Reaching Out To Learning -- Barriers Fall, Successes Rise In `Open' School

Stroll through Seattle's Kimball Elementary School, where children voluntarily skip recess to work on science projects, and you may wish you were back in fourth grade.

School has changed dramatically since children sat in neat rows and fidgeted while the teacher lectured.

At Kimball, kids are more likely to be sprawled on the carpet reading aloud in pairs or gathered around a computer terminal shooting questions and ideas at each other.

The low brick building perched atop the ethnically and economically diverse Beacon Hill neighborhood is a school without walls.

"Open concept" describes not only the building's physical design, a large cavern punctuated with book nooks and student projects, but also the school's philosophy.

Since it began restructuring six years ago, Kimball's faculty has chipped away at invisible barriers that have traditionally separated teachers from parents, science from social studies, and students from each other.

Teams of teachers plan multisubject lessons; immigrant students work on assignments with native-English speakers; and bilingual teachers visit parents at home.

Home visits?

For 11-year-old Haoming Guan, it's a squirmy hour in the living room while bilingual teacher Dolores Dong chats in Cantonese with his mom and dad, recent immigrants from China. For Jinli KwanWong and Guojian Guan, restaurant workers, the teacher's visit is a window into their son's American education.

Because Haoming is an only child, the teacher offers to help enroll him in Boy Scouts so he'll have more opportunities to play with other children.

Before Dong leaves Haoming's house that evening, his parents replay an English message on their answering machine that they don't understand, and Dong translates it into Chinese.

COMMUNITY LINK

Translating messages, making referrals to health clinics and linking families with social services are among Kimball's new roles.

While some bemoan demographic changes that make teaching more challenging, the Kimball faculty has reached out to immigrants and low-income and single-parent families. If families feel connected to the school, the theory goes, education will become that much more important to their children.

At Kimball, 18 percent of the school's 487 children speak limited English, 28 percent receive federally subsidized breakfast and lunch, 24 percent don't live with both parents.

The school's goal is to make all students academically successful, no matter what their background.

Recent national test scores look promising. Kimball students scored about 10 points above the national average in reading, language arts and math.

The school is also improving faster in those three subjects than most schools in the district.

Notably, Kimball's students of color appear to be catching up to white students in language arts.

That's good news in a district where students of color have fallen further and further behind white children in all major subjects for more than a decade - the result, some say, of an educational system that has shortchanged them.

Principal Victoria Foreman is cautiously optimistic.

"We're not talking a quick fix," says Foreman. "But if I can see this continue over the next couple years, I'll say, `Wonderful!' I'll know we're doing the right thing."

There is no magic formula. Instead, the school relies heavily on cooperative learning and what Kimball teacher Jan Perry calls the "A-ha!" method of education.

As in: A-ha! so that's what the debate about dams and salmon and hydro-electric power is all about.

While salmon eggs were growing into salmon fry in classroom tanks, fourth-graders built a large topographical map of Washington state out of plywood and putty - complete with major cities, mountains, rivers and dams. The project is a launching pad for lessons in art, geography, social studies, ecology and biology.

The children plan to wire the map so each city and dam is marked by a little light bulb, an exercise fueled by science lessons about atoms, electricity, circuitry.

Later this month, the children will trace the path of electricity from the dams to the cities and discuss the effect of dams on power rates, salmon runs, irrigation and flood control. These lessons about real life are more interesting and relevant to students than made-up text book examples, teachers say.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING

Working with other people is another important skill that Kimball teachers emphasize through cooperative learning.

In teacher Tina Merdinyan's second-grade class, a group of three children puzzle together over the spelling of the word "pollution." Seven-year-old Kate Harvey writes it down with one `l.' Classmates Norwyn Bunoan and Michael Mungin frown. A few moments later, Norwyn shyly tells Kate that "polution" has another `l' and squeezes it into the word.

No, Kate shakes her head and smudges out the second `l' with her thumb. Finally, Michael runs to the master spelling list. "Two `l's, see?"

"All right, all right," Kate says.

Pollution is spelled correctly by the time the group presents the word and definition to the class.

Along with spelling, the children have also learned about being assertive, admitting when they're wrong, and building consensus.

More teamwork across the building, this time between bilingual teacher Saki Shimizu and fourth-grade teacher Laura Grosvenor, who present a lesson about immigration and internment of Japanese-Americans.

After talking about passports and family history, the children settle on the floor in pairs to read aloud to each other from Yoshiko Uchido's "Journey to Topaz," a novel about Japanese Americans during World War II.

Bilingual students are paired with the fastest readers in the class. In some cases, it makes the fast readers feel important and helpful, teachers say. Other times, it's frustrating for both students because the reading pace is so slow. That, in itself, provides a lesson.

"This whole thing about caring for somebody else is something you have to teach," Shimizu says.

For most whole-language lesson, bilingual students work with a bilingual teacher or aide in a separate classroom along with a few other children (native English-speakers) who need more individualized instruction.

Adding mainstream students to the bilingual class reduces the number of students in the mainstream class and also prevents bilingual students from feeling stigmatized, teachers say.

But Shimizu and others say it's still too early to tell whether the mixed classes will improve or impede academic progress.

------------------------------------- TOMORROW IN THE TIMES ------------------------------------- -- Edmonds school doesn't divide students by grade - or give them grades.