School Opens New Horizons in Costa Mesa

Asuncion Gonzalez cried on her first day of school three months ago. They were not tears of childish fear, but of joy mixed with grown-up regret. For never before had the grandmother been in a classroom as a student in all her 61 years.

The small but sturdy woman from Oaxaca, Mexico, had never learned to read or write. As a child, she had never had her own pen or notebook. She had never known anything but work since she was a girl of 11 in the rural town of La Cienega.

Why should she go to school? her mother would say. She was a girl and she needed to work.

“Esa era la ley de antes,” said Mrs. Gonzalez, who did housekeeping for a living. “That was the way it was in the old days.”

It’s a new day now at Whittier Elementary School, which serves Shalimar and other blue-collar barrios bursting with children in southwest Costa Mesa. This humble, 1950s-era campus has flung its doors wide open to the parents of its students: to the cleaning ladies, busboys and car mechanics struggling to get a leg up on the ladder of success.

“Can you imagine?” asked Mrs. Gonzalez, one of 75 residents enrolled in a new adult school on campus. “From knowing nothing to starting to learn at my age!

“But they say it’s never too late.”

Mrs. Gonzalez attends class every day but Friday, when she still works cleaning a private residence. She doesn’t have kids at the school, but she’s like the other working folks who came here mostly from Mexico, with almost no English and grade-school educations at most. Several are illiterate. And many held the deferential belief that schools were off-limits and education was properly left to professionals.

That was a belief school officials vowed to debunk. Parents should be partners in the education of their children.

Yet, when the immigrant children showed up at the kindergarten door, more than 90% spoke only Spanish. Most didn’t know their colors or how to count to 10 in English. They had never had a book read to them at home. Some had never even seen a book at home.

Two key components of school success were missing here--parental involvement and early preparation. In February, the school debuted an unusual program designed to tackle both problems and help make Whittier a true community school.

With a state grant, Whittier started preschool instruction for 50 4-year-olds. Another 60 kids went instantly on a waiting list.

But the no-cost preschool, unavailable to most families in this area, came with a hitch. Parents who enrolled their children had to enroll in school themselves. Adult education was offered under the same roof at the same time as regular classes.

To make school even more convenient, the parents are allowed to bring their babies and toddlers to class with them. Call it vertical instruction, from infancy to retirement.

So today at Whittier, you’ll see the most endearing sight before the school day starts. Out on the blacktop during morning assembly, a small group of parents lines up with the children to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Then the kids go to class and the adults go to the library to study basic math and phonics, along with how to open a bank account, do CPR and become a citizen. The row of strollers parked outside the adult classroom is the school’s proud symbol of successful parental participation.

Twice a week, third-graders visit the adults to test them on the 500 most frequently used words in English. They also drill the grown-ups on Zoo Phonics, a method of learning alphabet sounds combining the names of animals with hand signals.

The moms and dads make very cooperative pupils, monkeying the funny gestures that go with Gordo Gorilla, Ollie Octopus and Pee Wee Penguin. And their children, apparently, will make very responsible parents.

At home, kids are demanding to see their parents’ classwork to make sure the teacher stamped it with a duck or penguin that testifies it was satisfactory.

On campus, the children pop into the adult class and ask the teacher: “Did my dad do his homework?”

The three children of Lorenzo Corona have nothing to worry about when it comes to their father’s schoolwork. On Tuesday when I visited, Mr. Corona was proudly showing his teacher page after page of English phrases written neatly in a spiral notebook.

The full-time busboy from Guanajuato, Mexico, stood with his arms down to his side like a shy child, his head bowed a little, his eyes eagerly searching the teacher’s face for approval.

“Good, Lorenzo! I’m proud of you,” says Ines Vicente, the Argentinian-born teacher whose affection for her adult class shimmers in her smiling eyes.

Mr. Corona flashes a wide, aw-shucks grin. His wife, Maria Concepcion, who is standing behind him, also smiles. She, too, attends class at Whittier. Like the grandmother from Oaxaca, Mrs. Corona never learned to read or write. Until now.

Her husband is so proud of his progress he even shows off his lessons at Palm Court, the restaurant inside the Waterfront Hilton in Huntington Beach, where the hostess also expresses admiration for his work.

Mr. Corona may have trouble pronouncing the name of the place where he cleans tables, but he proudly writes proper English sentences about the White House and Congress to show his co-workers.

“I’m delighted to see them make progress,” said Vicente, who hands out Tootsie Rolls as rewards for her oversized students. “They really care and they want to learn.”

But the parents weren’t always so involved in the school. A couple of years ago, only a handful would show up for the monthly parent meetings. Now, as many as 150 attend.

The push to embrace parents was a priority for Principal Sharon Blakely, now in her second year at the helm. She hired a community outreach worker, recruited parent volunteers to help with office tasks, and told the staff to make parents feel welcome.

“It was a happy school, but parents were silent,” said Blakely.

The principal worried at first that the community wouldn’t accept her because she’s not Latina and doesn’t speak Spanish.

“They’re going to need to read my heart,” she thought.

The teachers I talked with over lunch praised the principal’s initiatives. They said their school was once like the ignored stepchild of Newport-Mesa Unified, which includes much wealthier areas across Newport Bay. Other schools had newer facilities and richer families with more resources.

A jogathon that raised, say, $25,000 for a school in an affluent area would net $350 at Whittier.

“It just didn’t seem fair,” said first-grade teacher Susie Erickson, 13 years at Whittier. “We’d go to just as much trouble, but our parents couldn’t pledge as much.”

Whittier parents contribute other riches. On Cinco de Mayo, the residents swarmed the school for an afternoon fiesta. The children performed folkloric dances in costumes their parents bought in Tijuana or made themselves. All the food was home-cooked--enchiladas, pozole, taquitos and carne asada.

“I think the whole neighborhood was here,” Blakely rejoiced afterward.

“This is wonderful,” she said to Vicente. “Such a community, isn’t it?”

“This is family,” responded the adult-ed teacher.

Indeed, in just a day I felt I had joined the family.

After the fiesta, I happened to run into Mr. and Mrs. Corona with their three children. He greeted me warmly and introduced his kids, still dressed in their western dance wear. So was their dad who, along with other adult-school parents, performed a line dance while singing “Achy Breaky Heart” in English.

Mr. Corona showed me his new moves, leaning back on one step. We all laughed.

For the show, the parents had also recited a dialogue written for them and their third-grade tutors. It was a playful role reversal for adults and children. At Whittier Elementary, switching places can be both fun and instructive.

PARENTS: We have learned a lot this year. There’s a lot for you to hear.

STUDENTS: We’re short on time, we’re sorry to say. Just save it for another day. Right now please pass your homework here, because the time to end is near.

PARENTS: Homework! What homework? Did we have homework?

PARENT 1: I forgot.

PARENT 2: I left it at home.

PARENT 3: I was sick.

PARENT 4: The dog ate it.

PARENT 5: The baby tore it up.

STUDENTS: We give up!

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.