Writing Programs Win Honors : National Council Cites 3 San Diego County Schools

At most schools, children are discouraged from writing notes to one another. At Maryland Avenue Demonstration School in La Mesa, teachers have set up a postal service to distribute intraschool correspondence between students.

“We just make a point of helping children practice the English language, oral and written,” said Rose Anne Goodrow, whose third- and fourth-grade students deliver students’ and teachers’ notes to one another. “We do a great deal of writing.”

That emphasis on writing is the common factor among three San Diego County schools chosen last weekend as “centers of excellence” in a nationwide competition held by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Clairemont Senior High School in San Diego and El Capitan High School in Lakeside were also among the 158 schools nationwide that were recognized for the excellence of their programs in drama, journalism, film, reading or writing.

The council looked for programs that fit their communities, and used sound theories and research that teachers elsewhere could use, said Skip Nicholson, chairman of the council task force making the selections.

“Few of these are new programs,” Nicholson said, “but they went unnoticed because so few people were asking the right questions of the right people. Too few investigators have tried to find out what does work in the teaching of English.”

Designers of model programs here agree that they must get their students to write--about anything--to conquer writing anxiety and teach them to verbalize their thoughts. “Kids will say to you that they can’t write,” said Mary Catherine Swanson, chairwoman of Clairemont High’s English department. “I’ll say, ‘Unless you’re missing a hand, you can write.’ ”

The school has had remarkable success with its 5-year-old “Advancement Via Individual Determination” program for minority and poor students, Swanson said, placing 156 of 158 participants in colleges.

AVID participants must take at least two advanced-level courses, supplemented by two hours of tutoring weekly from college students and two hours of tutoring weekly from English teachers.

College professors have been recruited to assist in the classroom, and professionals from the community visit each week to discuss their careers, Swanson said. The tutors are former AVID students who show the high school students that they can succeed in college.

“I didn’t know how to write an essay, period,” said Yolanda Botarin, a senior and AVID student who speaks only Spanish at home. “I was never taught how to write an essay.”

Uyen Bang, a Vietnamese native who spoke little English when she arrived here several years ago, said the program gave her the courage to tackle an advanced English course. “When I got an A in that class--now I have the confidence that I can do anything,” she said.

Ironically, the program is in danger of running out of money, Swanson said. San Diego Unified School District officials have not yet approved funding for the next semester, she said.

Also at Clairemont, students in every academic course must write for two or three minutes before or after each class, Swanson said. Many teachers ask them to summarize the crucial points of the day’s instruction or to write out questions on concepts they do not understand. The requirement has been adopted by other schools in the district, she said.

“We found that once they can verbalize in their own words, then the knowledge is really there,” Swanson said.

At El Capitan, most students practice the same writing exercises as Clairemont students, and they are encouraged to keep journals to improve their writing, said English department chairman Mark Hanson.

“We use writing as a way of learning across the curriculum,” he said.