March 24, 2005
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Reading, writing, reality:
a day in Room 9 of Jefferson School
On the cover: Jefferson School
teacher Kristi Puzz
leads a discussion with her first/second grade class.
Photo by Emily Gurnon
story & photos by EMILY GURNON
Editor's note: The Journal
got the approval of the parents of three Jefferson School children
to talk about their lives. Those three are identified by their
first and last names. Children introduced in the story with just
a first name have been given pseudonyms to protect their identities.
IT'S 8 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING,
AND most of the kids in Kristi Puzz's first/second grade class
are in the Jefferson School cafeteria eating breakfast.
Six-year-old Ashley Slupinski
has finished, so she comes back to say a last goodbye to her
mom and dad, who are talking with a visitor near the office.
"How was breakfast?"
her mother asks.
"Good," Ashley says.
"What did you have?"
Ashley smiles. "Goldfish
crackers!"
"That's not breakfast!"
her mom protests. "Didn't you have cereal or milk or something,
too?"
"I had milk," Ashley
says. After kisses and hugs, she hikes her backpack on her back
and makes her way down the hall to Puzz's classroom, Room 9.
Teacher Kristi Puzz with some of her first- and second-grade
students.
A questionable meal notwithstanding,
Ashley -- a warm, sweet child with long brown hair and dark eyes
-- is doing better than most of the kids in Room 9. She lives
in a stable home with both parents, a luxury shared by only four
others in the class of 19. Neither parent is in jail. She is
reading well. She gets along with the other students and doesn't
cause disruptions. [photo
below left: First-grader Ashley Slupinski]
Jefferson, located on B Street
near downtown Eureka, is Eureka City Unified's poorest school.
According to school statistics, 98 percent of its families qualify
for free or reduced-price lunches and breakfasts because of low
income. Its students scored an average of 676 on the state Academic
Performance Index, giving it a statewide ranking of only 3 on
a scale of 10, according to 2004 figures released from the Department
of Education last week.
Statistics
often reflect what's going on outside of school, as well as inside,
but numbers can't tell the stories of children's lives. To get
a glimpse of who Jefferson's first and second-graders are, I
decided to visit for a day.
Kristi Puzz, 34, is a serious-looking
woman who seems to have a knack for keeping an even keel in her
classroom. A mother of three, she has worked in Eureka schools
for nine years, including four at Jefferson. On the day of my
visit, she is dressed comfortably in baggy pants and a loose,
blue button-down shirt, her blond hair clipped up.
A classical music tape is playing
as the kids file into the room from breakfast. Puzz tells them
to get a book to read at their table (they don't have individual
desks) for the few minutes prior to "morning meeting."
Miguel's day is not starting
off well.
Instead of choosing a book,
he's busy inspecting the paper cups on the windowsill that contain
seeds the kids have planted. Some have sprouted a tiny green
shoot. Miguel's reveals nothing but dirt.
"Miguel, I told you to
get a book," Puzz says. Most of the other children are sitting
at their tables, reading or simply looking at the pictures. A
couple more minutes go by.
After another warning goes unheeded,
Puzz tells Miguel he must go to the principal's office. She picks
up her classroom phone. "Miguel's coming for five minutes,"
she says. No further explanation seems necessary, as if this
kind of thing happens a lot.
It turns out that Miguel's mother
forgot to give him his attention-deficit medication this morning
-- something that Principal Catalina Nocon manages to figure
out. He stays in the office until his mother can bring it to
him.
First-grader Dylan Roberts has
chosen The 3 Bears Pop-Up Book, a version of the Goldilocks
story, but it sits on his table unopened. Dylan rubs his eyes
and yawns.
Puzz blows a train whistle to
signal the end of reading time. "One!" she says loudly
to get the students' attention. "Two. Three. Four. Five.
Ears listening. Eyes on me. Mouth quiet. Hands still. Feet not
moving."
As their teacher counts, the
kids slowly come to attention. She tells them to put their books
away and go to the carpet for morning meeting. The kids sit on
the floor in front of her.
The "meeting" starts
with a taped song to which the kids sing along. "The world
is a rainbow with many kinds of people," they sing, reading
the words from brightly painted posters they've made to illustrate
the song. "The world is a mixing cup, just look what happens
when we stir it up." It's an apt tune for the group, which
includes two African American kids, three Latinos, two or three
Native Americans and several whites.
Puzz takes attendance and notes
that two of the kids are missing. Then she calls on Ashley, who
has something she desperately wants to share.
"My tooth is really loose,
and I'm wiggling it and wiggling it, and I'm not sure if it's
gonna come out today or tomorrow or April!" Ashley says
with a big smile, demonstrating the movement with one finger.
She's never lost one before. "This is your first tooth?!"
a little girl next to her asks. Ashley nods proudly.
The class reads a poem about
spring together, then Puzz goes over the week's spelling words;
they will have a test later. The words all end in "er,"
like brother, mother, after and over.
Justin is having trouble paying
attention. He's a wiry kid with an athletic shirt and jeans worn
to holes at the knees. Puzz tells him to get up off the carpet
and sit in a brown chair behind him. He chooses a blue one on
the other side of the group instead. At first, Puzz seems not
to notice this, continuing with the group discussion. Then it's
apparent that what she is doing is giving Justin a chance to
cooperate. He doesn't.
"Justin, I asked you to
sit in that chair and I'd like you to sit there right now. I'm
going to count to three," she says.
He moves in the direction of
the brown chair, slowly. "I can sit in any chair I want,"
he says softly to himself. He gets to the brown chair, but does
not sit in it. He stands in front of it and leans against it
backwards.
Puzz has not given up, nor has
she lost her temper.
"I'd like you to put your
bottom on the chair, Justin," she says. He claims
a few more seconds of victorious recalcitrance, then gives in
and sits.
Some such disruptions are normal
for any classroom with young children, but Puzz says it's especially
difficult to keep her kids "on task" and focused on
their learning.
"We've had houses burning
down, mom-and-dad issues, fights -- just a lot of things you
wouldn't want your first-grader worrying about. Whether or not
they're going to have dinner that night, whether or not they're
going to have a place to sleep, or who's going to pick them up,
those kinds of issues.
"Kids are pretty resilient,"
she continues, "but sometimes if things are really hard,
then they're acting out, then I notice. Then it does get in the
way of their learning."
Over the years she's seen "more
and more kids who are in crisis" -- moving from place to
place, or living in a motel, or with a parent in jail -- "more
than I've ever seen."
<<>>
Puzz reads a story aloud to
the first-graders while the second-graders move to a table to
do their spelling test with an aide, or more accurately a "reading
tech" who spends an hour a day in the classroom. Another
reading specialist works individually throughout the week with
the four kids who are having the most difficulty. (The extra
staff are wonderful to have, Puzz says, but she wishes she also
had a full-time aide, as many schools outside of Eureka do.)
Most of the kids listen attentively
to the story, but there is constant fidgeting. Carrie, who lives
with her grandmother, pulls up her right pant leg to inspect
a scraped knee, lifting the Band-Aid to peer at the wound, then
sticking it back down. Justin, who's now back on the carpet,
taps a pencil on the floor. Without interrupting the story, Puzz
reaches out her hand for it.
Next on the agenda is a student
"interview" of Terry, a new kid in class. He is the
fourth child to join Puzz's cadre since the start of the school
year -- and four or five others who were there at the beginning
have left. The transiency rate at a school like Jefferson is
enormous; Nocon estimates that an average of 25 or 30 percent
of a classroom will turn over in the course of a year. Families
get evicted from their apartments, or need to move to be closer
to work, or lose their transportation, or the child is sent to
live with a relative for some reason, Puzz says. "That's
real common here," she says, "that revolving door."
"What's your favorite thing
to eat?" one kids asks Terry.
"Pizza," Terry says,
after someone suggests it. He speaks so softly Puzz doesn't hear
him at first.
"What's your favorite TV
show?"
"Dragonball Z."
After the interview, Puzz instructs
the second-graders to write a sentence about something Terry
likes to do. The first-graders are told to simply write Terry's
name and draw a picture of him. Ashley draws a surprisingly good
picture of Terry kicking a ball to another kid.
"She loves going to school,"
her mother, 29-year-old Mandi Slupinski, tells me later. The
family has been so pleased with Jefferson, its small atmosphere
(there are 200 kids), and its teachers that they continue to
send Ashley and her brother there even though they moved to Fortuna
last fall. Mandi Slupinski works as a preschool teacher in Eureka,
so she drops the kids off on her way.
The Slupinskis moved to Eureka
four years ago from Monterey for the cheaper rent. Though both
she and her husband work, Mandi Slupinksi says times are tight.
She makes $10 an hour.
"There's not much money
left for having fun," she says. "Me and my husband
haven't been on a date since we got married. They say money can't
buy happiness, but it would sure make things a lot easier. That's
why I want my kids to have a good education, because I don't
want them to be in the same situation that my husband and me
are in all the time. We get by, but it sure would be nice to
not have to worry about having the money to buy enough gas to
get yourself to work for the next two weeks."
<<>>
At 9:45, it's "motor-perception
time," a fancy way of saying the kids get to go outside
and play with a large, multicolored parachute that they lift
up and down together. "The parachute's about working together
and being a team," Puzz tells them. At 10, it's time for
recess. It's also snack time. Several of the kids have saved
parts of their breakfast to eat now: bananas, apples, the goldfish
crackers. Some have brought snacks from home. Carrie sits on
a bench, rips open a package of Top Ramen and eats it uncooked,
chunk by chunk. Three other kids beg her for a piece. She shares.
Puzz says she buys snacks from
Costco out of her own pocket to have for the kids who get hungry,
"Saltines or graham crackers or something that will tide
them over."
By 10:25, recess is over and
the class reviews the spelling words once more. After the spelling
test, the kids sit on the carpet again, and Puzz leads a discussion
about days of the week, and the difference between "today,"
"yesterday" and "tomorrow." The kids count
by fives to 100. Then, it's time for a math project involving
jelly beans. Working in pairs, the students must sort a bag of
36 jelly beans by color, then make a tally of how many of each
color there are. She demonstrates the sorting on a digital projector
-- a machine that projects an enlarged image of anything placed
on top of its screen.
"Do they all taste the
same?" Ashley asks.
"I don't know," Puzz
says, "but you'll be able to try them if you do a good job."
This is a powerful incentive; the children get to work.
Trevor, a tough-looking kid
who's been reprimanded a couple times this morning, blusters,
"I don't want no partner `cause I can eat all these. I can
eat all these on my own." Before he's finished tallying
the candies, several disappear into his mouth.
<<>>
At 11:45, after a post-jelly-bean
sugar dance, it's time for lunch. The kids line up at their classroom
door, then follow Puzz down the hall to the cafeteria, where
they have the choice of any or all items on the menu today: a
"taco pocket" (a sort of hot pie with taco filling
inside), fruit, yogurt, fruit leather, carrots and raw broccoli
with a tiny cup of dip, and a cookie. Two sets of crates at the
end of the line hold chocolate and regular milk. Almost all of
the kids choose chocolate.
One second-grader makes it to
the end of the line with just a cookie. An alert playground monitor,
an engaging 20-something guy named Cory Biondini, spies him.
"No way, Julio," he
says good-naturedly. "Put the cookies back. You don't get
junk food until you eat some real food today."
[Photo at right: Dylan Roberts reads Bears on Wheels]
A kitchen worker overhears,
and apologizes to Julio for not having a sandwich ready for him.
"I'll see if I can get you one," she says. To me, she
adds, "He doesn't eat hardly anything but peanut butter."
She returns with the sandwich minutes later.
I sit down near Dylan and try
to strike up a conversation. He has beautiful gray-blue eyes
and he gazes at me, not really sure why this stranger is asking
him questions. His favorite food is cereal, "except not
the raisin kind." He's lost three teeth, two in kindergarten
and one this year, and he doesn't remember how his two front
teeth got chipped. His favorite part of school is working on
the computers that they have in Puzz's classroom.
His mother, Michelle Moody,
28, tells me later that she's a single parent who has been trying
to make some difficult changes in her life. She resists giving
details. Things are better now than they were a couple of years
ago, she says: She and her three boys (Douglas, 8, Dylan, 6,
and 22-month-old Dustin) live in a two-bedroom apartment in Eureka,
low-income housing for which she pays about $450 a month. She
had a temporary job last year, but it ended in December, and
now she's looking for work.
Dylan likes Jefferson, his mother
says, and he's attended since kindergarten, so it's been a consistent
part of his life. "He's doing pretty good," she said.
"On the way home earlier, he was showing me how he could
read, could sound out words and read them."
After lunch, it's recess again,
and the kids run madly around the playground. Ashley and second-grader
Ismael Orona sit to talk.
Ismael [photo
at left], a bright, active kid
with dancing eyes, says he lives nearby with his father, who
works at a cheese factory; his mother; and his two older brothers.
Though he's classified as an "English learner," he
seems perfectly at ease with his new language, and I don't hear
him speaking Spanish even once during the day.
He holds my tape recorder as
I ask the questions. He likes to play on the computer when he
gets home from school, he says. "Like, I go to the Internet
and go to Cartoon Network."
What's for supper?
"Um, I don't really do
supper," he says. Instead, he eats "fruity snacks,
the snacks that are Spiderman." Spiderman fruit chews. And
juice. Before bed, he likes to watch cartoons.
Another little girl from Ismael's
class eyes the tape recorder. "I wanna talk!" she says.
She's a lovable, animated child with shoes so worn out that her
feet slope inward when she walks. She tells the tape recorder
where she lives.
Does her mom or dad work nearby?
"I don't have a dad,"
she says.
"What happened to your dad?"
Ismael wants to know.
"He -- went away."
Ashley talks about her loose
tooth again, then Ismael says he's lost "like 10 of them!"
He reaches inside his mouth to point back toward his molars.
"This one, the doctor took it, and it hurted," he says.
"It was broke in half. I ate too much candy!"
Puzz says she sees lots of dental
problems among her kids, "and kids in critical need -- I've
had kids in pain, and that's really hard." Poor families
often cannot find a dentist who will treat their kids, because
many will not accept Medi-Cal or Healthy Families insurance.
Fortunately, the school will be visited next month by a dental
van operated by Open Door Community Health Centers, which will
offer free treatment for kids whose parents return a permission
slip.
<<>>
Back in the classroom, it's
time for the kids to take out their seed journals. They are tracking
the progress of little bean seeds they planted in their paper
cups. Each cup is labeled with the child's name.
"Write about what you see
happening," Puzz tells the students.
In careful lettering, Ismael
writes: "Mine is starting to pop up And it is Amazing."
Writing projects are a great
way for kids to learn to express themselves, and they often elicit
deep feelings, Puzz says.
A class project displayed on
a bulletin board consists of enlarged Xerox copies of $100 bills,
with each child's school photo pasted over Benjamin Franklin's
face. The assignment was for kids to describe how they would
spend such a vast amount of money.
"If I had a 100 dollars
I will get a Quad and a dirt bike. and a car and a ice cream,"
Dylan writes.
"If I had 100 dollars I
would buy a house and stuff to go in it," writes one girl.
"I would buy a fridge, and food."
Another girl writes, "If
I had 100 dollars I would buy a mansion because my mom lives
in a motel."
Principal Nocon said that educators
can tell even at this early grade level which kids are going
to have problems later on. "We can tell at kindergarten
-- unless things get turned around -- just because of behavior."
Despite the low overall test
scores, Jefferson was ranked 8 on a scale of 10 last week among
"similar schools," meaning that it does well among
schools that have similar demographics, and Nocon is happy about
that.
But school can only go so far.
"School isn't enough unless [learning] extends into the
evening," she says. That can be as simple as talking with
a child about what they did in school, or building something
together, or reading the road signs as you drive home.
Puzz says she does what she
can. "I try my best to make this be the safe haven. I want
it to feel like home and family, because that's what they need."
The Family Advocate's office
at Jefferson School helps provide shoes, clothing and medical
referrals to its families who need them. For more information,
call 441-2493, or contact a school near you to find out how you
can help.
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