outgoing. Zwerdling was still adjusting his medication, but the boy struck the doctor as more conversational and focused.

At the therapy session in early December, Zwerdling first measured and weighed Trevon. He was 4-foot-6 and 58 pounds. Zwerdling put a pen mark on the growth chart and showed Trevon where he was, in the fifth percentile for his age. Zwerdling said he would continue to monitor Trevon's growth; the boy's small size could be the natural result of having a short mother, or it could be an undesirable side effect of the medications, in which case, Zwerdling would need to change them. Then they began the therapy session.

Trevon, who had just turned 11, still could not express himself with much complexity, which was apparent when he answered the doctor's simple questions, his voice high and not always easy to understand, although speech therapy is part of his regular routine. A few times, Zwerdling had to ask him to repeat himself.

Zwerdling: Ms. Filiault says you're really good at math. Do you like math?

Trevon: Maybe.

Zwerdling: Maybe? You're not sure about that? Do you like some of math?

Trevon: Yeah.

Zwerdling: Which part do you like?

Trevon: (unintelligible)

Zwerdling: Huh?

Trevon: Science.

Zwerdling: Oh, you like science. But what about math? What part of math do you like?

Trevon: Adding.

Zwerdling: Are you pretty good at adding?

Trevon: Uh-huh.

Zwerdling : Okay, I'm gonna tell you a really hard one, okay? What's 1 plus 1?

Trevon: Two.

Zwerdling: All right!

When Lorna joined them a few minutes later in the therapy room, Trevon brightened a little and became more communicative as the three discussed ways Trevon could devote more care to his homework and write more slowly to improve his handwriting. Zwerdling handed Trevon his notepad and asked him to write a sentence in his best handwriting. Trevon shrugged, took the proffered pen and wrote carefully. Taking the pad back, Zwerdling smiled delightedly and turned it toward Lorna. "'See, this is great! Good job!"

Afterward, Lorna smiled as she tucked her short hair into a black velvet cap and buttoned her coat against the frigid weather. Normally, she would dash to work, but she had the day off and was looking forward to some time by herself.

"This place is more than just dealing with the school and the children; it's dealing with the whole family, and that's the thing -- the whole family has to heal," she said.

Months later, looking toward the windows from her desk at the Rebecca Project, the first taste of spring sun filtering in above 18th Street NW, Lorna sounded proud when she explained that she had now been in recovery for six years. Her oldest, Danté, is in high school; Tiana is in middle school; and Trevon and Anthony are in fourth and first grades, respectively, at Broad Acres.

She was optimistic as she reflected over the improvements in Trevon.

"I see him growing. He's become more active outdoors. His social skills are improving, and he has a friend. He's changing," she said. "We may have the stubborn streak sometimes, but he's able to express himself more now."

And, as though suddenly clarifying all of Bob Evert's enigmatic circles and arrows scribbled on the white board back at Broad Acres, Lorna explained why she has chosen to help others in her work.

"I do the work that I do to share with other people that there's hope out there . . . I'm just giving back."

Russell C. Barajas last wrote for the Magazine about choosing high schools. She can be reached at rcbarajas@mac.com.

High Anxiety

Originally published in the Washington Post Magazine: 
Sunday, August 6, 2006

An Arlington mother finds that, as the competition for college intensifies, ninth grade never seemed so important

Sebastian positions the bottle of chocolate syrup over his glass of milk and is beginning to give it a hard squeeze when I say casually, "There's a high school information meeting tonight at 7. Want to come?"

The almost empty bottle lets out a rude gassy noise. Sebastian says nothing until he's squeezed the last drops into his glass. He rights the bottle on the table and looks at me wearily, long curly hair almost obscuring his hazel eyes.

"Do I have to?"

I'd felt from the beginning that this was futile -- my casual tone had been a ruse -- but I give it one last try. "It might be a good idea. I bet a lot of your friends are going to be there."

He gives a derisive snort. "Yeah, right. If I go, no one will be there. If I don't, everyone will go. What's the point?" His spoon rattles loudly against the glass as he stirs, watching the brown liquid swirl.

Our son is poised on the knife's edge between middle and high school, and we have arrived -- as if by time machine, it seems -- at the moment when we must decide where he will spend his last four years of mandatory education.

We live in Arlington, and Sebastian has spent the first nine years of public school in partial Spanish immersion programs at Francis Scott Key Elementary School and Gunston Middle School. That's a choice my Colombian-born husband, Adolfo, and I made for our three sons, so they would grow up bilingual and get an early appreciation for their father's Latin background. Arlington's rich cultural and economic diversity is also why we've chosen to raise our kids here, in a county where the public schools' Web site boasts of its 19,000 students from more than 120 countries, speaking more than 100 different languages. The desire to continue this life education is about the only thing Adolfo and I are certain of as we embark on the journey to find the right high school for our oldest. It's hard to tell what Sebastian wants. He is reluctant to engage in the "which school" debate, but I sense his anxiety about the upcoming transition.

"I don't know," he says hollowly from the back seat one afternoon on the way to a tennis class. "I just think about the fact that all the credits are gonna count. What if I totally tank?"

"You're a good student," I reassure him, perhaps too brightly. "A smart kid! You'll be fine. Don't worry about it!"

Secretly, I wonder: Is he organized enough? Is he sufficiently motivated, ambitious, resilient, confident? Can he turn down the amp in his brain long enough to write those papers?

High school prepares you for college, college prepares you for life.

Ergo: High School = The Rest of Your Life. So here we all are, parents and child, facing an assignment that feels weighty enough to crush us all under its terrible implication:

High school is scary. Discuss. Then choose the right one.

Show your work.

Leaving Sebastian to brood over his chocolate milk, I attend high school information night on my own. It's just a preliminary survey after all, so I don't insist that Adolfo leave work early to join me. This year, it's being held on October 24 at Wakefield High School in South Arlington. Inside the entrance, I accept a thick folder of information from a crisply uniformed ROTC member and follow the other parents down the hallway to the auditorium. Looking at the people around me, it's easy to spot the first-time high school parents. Their faces are masks of stunned desperation: How did this happen so fast?

And their eyes -- our eyes -- say: Our children are no longer children. Starting now, there are no take-backs or do-overs. Everything counts.

The audience includes parents I've known since Sebastian entered kindergarten at Key Elementary. How many of us will be together next September, we wonder aloud, adding to the buzz around us. We're silenced by the crackling of the microphone on the stage.

We are welcomed, and given an overview from several educators, including Arlington Superintendent Robert Smith, and about half an hour later parents splinter off to presentations in various rooms around the school. Represented here are the four Arlington high schools: Washington-Lee, which has the International Baccalaureate option; high-achieving Yorktown; H-B Woodlawn, with its hugely popular alternative approach; and Wakefield, which is open to all Gunston Middle students who want to continue in Spanish immersion. Each of these schools appeals to us in some way, so I want to get information on all of them. Topping the list at the moment, though, is the continuation of Spanish immersion, so I follow our close-knit group of parents to where Wakefield is presenting.

Wakefield's principal, Doris Jackson, is very charismatic. She's been with Arlington Public Schools for 15 years -- this is her fifth as Wakefield principal, and the staff members standing behind her this evening in Room 110 smile at us with pleasant zealotry. Jackson says the school believes fervently that the makeup of Advanced Placement classes should mirror the racial, ethnic and economic makeup of the general student body. To this end, in the spring of 2004, Wakefield launched an effort to support any and all students who want to take AP classes: a preparatory program called AP Bridge, which is designed to help entering students overcome their hormone-induced brain scramble by strengthening their time management and study skills. Visualizing Sebastian's junk heap of a desktop, I scratch a large "!" in my notes.

We then head to the presentation by the International Baccalaureate Programme at Washington-Lee, another natural choice for immersion kids because of its international curriculum and emphasis on incorporating a second language. By now my head is buzzing with information overload. I try to focus, but know I'll have to go to the November meeting instead for my information. I feel edgy and wrung out, and judging by the thinning crowd, many other parents feel the same. The evening ends, but I've gotten all turned around in this huge school and go out the wrong door. I end up in an unfamiliar parking lot, hunting for my car, which, I soon discover, is parked on the opposite side of the building. As I scurry sheepishly back through the door and down the almost-deserted halls, I imagine Sebastian getting lost here, too; his broad shoulders hunched up, his anger welling to the surface to cloak his embarrassment. On the drive home, my own shoulders hunched up over the steering wheel, I don't even hear the tunes on the radio.

Amy Shilo, a guidance counselor at Wakefield, says my parental anxiety is not entirely misplaced. Ninth grade is a tough transition for students. "I don't think they quite realized how difficult it would be," says Shilo. "The time-management skills they'd need, and the study time and just how much work they would have . . . They're stepping up to the plate in a much different environment than middle school . . . I think at some point they become like scared rabbits in the headlights."

Then, as if to soften the point, she adds: "Once they move past that and they realize they can handle the work -- it's just managing it -- they're okay."

But my mind is still stuck on "scared rabbits." What do scared rabbits do? If memory serves, they often run the wrong way -- perhaps into the path of oncoming traffic. It doesn't help that the schools are always sending home flyers trying to clue us in to teenagers' vulnerabilities. The latest crumpled offering, titled "Teen Brain Development," reminds us that adolescents have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain responsible for impulse control and judgment. There is also a section called "Things Not to Say," which I speed-read while crossing the kitchen. Placing the pamphlet on top of a teetering stack of school-related missives, I make a mental note to stop telling Sebastian to "get over it."

Of course, we're not alone in our quandary. With the abundance of magnet, language and IB programs in area public schools, many parents reach such a crossroads at some point. But choosing which path Sebastian should take still feels intensely personal and fraught with peril. Will our choice turn a smart, creative but mistrustful student into a confident and motivated one, or will it encourage the budding cynic?

"Nothing I do in school really sparks my interest. I feel like I'm wasting my time," he will tell me at one point during this process. "They're making me learn but not in a way I want to continue after school. I mean, anything will make you learn if they force you to do it for six hours a day."

Even though I know he is referring to only a couple of specific subjects -- and that he has enjoyed others -- the words are hard to hear.

I also find myself wondering whether ninth grade is as important to my child's future as it feels. Am I just buying into the skewed perspective of the middle-class hyper-parents surrounding me?

I ask Shirley Bloomquist, an independent college counselor in Great Falls. It does matter, she tells me. The reality is that colleges admit students based largely upon the first three years of high school.

"It's important students realize that ninth grade counts for one-third of your GPA." The good news, she says, is that colleges also look for an improving record, so a less-than-stellar performance is not the end of the world.

And how much do colleges care which high school Sebastian goes to, assuming it's not a poor performer (of which there isn't one in the mix here)? While colleges do recognize that some high schools are better than others, what really matters is how good a fit the school is for the student, says Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at University of Pennsylvania.

"Students will progress in an area where the fit is better," Stetson told me. "The actual choice isn't as critical if they learn how to shine."

Despite the reassurances, it seems unfair to me that Sebastian must start to build his permanent record at a time when biology is clearly working against him.

It's now early November, and I am feeling panicky. So many dates, such poor calendar skills. The major flurry of activity for potential transfer students is scheduled by Arlington County to occur between November 7 and January 20, so I go back over the pile of information I got at high school information night. I see that we already missed the deadline to apply to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County. Well, it seems too elitist anyway, clearly discriminating against those of us who don't have our acts together.

It's also not the place for Sebastian, he being more a liberal arts kind of guy. Then again, math and science are areas of strength for him. Then again, it's one less choice to worry about. I feel myself already getting tired of the then-again scenarios. Oh, and it seems I also missed the first transfer orientation meeting -- for students transferring out of their neighborhood school into another -- which was two weeks ago. Self-congratulations for being off to such a good start. The only school I have a feel for is Wakefield. It is time to examine what the others have to offer.

Adolfo and I arrive on time at the library of Washington-Lee High School on an unseasonably warm November evening. We are there to learn about IB -- the International Baccalaureate Programme (it's even spelled internationally!). We enter the crowded room to find that the presenter, Marilyn Leeb, has started. We slink around the back walls and scrounge chairs.

Leeb's New York patois sounds exotic here in Virginia. Rather than AP exams, she tells us that IB students take special exit exams prepared by the IB Organization, the foundation that administrates the program. The pass rate for these exams is 70 percent internationally, she says, and, at W-L, it is 90 percent. Wow, we think. IB students, she says, often get priority admissions to colleges, and they enter with tremendous confidence.

What's more, students coming in from the Gunston Spanish immersion program, as Sebastian is, would enter a track for fluent speakers and end up with a bilingual IB diploma. Adolfo and I glance at each other. This is sounding a lot like volunteering our reticent son for extra work. The tiny words in the PowerPoint presentation begin to blend together, and I find myself mildly put off by the grand-sounding buzzwords: extended essay, theory of knowledge, creativity-action-service. I know the jargon will turn Sebastian off, too.

Three senior girls join us near the end of the presentation. They're honest -- it has been incredibly hard. But with pride, one smiles and says, "I have all this knowledge inside of me, and I'm 17!" When asked why they'd done it, and if they'd do it again, two acknowledge that their parents had signed them up, but that they would definitely do it again. The third hesitates, looking at the floor. "I felt really overwhelmed between junior and senior year," she says. She pauses, then looks up at the crowd as if remembering where she is. "But I'd probably do it again."

It's not lost on Adolfo and me that there are no boys presenting. Our unscientific research -- which consists largely of comparing notes with other parents -- has led us to conclude that girls at this age are usually better organized than boys. Does that mean girls are more likely to do well in IB? Could Sebastian survive this intensity? Isn't this tantamount to college before college? The requirements are intimidating but, all in all, IB does appear to offer an edge.

To confound us further, two friends who teach undergrads at Johns Hopkins University weigh in over a bottle of wine one evening: Sure, they say, they know kids who've come from IB. "They're crestfallen to discover that they're no more or less able than a student who came out of an AP program," one tells us. So much for that edge, we think.

In order to opt Sebastian out of our neighborhood school, Yorktown, I must attend a meeting solely for the purpose of getting the principal to sign the pupil transfer application form. Yorktown is within walking distance of our house. It's very prestigious and turns out good students -- 90 percent go on to college, and it was No. 51 on Newsweek's "Best 100 High Schools" of 2005.

Despite this, it's not quite what we're looking for. The student body is less racially and ethnically diverse than the schools Sebastian has attended so far, and it's much more affluent. We want our son to go to school where the kids reflect the ethnic and economic mix in the world at large, and these reservations, together with our interest in continuing Spanish immersion, have thus far outweighed Yorktown's pluses. Even so, listening to Principal Raymond Pasi extol the school's virtues does give me the opportunity to wonder -- for the hundredth time -- if we are doing the right thing.

The neighborhood that surrounds H-B Woodlawn is a mixture of modest brick homes nestled amid mature trees, and new mansions rising starkly from shorn lots that sport their fledgling landscaping like peach fuzz on a teen's chin. Waiting for the designated first-floor classroom to empty out so a ninth-grade orientation meeting can take place, Frank Haltiwanger, the principal of the coolest program in town, stops a tall male student who's ambling down the hallway with enormous headphones over his ears. Frank (students at the school get to call the educators by their first names) shoots the breeze with the student for a few minutes, listening in on the phones, and it looks more like the meeting of two colleagues than that of adult and child. Yes, I think sadly, this is the place for Sebastian. He'd be as happy here as he could be in school. Of course, there are only eight slots open for ninth-graders this year, so his chances in the lottery are small. He was rooted in the No. 3 slot on H-B's middle school waiting list for three years -- and never moved an inch.

It is no great surprise that this school is so sought-after. It had only 585 students this past year, and class size is mouth-wateringly small. The school's philosophy, which harkens back to its '60s founding, is to provide students with more control over their own education. Its educators prize independence and self-discipline, and students are rewarded with increasing freedom. For 2005, H-B came in at No. 5 on Newsweek's coveted Best 100 list, beating out Yorktown by 46 places. (W-L was No. 44.) I know there's more to a school than this kind of ranking, but there's no denying it's a nice bit of cachet.

And maybe that No. 5 ranking is the reason the room is now packed -- parents are squeezed into every desk, lining the colorful walls, filling the squashy couches. Their eyes bore into relaxed Frank, who waits while everyone jostles for position. He looks at us, smiles easily, and says, "Well, we counted, and you're the largest group of potential transfer parents ever!"

Great, we all think glumly. I try not to want it too badly.

It's a dark early morning now, and the glaring kitchen bulbs show my desk calendar in an unflattering light. The January air is breathtakingly cold, and the streets are dark and surreal as I walk with Sebastian and the dogs to the bus stop on the hill. Deadlines are about to rain down on our heads.

The deadline for high school transfer applications has been extended to February 1, but this is not very helpful. We now have two more weeks in which to second-guess ourselves. When all your choices are good, you feel particularly vulnerable. I waffle on a daily basis between Wakefield and Washington-Lee (I try not to think about H-B at all, as distant as our chances are), and worry again that we might condemn Sebastian to the wrong one -- wrong for him, that is. Other than expressing a disinclination toward school in general, Sebastian avoids talking about it.

"So what is it you want in a high school?" I finally ask in exasperation. He sighs and looks away.

"I want a sense of purpose, a reason why I should go to school," he says. "I want to feel that when I come home from school, I've taken something with me."

It's a weighty answer, and I've long admired my son's willingness to march to his own beat. But it doesn't give me much to go on.

In the last days of January, we finally make our decision: Sebastian will go to Wakefield.

When all was weighed and measured, the IB program sounded like it was better suited to students who do not -- as Sebastian does -- deeply resent the amount of time school takes from their desired activities. It is also perhaps best for those students who are already able to juggle vast workloads with relative ease. As for H-B Woodlawn, the planets did not align this year: Sebastian placed a distant No. 83 on the waiting list.

Sebastian seems content with our choice -- most of his friends are going to Wakefield, too. And he's actually exhibiting some ownership over this decision, declaring his desire to continue in Spanish immersion.

Several days after we make our decision, I accompany a group of fifth-graders to Wakefield for a multi-level band rehearsal for South Arlington schools. It's a long, loud and chaotic morning, and afterward our band leader, John Findley, provides pizza for all the kids from his three elementary schools. We line a hallway, and as the kids eat I lean against the opposite wall, observing the high school students who pass by, forced to pick their way around the short, wiggling legs.

As I try to imagine Sebastian among them, a tall, tough-looking and impossibly cool guy turns the far corner and strides toward me. He's dressed all in black, muscled arms swinging at his sides, braids dancing against his shoulders. I smile reflexively, apologetically, as he passes by the frenetic kids and their pizza slices. He looks directly at me and breaks into a guileless, welcoming smile. He continues on his way past us and down the hallway, and I find myself still smiling. At that moment I suddenly have no problem picturing Sebastian walking these halls.

R.C. Barajas is a freelance writer.

A Dog's Life

Originally published in the Washington Post Magazine: Sunday, March 28, 2004

Published with several drawings by Sebastian Barajas. Above is one example.

They thought they had adopted an ordinary pet. Then they discovered her secret identity

My three boys shrugged on their coats. 

"We won't find anything," muttered Sebastian, the oldest, as he climbed into the car. "They're always too big, or too hairy, or something," We had been to two dog adoption events without finding a dog that suited us, and the boys were already discouraged. But for some reason I had a feeling this would be the day.

Sebastian, Julian, Gabriel and I drove to the Baileys Crossroads Petco, where the Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation (LDCRF) exhibited its available dogs. On the sidewalk in front of the store, a bruiser named Rocky appealed to us, and a volunteer encouraged us to take him for a walk. The dog was a slobbery, muscular charmer, the product of big-chested, wide-mouthed forebears, with powerful jaws that could have snapped a chair leg. His mismatched eyes rolled at us, and we joked about naming him Mad-Eye. But once he was on the leash, the nylon fibers stretching to the breaking point, it became clear that Rocky was too much dog. The twins, 9 and not particularly tall for their age, had to throw their arms across their faces to fend off his giant tongue, and Sebastian, wiping his sodden sleeve on his jeans, shook his head. 

"He's sweet and everything," he said, "but he's just too hyper." Sebastian would be entering middle school soon, and was tight-lipped about his feelings concerning the unknown demands ahead. But finding just the right dog -- a dog that would be loyal to him, whatever challenges he might face at the new school -- seemed to have taken on tremendous importance to him. 

We wandered inside where we spotted a young dog, puppyish in her proportions. When the boys patted her, she offered up a few licks as their hands bumped over her ribs. Her papers said she was a 6-month-old hound mix, but she looked closer to a year. Her file said her name was Kelsey, and that she had been rescued by LDCRF from the Spotsylvania Animal Shelter, where she had been brought in by her owner. "Can't keep her no more," was all the person had managed on the give-up form, along with ticking the "yes" box next to good with children.

We walked her outside, through the rush of eager, adoptable dogs and across the street, noticing a samba-like sway in her hindquarters. I could see that under the dense brindled coat, she needed fleshing out. She accepted a treat or two, wagged her tail -- which, judging by its various unnatural angles, had been broken in several places -- and exhibited a slight favoring of her left hind leg. But her shy, waiflike beauty and her gentleness were captivating. We all looked at one another, grinning, and then went inside to fill out the adoption papers.

After contemplating a dog for so long, and then after many months of reading the want ads and searching the Internet, it was a strange feeling watching this unfamiliar creature, this shedding, limping hound dog, hop gingerly into our car for the first time. The boys clambered in behind, giddy but a little uncertain.

"I get to sit next to her!"

"No, I do! Why is it always you?"

"Go ahead. I don't want to -- she stinks."

At home, Mocha -- as we finally renamed her, for the chocolaty colors in her fur -- was sweet but withdrawn. She curled up in her bed and stayed there for two days. At her first vet visit that week, she and I were both nervous. Steven Rogers of the Falls Church Animal Hospital thought she looked thin, and was concerned that there was something abnormal in her leg or hips.

"She's got a strange rear end," he said. "Could be a badly healed pelvic fracture from a car accident, or an ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] tear." He put her on a slew of medications for infections and parasites, and said if her limp didn't clear up in a few weeks we should get X-rays.

Her limp didn't go away, and we returned. Dr. Rogers strode into the examination room where the boys and I were waiting. "Well, it's not her hips, and it's not her ACL," he said, with grim certainty. He snapped the X-ray into the light and pointed to two fuzzy ovals surrounded by what looked like gray dust. "Those are bullet fragments."

It seemed that we stopped breathing. Six weeks had been more than enough time to bind these boys to Mocha for a lifetime, and the thought of a bullet ripping into her leg produced a sputtering explosion of outrage, condensed to a question aimed at the world in general and the vet in particular:

"What kind of person would shoot a puppy?"

Dr. Rogers just shook his head. He had clearly seen this kind of thing before.

After that, the boys looked at Mocha differently -- reverentially -- and the favorite topic at the dinner table for many days became what each of them might do if they found the unspeakable lowlife who'd shot her.

Over the next few weeks, it became clear that Mocha was a fearful dog. We could see that now. Tall men especially terrified her when they came to the house, and she would bark menacingly. She wasn't aggressive, but I was concerned that her fear could make her dangerous. Although small and slight, she could look vicious. I paid for group obedience classes, which turned out to be of little use because she was terrified of the trainer. When my parents came to visit that April, she kept up a steady, suspicious growl at my father. Back home, they told my sister about the unbalanced dog I'd gotten mixed up with. My dad said, "She'll have to be gotten rid of," my sister later confessed to me. I almost despaired, and had guilty daydreams of never having gotten Mocha -- or worse, of returning her.

But what kept my faith in her was her ease and obvious pleasure around children. In their presence, her tail would wag, she would sniff them all over and follow them happily, like a protective nanny. As she accepted our home as her own, she adopted the boys as her charges and playmates. She came to know exactly when the school bus would arrive, and would scratch at the front door at 3:45, going to where I keep her leash, and looking at me expectantly. We'd walk to the bus stop, and when the bus arrived, she'd wag herself to pieces as the boys tumbled off and wrapped their arms around her neck. But I knew she needed help, and so I decided to get her some one-on-one training.

We had 11 sessions with Michelle Beardsley, who owns a business called Capital Canines. Beardsley trains dogs and their owners, focusing on obedience, behavior problems, and even agility training. It was Beardsley who recognized that Mocha had been poorly socialized -- meaning that in her formative months she didn't have enough interaction with dogs or people, making her uncertain and nervous. Beardsley also pointed out that Mocha was a dog's dog -- more comfortable with other dogs than with people.

"She's what I'd call primitive," Beardsley said one day, as she watched Mocha practicing her sit-stay. "It could just be the way she was born, or maybe she's had to rely on her wilder canine heritage to survive." In fact, Mocha had all sorts of rituals that could be called primitive, like routinely dashing from the kitchen with a mouthful of kibble to "bury" in the carpet -- saving for lean times, I guessed. She even tried to hide chew toys in the floor of the twins' room, whimpering when she encountered, for the hundredth time, the obstinate hardwood. She shied away from open hands and barked and growled at strangers. She was primitive, certainly. At some point that might have been what saved her.

Beardsley's training left Mocha and me deeply bonded. I got comfortable being in charge, and Mocha began to see that trust would now be rewarded -- with treats, with a soft bed by the heater, with three boys competing for her affections. But the mystery of Mocha's earlier experiences still haunted us. We would watch her and wonder aloud what had happened, what her life had been like before. And we continued to speculate on who had shot her.

Sixth grade was soon in full swing for Sebastian, with its many social and academic demands. Perhaps in response to these, Sebastian, who had always enjoyed drawing, soon began a new sketchbook and started drawing in it every free moment he could find. In page after page, he began to explore and document Mocha's story as he envisioned it, conjuring from his pens an intriguing alter ego for her.

In Sebastian's serialized version of Mocha's life, she does what he cannot -- she searches for revenge against the shooter. His comics show not the scared, innocent puppy she was, but a cunning and merciless warrior, no longer defenseless but armed to the teeth with weaponry and kung fu moves. She speaks in her own unique vocabulary, such as, "Eat my laser, and my ill wishes!" and, "Oh, you cliche weirdos!" Against the thugs she meets, she "does the Matrix," leaping high in slow motion, twisting and firing. Perhaps Sebastian is living through her, enjoying her ability to defeat her enemies with such composure and finality. Friends and neighbors come regularly to see the latest installments of what have become known as the Mocha Comics. He reads them aloud, using different voices for all the characters, as his listeners turn and look with amazement at the sleeping dog that inspires them.

Lately, Sebastian's drawings have begun to reflect Mocha's growing contentment and peace with the world. She now relaxes in a hot tub -- a fountain in the background flows over rocks and around bonsai, while next to her a record player spins out music, and a towel with her name awaits. Mocha is taking a break from action-packed vendettas, happy to live the dog's life, as it were, though Sebastian is adamant she has not retired. He, too, seems to be having an easier time of things. His comics currently feature himself and his friends as the main characters, facing nothing more dangerous than an overly zealous teacher, or a schoolyard bully.

But Mocha cannot abandon her old life completely. Her next adversary, Sebastian has decided, will be an abused dog, trained to be fiercely aggressive. "I find metaphors for real life really tiresome," says Sebastian, though he admits that this new, ferocious villain is symbolic of the very fate his beloved dog escaped. "Mocha was a hair's breadth from going in the same direction, you know."

Note: Sadly, the rest of the drawings are no longer available on the Washington Post.com site.