Eighth-grader Terrell McFadden was astonished earlier this week when he learned he would be one of 40 Wright Middle School students to meet with President Barack Obama in a private gathering in the school's library. But he was even more surprised by what the nation's leader had to say.

It felt, well, personal.

"The president told us how in seventh- or eighth-grade he got a D, and he was mad about it," said Terrell, 13, after the meeting. "He was mad, so he changed it around and worked hard, and got a better grade."

That was the president's message to students throughout his visit to the Madison charter school Wednesday: Teachers, parents and government can help children get a good education, but the final effort lies with the students themselves.

"We want all of you to understand that there's nothing more important than what you're doing right here at this school," Obama told the students in the meeting. "And Wright has a great reputation. This school is improving all the time, but ultimately, how good a school is depends on how well you guys are doing."

Obama also drove home the point during a speech in the Wright gym Wednesday attended by more than 600 students, teachers and other school staff, dignitaries and 50 parents of Wright students who won a lottery to attend the speech.

The president diverted from his prepared remarks to talk about how his 11-year-old daughter Malia had come home, disappointed, with a 73 on a science test. She decided she could do better. And the next test she brought home bore a 95.

"She said, 'I just like having knowledge,'" the president said of his daughter. "That's what she said. And what was happening was she had started wanting (academic success) more than us."

That story was almost as important to Isaiah Yancey, 11, a sixth-grader at Wright, as the fact that the president shook his hand.

"Shaking his hand was the greatest thing in the world," he said. "When he talked about his daughter, it made me think about how I could do better in school."

Obama came to Wright, the middle school with the Madison School District's highest percentage of minority and low-income students, to celebrate the first anniversary of his election and to dangle more than $4 billion in federal education funding before states like Wisconsin if they make reforms the administration says will improve schools.

The students in the private meeting with Obama, selected earlier in the week by Principal Nancy Evans and her social services staff, were ushered into the library at noon, an hour before the president's scheduled arrival.

Each carried a special invitation, along with an index card spelling out questions they'd pose to the president if they got a chance.

They were questions like: "How do you feel being the first African-American president?" and "How do you feel about the Secret Service following everywhere you go?"

Along with jeans and sneakers, many wore white T-shirts decorated with an image of the president's face and the slogan "Doing Things the 'Wright' Way."

One boy had "Obama" stenciled on his face.

For an hour the students waited in silence, legs swinging and arms only occasionally fidgeting, across from a "Panther Pride" banner hung on the library wall advertising the school's motto: "Respect each other. Respect your school. Respect your education."

A charter school with 249 students, and only 20 to a classroom, Wright offers a standard curriculum as well as a mission of community service and involvement. Obama's visit was the first ever presidential visit at a Madison school.

Reporters witnessed the first five minutes of the encounter between the president and students - a mostly chatty, fatherly lecture by Obama about the importance of a good education. But then the White House kicked out the cameras and reporters.

So it was Obama and Duncan, perched on a pair of high stools, a handful of school and White House staffers standing off to the side and, in four rows of chairs spread out before Obama, students such as sixth-grader Kingsley-Reine Carter, 11.

"I just felt so honored in front of the president, but also he's just a normal person like us," she later recounted. "I felt honored but also comfortable."

Kingsley-Reine's question: "Did anyone ever try to hold you back?"

The president responded by saying some people thought he was "crazy" when he decided to run for president, she said. The lesson for her own life was "never give up on your dreams, and no matter what people say, just try your hardest."

Sixth-grader Elizabet Pietz asked Obama why he chose to visit Wright, she said.

"He said it's because we're a charter school, and we have a smaller population than the other middle schools around us," she said. "There's lots of different kinds of families and backgrounds. He said he wanted to come to a middle school, because that was one of the more important times in your life."

"It's really a great honor to have him in our school," said eighth-grader Jeremy Arevalo, 13. "When he was talking about he didn't have a father and he got in trouble a lot in seventh and eighth grade ... seeing how successful he got can lead me to great things."

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