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EDUCATIONSTORY BY VENICE BUHAIN, PHOTOS BY TONI [- BAILEY ' t O THE OLYMPIAN

have the most porosity - "poroSidad.""Cuantas tazas de agua?" she asked, as

students measured and poured cups ofwater into bowls.

Spanish and scienge nre intertwined atEvergreen Elementary School in Shelton,a kindergarten-through-fi fth- gradeschool in the Shelton School Districtthat is one of the few bilingual publicschools in the state.

fust more than half of the school'sstudents are Hispanic, according to theOffice of the Superintendent of PublicInstruction.

The school's unique features requireEnglish-speaking teachers to pair up withSpanish-speaking teachers, the use of atranslator and headsets at PTA meetingsand students buddying up to help eachother learn the language.

Students learn math in English, andan hour of science every day in Spanish.Reading and writing are taught in bothlanguages.

'At some point every day, every (Ev-ergreen) student is a second-languagelearner," said principal Steve Warner.

And it's not iust Spanish-speakers who benefit.

Cassi Sryke, a fifth-graderwho speaks English athome, said, "You get tolearn a second languageand experience a lot morethan if you went to anotherschool."

A language evolutionThe bilingual program at the downtown

Shelton school began in the mid-1990s asone classroom each in grades I through 3,with a mix of half English-speaking andhalf Spanish-speaking students. But asthe Hispanic population of Shelton grewso did tftg program.

lnfl,Q?, the progpam expanded intothe entite scho0l.. English-speaking par-ents in the neighborhood have warmed

ABOVE: Ashley Pena, 7, sings in Spanishin Vilchez's second-grade class.TOP: Lizbeth Olguin,9 (from left), lsaacJuarez,8, and Kevin Garduno, S, prepareto answer questions.

to the idea."It's been a process of educating the

community about the program," saidSuperintendent foan Zook. "Sometimespeople don't understand it. I think theythink they're not learning English."

Many parents like the idea that theirchildren will be fluent in two languages.

"More English-language students arelearning Spanish. The more that goes on,the more enthusiastic parents we havewho want their kids in the program."

Greating a magnetWhile Shelton is a small town, its de-

mographics support a bilingual school.According to state figures, the model

Evergreen uses is the rarest form ofbilingual school in Washington. It needsenough students speaking one foreignlanguage, an adequate number of staffmembers who are fluent in that languageand a long-term commitment from thedistrict, said Howard Deleeuw programadministrator for migrant and bilingualeducation for the Office of Superintendentof Public Instruction.

About 1l percent of Shelton's 9,000 orso residents are Hispanic. Abput 13 per-cent of students in the district are ofHispanic descent, according to the state.

However, the school's population ishalf Hispanic because of clusters in rhecity's demographics, and because theschool program is a magnet prograrn-

Spanish-speakers are admitted to theschool no matter where they live in thedistrict; English speakers who want thebilingual experience also can apply for atransfer.

Students in the neighborhood whowant a traditional English-speakingprograrn are bused to either Bordeauxor Mountain View elementary school.

Finding bilingual teachers can be achallenge, Warner said, but the'schoolalso attracts applicants from all over whowant to teach in a bilingual environment.Warner also has recruited teachers fromGuatemala, Mexico, Texas and otherlocations, Zook said.

A reasoned approachThere is a rationale behind teaching

math in English and science in Spanish."It's a really good way to apply the

language," said fifth-grade teacher JudithSerrano, who has taught in many differenttypes of English as a second langu_ageprograms since she became a teacher inthe 1980s. "It is so important to learn alanguage in a context."

Serrano said this type of bilingualprogram gives more children a chanceto be a classroom leader in whateverlanguage they are most comfortable with.

"I have some really bright kids. In themorning, the English-speaking kids helpout the Spanish-speaking kids. In theafternoon, the Spanish-speaking kidsget to be the leaders," she said. "Yet ev-erybody benefits from it. The levels ofparticipation double."

Warner, Evergreen's principal, saidthe school's scores on the Washing-ton Assessment of Student Learningscores don't reflect those successes.Evergreen's scores on the WASL andunder Adequate Yearly Progress for thenational No Child Left Behind act lagbehind the state, he said.

"When you have a student taking thereading WASL in English after they'vebeen speaking English for two years, youcan't expect that they'll pass," Warner said.

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Fourth-grade WASL scores betweenIr\ll and 2OO7 show that Evergreen'srrhite students have been close to andsometimes surpass the reading and*'riting scores of the average whiteiourth-graders in the district, Warner said.

But the Shelton district as a wholeand Evergreen specifically also haveother challenges with state standards.

Nearly half of the district studentsqualify for the free and reduced-pricelunch program, one indicator of poverty.At Evergreen, about B0 percent ofthestudents qualify for the free and reduced-price lunch programs. Statewide, therehas been an achievement gap withios'-income students and the studentpopulation as a whole.

The bil ingual experience

Vilchez and her students were dis-cussing the biography of Martin LutherKing |r. They filled out timelines of U.S.presidents and of King's life.

"iPresidente Hoover era presidentepara cuanto tiempo?" (President Hooverwas president for how long?) she asked,as the students counted up from 1929 to1933.

"Martin Luther King era un pequenonino," (Martin Luther King was a littleboy) Vilchez said, with her hand close tothe ground.

"No!" second-grader Skyler Keckblurted. "My brother is 5 and he's thistall," with his hand a bit higher off theground.

While students are encouraged tospeak the language the teacher uses, it'snot required.

All of the teachers use ESL techniques,no matter what they're teaching and whatlanguage tlrey use, Serrano said. "We doa lot of chants, we use a timeline, we do alot of vocabulary" she said.

Serrano's classroom was wallpaperedwith charts explaining geological conceptsin Spanish, in preparation for a visit toMount St. Helens.

Students,also ar.e parred with buddieswith different native-language skills tohelp each other.

"If it's a new subjectin science, we talk aboutwhat we already know,"said fifth-grader SergioGonzaLez, 11. "In my class,(the teacher) explains ev-erything in Spanish and shetells someone to translate."

Fifth-grader RosahuraLoza,ll, said, "The teacherfinds pictures to show us,or sometimes uses books.For certain words, if peopledon't get it, she keeps ex-plaining."

Most of the students canat least understand teachersand answer questions abouttheir subjects.

"The first day, they'd goeasy on you," said |ustinDemattos, a fifth-graderwho speaks English athome but has been at Ever-green since kindergarten. "Ican translate from Spanish,but I can't speak the lan-guage really well."

Olympic Middle School - the district'sonly school for grades 6 and 7 - now isoffering bilingual classes.

District officials predict the Evergreenprogram also will have ramifications forthe high school, as demonstrated byformer Evergreen students being placedin first-year Spanish classes.

"They asked the teacher in perfectSpanish'What do we do if we're beyondthis?"'Warner said.

Serrano believes one of the biggestbenefits of the bilingual program is thatstudents get a chance to get to know eachother, which they wouldn't if Spanish-speakers were segregated into a separateprogram.

"You see the difference in interactionin the level of cooperation among thekids. You see it on the playground. Yousee brown kids with white kids," shesaid.

Venice Buhain wr i tes for The Olympian.She can be reached at 360-754-5445 orvbu hai n@theolympian.com.

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SCHOOT DEMOGRAPHICSEvergreen Elementary School, with 5OO students

in preschool through f i f th grade, is a magnet schoolfor chi ldren who speak Spanish at home, and aneighborhood school for chi ldren of al l ethnic back-grounds. l t has a higher percentage of kids with aHispanic background than Shelton School Distr ict.

Shelton School Districtr Hispanic:13 percentr Transitional bilingual: 6.1 percentr Migrant (May 2OO7l:4.5 percent

Evergreen Elementary Schoolr Hispanic (May 2(X)6): 52.8 percentr Transitional Bilingual (May 2OO71t 38.7 percentr Migrant (May 2OO7lz 26.2 percent

Source: Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction