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The youngest heart I know belongs to my 80-year-old grandmother.

Ba Ba — she’s been called that since my youngest brother mispronounced "grandma" — is some kind of living amalgam of Mother Teresa, the Dali Llama, Martin Luther King Jr., St. Francis of Assisi and Julia Child.

A visit to her home in the thickly wooded hills east of Berkeley, Calif., is like stepping into some modern version of Elrond’s Last Homely House in J.R.R. Tolkien’s "The Hobbit."

There you’ll find open spaces furnished from travels to places such as India and South America, her constant movement from room to room, dinners fixed over the unnoticed course of four hours, conversations migrating like monarch butterflies.

It all combines into a kind of timeless, transcendent cocktail and it’s never ceased to inspire me.

Here’s a story Ba Ba likes to tell:

Once, around 1968, she went to a community center in Oakland, Calif., to help lead a literacy and citizenship class. Upon arriving, she noticed a large, hand-painted banner over the front door.

"KILL WHITEY," the banner read.

Unperturbed, Ba Ba went in and explained why she was there to the gathered members of the militant Black Panthers who were holding a rally. She ended up talking to none other than Stokely Carmichael, one of the group’s leaders and a notorious firebrand in those fractious times.

"He was really very nice," Ba Ba said, seemingly unimpressed. "What were they going to do? Kill me? Not likely."

I’ve thought a lot about why Ba Ba is the way she is, and I’ve come to one basic conclusion: she’s never stopped learning. No matter how much she experiences, how much she may have earned the right to be called "wise," Ba Ba simply refuses to let her brain go to sleep. And that, I’m convinced has kept her young and vital.

So, strange as it may seem, Ba Ba came to mind as I was considering how to pay tribute to Park Hill School District.

On Nov. 19 at the Tan-Tar-A Resort, the district became the first public school district in the state to win a Missouri Quality Award, which recognizes businesses and organizations for being effective and efficient.

One of the main criteria for winning this exclusive award is a focus on continuous improvement. It’s ironic that no other school districts have received the merit, because continuous improvement is just another way of saying lifelong learning, something that should be at the core of every educational institution.

I see plenty of evidence of Park Hill School District’s commitment to continually improving its ability to help individuals become lifelong learners.

I see it in the lack of presumption at the district’s central office, where someone like Superintendent Dennis Fisher will answer his own phone.

I see it in the remarkable transparency displayed by people such as Chief Financial Officer Paul Kelly.

I see it in the willingness of building principals to admit there’s more that can be done to help students, even though their buildings may rank among the best in the state.

I see it in the extra time teachers put in to learn how to incorporate the latest, best classroom practices, though they already know they’re among the nation’s elite.

But most importantly, the students are the best evidence of the district’s willingness to be a lifelong learner. Talk to students at any school on any day, and you’ll feel a little bit better about the future. As a rule, they are bright, well spoken and interesting.

So congratulations to all the administrators, teachers, staff, parents and, especially, students of Park Hill School District. Don’t ever stop learning.

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