I realized how much children learn from being around other people. When my son hears the rest of us talking, he learns new vocabulary words, and because he’s hearing them in context, he understands what they mean. He’s a good speller because he reads a lot, but also because he sees how his older siblings spell-he loves to watch them draw and write, and then he draws and writes his own things based on their ideas. They hate that-they think he’s “stealing” from them-but he learns. He retains that information, and later, he can still spell those words, even without the original in front of him.

Our children are learning all the time, whether we are purposely sitting down to create a learning moment or just moving forward through our day. They absorb, like little sponges, and they pull out the information later on. Just as they learn the basic skills of speech from their families, they will learn all the other necessary skills. What better learning environment can there be than a place where they feel loved and adored?

Public school leaders here expect a fight over students as charter school operators prepare to promote themselves in more affluent parts of town.

Bills that eliminate the restrictions on who may attend charter schools passed in both houses of the Tennessee legislature last week, prompting some charter operators to predict lotteries may be necessary to limit enrollment. Others purchased school buses to compete.

“We have been locked in North Memphis. Now, our focus is going to be more along the lines of East Memphis and Midtown areas,” said Rev. Anthony Anderson, head of the Memphis Business Academy in Frayser. The charter school moved into a renovated Kmart last year after outgrowing its home in Faith United Methodist Church, 2450 Frayser Blvd.

Of MBA’s 125 openings for this fall, “25 to 30 percent of them will come from communities we have not served,” Anderson said.

One of the biggest benefits of drawing from different parts of town is the opportunity to diversify the student body, say charter operators.

Test scores and school culture often improve with diversity. And the new students, Anderson said, “don’t bring some of the same neighborhood gang associations.”

Memphis City Schools board member Dr. Jeff Warren says charter companies trying to recruit around “Snowden, Idlewild, Richland” and other popular city elementary schools are in for a surprise.

“Potential charters attempting to cream from our top schools are going to find the competition daunting,” he said.

Many local charters, including KIPP — whose mission is to serve predominantly poor families — have no plans to target new audiences.

“We will accept any child that wants to enroll but we are not making any effort to target other communities,” said Jamal McCall, head of KIPP Memphis.

Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering already draws from 31 ZIP codes.

Executive director Harold Wingood says the law change means all charters will have to promote themselves better in a community that still largely doesn’t know what charters are.

“The truth is, Memphis City Schools are getting better all the time. Families have a lot of options, and charters are just one.”

It is against state law for charter operators in Tennessee to administer tests as part of their recruitment process. Because they are public schools, they must take every student who applies and in the order they applied. If more apply than a charter can accommodate, the schools have to hold lotteries.

The issue that charters enroll selectively is so sensitive, charter operators refrain from using the word “recruit,” Anderson said.

“We are not going after families of students on honor rolls; we will not be creaming.” But he expects parents who see MBA’s advertising in Midtown will read “daily homework” as code for rigor and responsibility and will be interested.

“I think parents will take a look at us.”

School board member Martavius Jones believes charters will try to take the best students.

“If they are saying they are not going to do it, then Memphis charter operators would be doing the complete opposite of what is taking place in other states.”

The bills eliminating the eligibility restrictions were sponsored on behalf of Gov. Bill Haslam by Sen. Mark Norris, R-Collierville, and Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis. Norris says charters offer teachers and administrators flexibility to turn around persistently low-performing schools.

Because the tax money for education follows the child, Norris is aware that enrollment exoduses will affect city school budgets.

When charters were sanctioned in Tennessee in 2002, they could serve only failing students or students in urban districts assigned to failing schools.

The law was amended in 2009 to include children who qualified for free or reduced lunch prices.

In poor cities, like Memphis, that change in eligibility doubled the number of children who could attend the charter schools.

Memphis has 22 charter schools; three more will open in the fall, enrolling a total of of 6,700 students or 6.5 percent of the city school population.

Even if charters do find a new constituency, they can’t enroll more students than their contracts with the city school board allow.

“Any new schools still have to go through our application process,” said Alfred Hall, chief of staff in the city schools.

“We have a well-structured, comprehensive, yet fair application process that has served as a model across the state. We’ll see where the applications fall based on their merits.”

Celtic Challenge is a beautiful game. The game consists of 45 tiles which have a rustic feel to them, a wooden playing board, Celtic Staff Rune Marker, and a marker stone. The game is well made gives you the feeling you are playing an ancient game.

The tiles are engraved with Celtic symbols. The symbols have roots in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. While many have suspected what the symbols mean no one really knows the actual meaning. The symbols include: Binary Knot, Triquetra, Celtic Quarternery Knot, Triskele Knot, and the Traditional Celtic Knot.

Object of Celtic Challenge

Simply the players have to remove as many tiles from the game board as possible in six rounds. The player who removes the most tiles after six rounds wins. The game can also be played solo. The recommended ages are for 8 and up.

Game Play

The game is fast paced, engaging, and centers on strategy. I love games which cause us to pause and think ahead a few moves. Games that go beyond the roll of the die or the hand dealt are the ones my family enjoys the most so this game was right up our alley. The game lasts about twenty minutes so you can play a few times or play just to pass the time. I especially love that the game can be played solo.

The judge deciding the intricacies of the city-county school consolidation case is a lifetime Memphian, travels the globe — often with his mother — and is a longtime Republican loyalist.

In his nine years on the U.S. District Court, Judge Samuel Hardwicke “Hardy” Mays, 63, has presided over the fates of twice-disgraced City Council member Rickey Peete, international drug-runner Craig Petties, narcotic distributor Dr. Daniel Fearnow and funeral home swindler Clayton Smart.

He ruled in the legitimacy of Anna He’s adoption and in how jet engine maintenance costs are deducted, a decision that netted FedEx Corp. $70 million, plus interest.

While these cases were high profile, they in no way affected the complexion of the community as the decision in the school consolidation case likely will.

Mays’ job is to sort out the conflict over whether Memphis City Schools is a special school district or not, and as such, whether Norris-Todd, the law passed last winter outlining how the merger should proceed, is valid.

From there, he will have to determine how voters will be represented on a joint school board.

“A whole lot of the public is interested in the case, and a whole lot of the public will be affected,” said Lewis Donelson, patriarch at Baker, Donelson, and Mays’ first employer.

“It’s a tough subject, and (the public interest) makes it a difficult case. Plus, there’s a power struggle between the existing county school board and everybody else in the room.”

The sides have agreed to let Mays rule instead of going to trial. Donelson predicts that the decision will be immediately appealed.

“Hardy knows it too. There’s too much ego at stake.”

People close to Mays sense the toll the assignment is taking on him, but they also say they are left to infer that, because he never discusses it.

“Hardy has always kept his own counsel,” said his mother, Eloise Mays, who tells the story of Mays returning home from Camp Mondamin in North Carolina as a boy and retreating to his room.

“He stayed and stayed and stayed there. Finally, I thought I should check on him. I knocked on the door and said, ‘Are you OK?’

” ‘I missed my privacy,’ he said. That tells you how Hardy is. He has always been self-contained.”

Mays declined to be interviewed for this story. As a judge, he is forbidden from talking about his cases.

Former governor Don Sundquist, who selected Mays for his legal counsel and later named him chief of staff, remembers plenty of occasions when the job put Mays in the hot seat, including death penalty cases and clemency hearings.

“I tell you what, I never doubted that Hardy would give me the right recommendation,” Sundquist says.

While the former governor said Mays will do what is “correct, right and fair,” he feels the weight on Mays’ shoulders.

“I think what he would be worried about is if he does what’s right, some of his friends won’t like it.”

Mays, who earns $174,000 as a district judge, was called before a grand jury in 2000 with a handful of others from Sundquist’s circle in an investigation of a competitive bid process that allowed a local child care broker to keep its state contract for 10 years, even though competitors received higher scores.

Nothing came of the investigation.

Shortly after it, Mays was nominated to fill the seat of U.S. District Judge Jerome Turner.

Lawyers, colleagues and friends describe him as highly intelligent, hard-working, curious, engaging, thorough and self-effacing. Without fail, they also mention his humor and his regard for the human condition, which parades through his court on the 11th floor of the Clifford Davis/Odell Horton Federal Building every day.

“It is a pleasure to be in his court,” said John Speer, who practiced with Mays at Baker, Donelson and now argues cases before him.

“His disposition and his approach to the lawyers, the parties, the jurors, his own staff is always respectful. They all appreciate the way he interacts with them.”

In the most recent Memphis Bar Association’s judicial survey in 2007, Mays was ranked eighth out of 24 local judges by local attorneys for his knowledge of law, thoroughness, demeanor, efficiency and accessibility. He outranked his four peers on the U.S. District Court.

“My memory of Hardy is that he was always a very fair person,” said Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, Speaker of the House during Sundquist’s administration.

“If you told him something, you didn’t have to go back and ask again. He’s a very honest person.”

Mays was born in 1948 on New Year’s Day in Memphis and graduated from White Station High School in 1966. He was editor of Scribbler, president of the Future Lawyers Club, homeroom president, member of National Honor Society, National Merit Semi-finalist and named Outstanding Senior.

He went to Amherst College and graduated in 1973 from Yale Law School with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

He worked for Baker, Donelson 22 years before joining Sundquist’s team.

He has never married.

He was nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush and was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate in 2002.

Since 2006, 85 percent of his verdicts appealed to the Sixth District Court of Appeals have been affirmed, according to Westlaw’s Judicial Reversal report.

While that indicates Mays makes few errors on the bench, many in the law community say the findings mean little because they don’t account for complexity of individual cases.

“I would caution that any trends from the majority of cases any district judge hears would be of only marginal usefulness for a case that is as unique — constitutionally and statutorily — as this one is,” said Daniel Kiel, University of Memphis law professor.

Mays was a visible player in Republican politics, both locally and nationally, for decades.

He ran more than 30 campaigns, including Bill Gibbons’ 1983 run for City Council and his 1987 bid for city mayor.

“Virtually all of us running for public office in the 1980s and the 1990s would turn to him for help because he was so good at it,” said Gibbons, now head of the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

“He has extremely good judgment on what to do and what not to do, and he would tell you plainly what not to do, often with humor.”

In the same period, Mays gave $22,400 to local and national races as well as serving as party co-chairman from 1989-91 and on the Republican Executive Committee from 1985-1990.

Sen. Mark Norris, R-Collierville, says Mays’ political leanings are irrelevant because the case is not partisan.

“There may be some who want to make it that, but it’s really not. If you look at the briefs and see what the law is … ” said Norris, co-author of the Norris-Todd law that set in place a 2 1/2-year planning period before the school merger can happen.

Week to week, Mays sees a parade of poignant human stories in his court, including the sentencing hearing last week for Billie Watson, a 55-year-old tire technician who’s worked a series of jobs in tire shops along Lamar and served time more than 30 years ago for series of aggravated robberies.

In 2008, he was charged with possessing a stolen handgun, and went to trial facing 15 years in prison. (Watson said he found the gun while being paid to clean an abandoned house and picked it up to keep it out of the hands of children who played in the house.)

Until Mays entered the courtroom, Watson sat with his head bowed and hands clasped, shifting his weight audibly on the wooden bench.

“I have no reason to doubt the circumstances in which he acquired the gun, but he continued to carry it,” Mays said.

When police approached Watson, the unloaded gun was laying on the ground by Watson’s feet.

“That’s the lowest level possession you can have,” Mays said, but added it was still “a fairly straight-forward crime.”

Mays sentenced Watson to 5 1/2 years in prison, in conjunction with a plea agreement.

“Mr. Watson, I know you are a better person than the person who committed this crime,” Mays said.

“Good luck, Mr. Watson,” he said in a quiet voice. “I hope things work out for the best.”

I had never been to Murray Martin’s house (Hill House) before today. I met Murray many years ago when she used to attend Resident Artist, Billie Shelburn’s painting classes. Murray Martin came to Brasstown in 1935 and was a craft teacher at the Folk School during the time of Folk School founders, Olive Campbell and Marguerite Bidstrup. She certainly gave a lot to the school and the community. To help local folks make a better living, the Brasstown Carvers were mentored by Murray and rose to a place of national recognition for their carvings. She retired in 1973 and lived in Hill House from the 1970’s until her death in 2005.

Hill House is one of the many buildings on campus designed by original Folk School architect and instructor, Leon Deschamps. Danish style architecture with dormers embrace the lovely views. The front facing view has curved stone steps upward to a small deck. The half-heart shaped ironwork stair railing is repeated in quiet simplicity. A full heart pattern repeats on the hinged fireplace screen, whose rock chimney sits centered in what is now an open room. The contractor and a carpenter have almost got the underneath flooring installed. They show me pictures of these same wooden panels for the flooring, being used first to brace the outside stone walls while additional concrete is poured into rebar to reinforce inner walls. Obviously, it is no small effort to restore an old house of this nature. This house will be a place for Folk School students to stay when finished. Students are gonna love living here I know I would!