Katie Sward sat in front of her second-grade class at César Chávez Elementary School, her students seated on a colorful rug around her feet. She pulled out a zip-top bag with three muddy, orange carrots in it, their green, leafy stems still attached.

The smallest was a few inches long. One was a bit longer. The last was the longest.

It was a lesson in adjective forms, and students could clearly see what Sward meant.

"In your books, I want you to draw these carrots," she told them. "Then I want you to write the words long, longer and longest."

While students drew pictures in their notebooks, Sward continued to talk to them about the carrots, saying she grew them in her garden and would save the stems for her chickens. She even used them to review a lesson on plant parts.

As she cut the carrots up for students to eat, they read out loud a poem about making carrot stew. She asked them how many pieces she needed to cut, and students started counting heads. When one student started counting in fives, the whole class joined with a song. "Five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40."

"Did you know that there's a song for almost anything?" Sward asked, smiling.

The lesson was over. It was time to eat the carrots. In a masterful show of classroom management, Sward lowered her voice until it was just a whisper. "When you get your carrot, you will stand up and put your book away," she leaned into the group, "and then you can have your carrot."

Quietly, students accepted their carrots, put their books in cubbies and started to nibble.

It all happened in about 30 minutes. Students worked on reading, science and math and even learned a little about home gardening, most without even knowing it.

Sward spent five years honing her teaching skills at El Dorado Elementary School. Before that, she taught art at several schools as part of the Fine Arts for Children and Teens program. Four years ago, she started working with a Spanish-speaking student at El Dorado. He struggled when asked to do things in English, Sward said, but in Spanish, he shined.

"I found that because I could speak to him in his own language, that he was a very smart kid," Sward said.

It was then she became interested in bilingual education. She received her Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages endorsement last year. While talking to colleagues last year about the need for bilingual teachers in the district, she realized maybe she wasn't using her skills to their fullest potential.

And so, in a move that is rare among teachers, Sward decided to leave the familiar, safe environment of El Dorado for César Chávez, where the majority of students are poor and Spanish-speaking.

"If bilingual (education) is my passion, I want to be someplace where I can help bilingual students in the district," she said, "and I couldn't do that in El Dorado."

About 40 percent of the district's approximately 12,500 students qualify as English Language Learners. The problem for district administrators has consistently been a shortage of teachers for those students.

In an effort to recruit more bilingual teachers, the district offers a stipend, recently increased from $1,500 to $3,000 per year.

Sward said she thinks even that amount might not be enough to lure teachers into classrooms with some of the most challenging students. "The first thing is always dollars," she said. "If there were more dollars, there would be more people."

Sward pointed out that the district is full of teachers who, because they already speak Spanish or come from Hispanic backgrounds, would be terrific bilingual teachers. But again, they need to be enticed.

But even that isn't enough, she said. The district paid for 10 teachers to attend a summer intensive, but only three signed up.

For Sward, though, the move had nothing to do with the money and everything to do with filling a need.

She acknowledged it's not always easy. "There are days when I ask myself, 'What am I doing?' " she said. But when she gets love letters from students, she knows it's worth it.

Sometimes that means packing so much into a lesson that students don't even know they're learning. But, she said, "To me, the most important thing is, how can I get my kids to wake up and want to come here more than anything?"

Contact John Sena at 986-3079 or jsena@sfnewmexican.com.