Small Planet, Part 2
Every Kid Counts

photo by Judy Blankenship.

At 7:30 on a drizzly Friday morning, the school is quiet. The gleaming hallways, brightly hung with kids' creations, are empty. The 700 students won't begin filling the building with sound and motion for another hour. But even at this early hour, the murmur of voices can be heard in the administrative offices where a small band of bleary-eyed staff members, clutching mugs of hot coffee, is already hard at work.

This team of teachers and administrators is doing what they do every Friday morning (and other days, too, if there's a backlog): seeking solutions for kids who aren't succeeding. In a school where 80 percent of kids live in poverty and close to half speak a first language other than English, there's never a shortage of struggling students. Last year, the team shared information and devised strategies for about 110 kids who weren't making it academically, behaviorally, or both.

Today, they have three names before them (changed here for privacy): Anton, Juanita, and Leo. As the team members—principal, psychologist, counselor, classroom teacher, Title VII specialist, Title I specialist, and staff assistant—trade bits of information, each child comes into focus as a whole person.

Anton, the youngest of a big extended family from rural Russia, has fallen far behind his fourth-grade classmates in spite of the intensive, small-group help he gets in reading and math daily. Even his native-language skills are weak—a red flag that could suggest a learning difficulty unrelated to second-language acquisition. During a test of Russian language development, he piled books around his desk to hide his answer sheet, and zipped through the 40-minute test in 15 minutes, marking the bubbles randomly. He's small for his age ("He's tiny, so tiny," says one staff member) and immature for his grade level. One day, when he was tripping on a shoelace, his teacher discovered he didn't know how to tie it. His family is loving and caring; the entire clan shows up for conferences. "He's our hope," Anton's mom once told a team member. But his home offers few opportunities for reading or writing practice.

Like Anton, Juanita is mired in learning problems, both in English and in Spanish, her native language. Born in an agrarian community in northern California, the fourth-grader is the unofficial translator for her single-parent household, using "Spanglish" sprinkled heavily with slang. She's also the fill-in mom—cooking, cleaning, and changing diapers for her younger siblings—when her mother's out, often late into the night. Frequently tardy ("She said she was up all night when the baby had an ear infection," a team member reports), Juanita struggles with math and literacy. Letter reversals continue to crop up in her writing—unusual for a child about to enter fifth grade. "She often writes the words completely backwards," someone observes. Already, she talks about dropping out of school.

Poised on the threshold of middle school, Leo is, like Anton, very small for his age and grade ("He's about as big as a peanut," the staff assistant observes). Examining the boy's cumulative file, the team discovers that a bureaucratic glitch bumped him from third to fifth grade when he entered Roosevelt last fall. The son of a medical interpreter who was a pediatrician in Russia, Anton is described by a team member as a "very sweet boy" who has encyclopedic retention of information but poor literacy and organizational skills ("He forgets his notebook and pencil, he forgets his coat," says a team member). He's the oldest of eight children, and his mother often keeps him home to help out.

After a spirited discussion that touches on every aspect of the children's home life and school experience, psychologist Marilyn Wycoff writes up the team's findings and a plan of action for each student. Among all English-language learners, she says, language difficulties can mask learning disorders. Sorting one from the other is dicey. Schools have to walk a delicate balance between overlooking learning disabilities and over-identifying language-minority students for special ed.

Anton and Juanita fall into that hazy place where language and learning troubles are jumbled. The team agrees that "there's something different about the way Anton's learning." They recommend tests to help pinpoint the problem: Is it a learning problem or overall immaturity? Depending on the results, they may recommend a special-education referral, retention, or some other intervention such as intensive, one-on-one instruction. In Juanita, the team also sees signs of a global learning problem. Without intervention, the girl will likely leave school at a young age. They agree to arrange for thorough native-language testing to help clarify her needs.

As for Leo, the group agrees he's "a slam-dunk" for retention. In Russia, students move up only when they've mastered the material, a team member notes. They think Leo's folks will agree to hold him back to catch up.

This early-morning group, officially called the "Screening Team," has a critical mission: To keep kids from slipping through the cracks of the system. At Roosevelt, no child goes unnoticed. Most students the team discusses don't qualify for special-ed referral. But they need something extra. Maybe it's family counseling. Or more time with a staff assistant. Or tutoring from a volunteer.

"We look at every possibility," says Title VII Coordinator Katrina Walla, a native of Moscow who has teaching endorsements in ESL, Russian, and bilingual education. "Sometimes extra time, individually, makes all the difference."

For one antsy little boy on a soggy spring day, a middle school mentor is just what's needed. When the lanky eighth-grader strides into the second-grade classroom, a chorus of little voices calls out, "Cory! Cory! Cory!" and a half-dozen pairs of little feet hurry toward the long-legged teenager. The teacher steers the young tutor to Javier, an energetic, talkative boy who's been off-task all morning. Clearly wowed by getting this celebrity all to himself, Javier (a pseudonym) settles right down to work with Cory, composing a verse for a traditional song called "Down by the Bay," where you might see "a goose kissing a moose," "a bear combing his hair," or "a whale with a polka-dot tail."

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