Elbows are okay on the table, as long as there’s no food at one’s place.

On the first day of Mrs. Parker’s Charm School, the children line up in the hall outside the classroom. Before they enter the room, Mrs. Kymberli Parker grasps each one by the hand, looks him or her in the eye, and introduces herself with a hearty handshake. She asks each student to do the same. This is Charm School’s first lesson, and Mrs. Parker hopes it will last a lifetime. Class begins the same way every time it meets at Francis Parker (not related) School. Mrs. Parker has been borrowing pupils from the student body, from both the Mission Hills and Linda Vista campuses, from second to eighth grade. Parents are so happy with her results that she’s decided to expand her offerings into the community at large.

The phrase “etiquette classes for children” invokes images of stiff-backed chairs and old-fashioned dances, but Mrs. Parker has had something else in mind for years. Not that she saw anything amiss with Mr. Benjamin’s Junior Cotillion, which has been teaching ballroom dancing and social niceties exclusively to sixth-graders for 56 years in Point Loma. But Mrs. Parker wanted to put her own, wider spin on things. In 2012 she scraped together both the necessary gumption and the capital to attend the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vermont, run by fourth-generation descendants of Emily Post. Post founded the Institute in 1946, when she was 74. She died in 1960 at age 86, queen of an etiquette empire that included a popular book, radio appearances, and a syndicated newspaper column that appeared daily in more than 200 publications. Her 1922 book, Etiquette — the Blue Book of Social Usage, became an immediate bestseller; her descendants continue to publish updated versions.

Post operated on the principle that there was a right way to do everything: the way that pleases the greatest number of people and offends the least. Today, the Emily Post Institute describes its philosophy as one that “emphasizes consideration, respect, and honesty, as well as the particular manners.”

Parker blends Emily Post’s ethic with her own 21st-century take on etiquette, mixing manners, fine dining, and pop lyrics. “Sporting a Prada handbag and my workout gear — a little bit hip-hop and a little bit Coco Chanel — that’s my brand,” she giggles. She encourages her students to find what works for them, keeping in mind that being kind rather than “cool” is the point. The students seem to be getting it. One parent, an executive at San Diego power utility Sempra Energy, commented to Mrs. Parker on the improvement in his child’s manners at the dinner table and beyond. And one day, a second-grader piped up in class to say, “Thank you for teaching me how to be civil.”

After “introductions,” the course of study for children turns to “table talk” and “technology tips” — two topics now permanently intertwined, thanks to smartphones. “Dining,” another major component of the class, lasts six weeks, culminating in a five-course demonstration dinner for students to showcase the skills they’ve acquired under Mrs. Parker’s tutelage. The first such dinner, in winter 2012, was catered at Francis Parker Lower School cafeteria. The second, in March 2013, got a major upgrade — to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse on Harbor Drive, where a prime corner of the restaurant was dedicated to the event. Twenty young ladies arrived and took their seats at a long table laid out with proper forks, knives, and spoons, and a printed menu. Mrs. Parker had to make a special request for extra silverware; even Ruth’s Chris doesn’t normally put out a five-course place setting.

At dinner, Mrs. Parker begins with a reminder to her students that guests should look to the hostess for cues during the meal. They’ve obviously covered this point in class and are excited to demonstrate their knowledge.

“When I move, you move,” Mrs. Parker sings out, à la hip-hop artist Ludacris in the 2003 hit “Stand Up.”

The girls chant back in unison without missing a beat: “Just like that!”

There’s Mrs. Parker’s brand: hip-hop mixed with manners in a way that would undoubtedly surprise Emily Post and Ludacris.

As the meal proceeds, the attendees look to Mrs. Parker at the start of each course. She’s nervous and isn’t eating, and there’s some confusion as she assures her guests that it’s okay to start without her. She beams as the girls chat amiably. They sit up straight and keep their elbows (and smartphones) off the table. (By the way, Mrs. P. regrets to inform us, there’s no place setting for cell phones. Take these out before or after the meal — to take pictures. And here is more news: elbows are okay on the table, as long as there’s no food at one’s place.)

The waiter asks each diner for steak-temperature preference; each answers with poise, polish, and a “please.” When the entrée arrives, the girls daintily cut their steaks, as Mrs. Parker has instructed them, with equal weight applied to fork and knife. They comment politely to each other on the quality of the meat, as if they’ve heard their parents do likewise at mealtimes. Between courses, the tutees agree that they’d like their teacher to tell the “Eleanor Roosevelt story.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and first lady from 1933 to 1945, was well known as a gracious hostess. As the story beloved by Mrs. Parker’s students goes, at one of her many dinner parties, when a guest was offered the customary finger bowl filled with water and rose petals to clean her hands between courses, the guest mistook it for soup, picked up a spoon, and sipped its contents. Upon noticing the error, Mrs. Roosevelt immediately picked up her finger bowl and followed suit: Mrs. Roosevelt didn’t want the blunder to cause her guest any chagrin. As Mrs. Parker tells it, Eleanor Roosevelt’s priority was to make her guests feel comfortable — a vivid illustration of the purpose of etiquette.

Mrs. Kymberli Parker with a star pupil upon etiquette-course completion

Mrs. Parker next tells a story about the origin of high heels at Louis XIV’s palace of Versailles, where the concept of “etiquette” is also said to have originated. Louis XIV, known for his extravagant court parties, became fed up with the behavior of his guests and commissioned his attendants to do something about it. The solution was to put up little signs throughout the grounds to guide visitors on how to behave with proper decorum. “Don’t feed the animals.” “Please stay on the path.” “Don’t pick the flowers.” Signs such as these became the basis for a code of conduct at court, giving social mores a name: “etiquette” is French for “label,” “ticket,” or “little sign.”

Finally, dessert arrives, and Mrs. Parker dares to take a bite. It’s strawberry cheesecake and chocolate-covered almonds. Parents dining at another table, observing their seven-year-old from afar while enjoying a night out, send over a splash of wine for the hostess. The meal concludes and out come the smartphones. A second-grader seated across from me, who has been squirmy but sweet during the two-hour experience, takes out an iPad and snaps some photos. Each student approaches Mrs. Parker to say thank you and goodbye. As parents ascend the curved staircase to the Ruth’s Chris dining room to pick up their children, other customers waiting for tables look on. It’s a charming sight: 20 children and adolescents behaving graciously and politely in a public place. The manager of Ruth’s Chris warmly assures Mrs. Parker that he will be delighted to host more such dinners in the future, and indeed, more are planned.

It’s not only parents interested in improving their children’s manners who have engaged Mrs. Parker’s services. A few days after she posted the preliminary draft of her website, an administrator from the University to Qualcomm program (also known as U2Q) contacted her to help with refining the fine-dining skills of their enrolled employees — University to Qualcomm assists full-time employees with a recent degree with the transition to “real life.”

When Mrs. Parker first spoke with a U2Q board member, he expressed a dire need for lessons in etiquette. “Kymberli, these are college students who have been eating pizza out of the box for four years. If they could, they’d eat the box!”

Fresh from a second round of training in Vermont, a series of business-etiquette workshops at the Emily Post Institute — alongside Kymberli at the Burlington Country club were customer-care representatives from Chanel, and executives flown in from Japan and Geneva, all being taught by Peter Post, one of Emily Post’s four great-grandchildren — it was Mrs. Parker to the rescue!

At Qualcomm, in front of a conference room full of 20-somethings in jeans and flip-flops, Mrs. Parker shared some of what she’d learned at the Institute, and, more specifically, what she has known intuitively her whole adult life: the importance of handshakes.

“I’m a two-pump kind of girl,” she shared, eliciting smiles and curious looks: for many in the crowd, English is not their first language.

“When I met President Obama,” she continued — she later told me she’d met him at a fundraiser several years ago — “I did two pumps and began to release my hand. Then he put his hand over mine and said how glad he was that I could make it to the event.” She grabbed the hand of a volunteer and demonstrated how to make a handshake more personal. Murmurs rippled through the room.

“True story,” she said.

Though she calls it school, Mrs. Parker is not taking a summer break from charm. On the schedule: a live chat with the Los Angeles Times and possible desk-side chat appearances with a prominent etiquette luminary, still under wraps. The San Diego County Bar Association invited Mrs. Parker to address young attorneys during their lunch-and-learn at the U.S. Grant Hotel downtown, and she showed up with her notes, left them at the podium, and charmed the crowd with her off-the-cuff style. The hotel’s wait staff even stopped to listen in and ask questions after they heard her talking about why the blade of the knife always faces in at the place setting and why wine is poured with the hand on top of the bottle.

As custom goes, the blade of the knife is pointed inward as a sign that diners are not aggressive toward each other and have their knives ready only to slice food, not fellow guests, at table. And, according to a story Kymberli heard, the correct method for pouring wine comes from an equally morbid notion: in the days of yore, those who might wish their dining companions ill would wear a ring with a tiny compartment for poison, which they would sprinkle into the wine clandestinely while pouring with a hand under the bottle. To appease guests, hosts and help were supposed to pour with hands showing on top of the bottle. The clinking of glasses also comes from this — clink hard enough, and some drops of possibly toxic libation might splash out of one’s glass into another’s, spreading the poison and foiling the plotter’s efforts.

After her gig with the Bar Association and fielding questions from the attorneys about how to deal with out-of-control-texting clients (don’t give out a cell number to clients, or, if the deed has already been done, let them know calls will be answered only during normal business hours), Mrs. Parker received thank-you notes from three lawyers who had been at the luncheon. For her, this is the ultimate compliment: a handwritten piece of evidence that proves someone was listening and that manners matter. Emily Post would be delighted.