School's `Hello' Helps Students Feel At Home -- Neely-O'brien's Transitional Program Offers Support To Nervous Newcomers

Picture a child's introduction to a new school.

The first lesson of the day has just begun when the child is brought through the door and introduced to a teacher who may not be expecting the newcomer.

Schoolwork stops and 20 to 30 pairs of strangers' eyes size up the new child while the teacher scrambles to find another desk and textbook.

After the student spends a week or longer trying to make friends, the teacher may decide he or she has needs best met in another classroom. The child is transferred and starts all over again.

Now picture a child's introduction to Neely-O'Brien Elementary, where a "welcome room," believed to be the only one of its kind in the state, helps ease the transition.

Before going to a regular classroom, new pupils, along with any brothers or sisters, meet other newcomers, do reading, math and writing assignments, meet the principal, tour the school and learn the rules.

The new students are given a book of coupons for such freebies as popcorn from the PTA, an eraser from the custodian, a toothbrush from the nurse, a bookmark from the librarian and a sticker from the playground supervisor.

For a week, the newcomers spend their mornings with welcome-room coordinator Barbara Leech and their afternoons in regular classrooms, where teachers are waiting to greet them. After they have spent half a day in every class at their grade level, the teachers decide where they will be placed.

Plenty of children need a special welcome at Neely-O'Brien. More than half the students leave the school and are replaced by other students each school year, the highest student turnover among the Kent School District's 22 elementary schools.

Only three students in last year's graduating class of sixth-graders attended the school since kindergarten. Of the 48 sixth-graders who passed through Alan Falcone's class last year, only 10 stayed from September to June.

Some children leave the school even before completing their week in the welcome room. More than 150 students have gone through the welcome room since it opened in October.

School officials think the turnover is linked to the high number of students, about 80 percent, who live in apartments.

"It's unbelievable," says Falcone, who thinks frequent moves from school to school leave students less trusting and less ready to learn.

Their brief stay in the welcome room lets them know they have at least one friend in their new school.

"If anybody gives you a hard time or if there ever is a problem on or off the school grounds, we want to hear about it. We want you to feel safe," Leech last week told Kelly and Andrew Davis, recent arrivals from California.

She read to the children from Thomas Rockwell's "How to Eat Fried Worms," explained school rules to them, fed them animal-shaped graham crackers and gave them a tour of the building and playground.

"Hey, Ms. Leech," call out several sixth-graders when she takes 11-year-old Kelly to a class for an afternoon visit.

"Ms. Leech, do you recognize me?" a boy asks.

"I'll bet that's Bruce, with . . . NO HAIR!" she replies, feigning complete shock at his shaven head.

At the fourth-grade classroom, where she drops off 8-year-old Andrew, children gather around Leech, enveloping her in a group hug.

"My job description," she explains later, "is to make the transition as easy as possible. That doesn't mean it makes it easy."

Out of the welcome room for just two days, third-grader Mojoko Gobina admits it was frightening to enter her new school, the fifth she has attended in her short academic career.

It became a bit less frightening when she became friends with a fellow welcome-room student, a girl who lives in her apartment complex.

"This school is really good because I met people really quickly and they play with me a lot," says Jessica Cole, a second-grader who made friends her first day.

Todd Nunn was pleased to visit all of the fourth-grade classes before his permanent classroom assignment. "Ms. Leech would let us give our opinion of what class we would like to go in. In other schools, they'll put you in a class even if you don't know anybody."

New students at Neely-O'Brien aren't always placed in their favorite classes. Teachers make placements based on the current makeup of their classes, their observations of new students and the results of the math, reading and writing assessments done by Leech.

Teachers Nancy Riedel and Linda Deal wrote the proposal that brought Neely-O'Brien $20,000 in federal money for the first year of the welcome-room program. (The Federal Way School District has a transitional class for Sunnycrest Elementary students living in a housing project for the homeless.)

Principal Tal Guppy attributes the welcome room's popularity to Leech, whom he calls "an absolute gem." He hopes to find the money to continue a project that eases the emotional challenges faced by students who move from school to school.