Vista Program Eases the Way for Students From Other Lands

At an age when most boys are dreaming of making a Little League team, Shahram Jodiri was worrying about being drafted for war. In his native Iran, the military recruiters come around early, plucking up youths barely in their teens to use as fodder for the holy war against neighboring Iraq.

Shahram, 13, was lucky. His parents, fearful for their son’s future, fled their homeland, ultimately landing half a world away in the hilly North County community of Vista, where relatives live.

The sudden move was a bit bewildering for the boy. He spoke only limited English, and the idea of having a new school, let alone a new country, made him more than a bit nervous.

But Shahram had help. On his first day in the Vista Unified School District last year, the boy and his mother were steered toward the Newcomers Center, a sort of mini-Ellis Island designed to ease the transition for new arrivals from foreign lands.

Happily Assimilated

With the center’s assistance, Shahram was pointed on the right course in his first days in America. Today, he has happily assimilated into the mainstream of life at Lincoln Middle School in Vista, dressing in a football jersey, jeans and high-top leather basketball shoes, and conversing easily in accented English with his eighth-grade chums.

Such tales are what the Newcomers Center is all about. Founded little more than a year ago, the Vista Unified School District program has served as the portal to education in a new land for nearly 500 students from 38 different countries--among them children from Iceland, Cambodia, Italy, Yugoslavia and Mexico.

The only program of its type among San Diego County’s suburban school districts, the Newcomers Center operates with four employees out of a small trailer at the back of Santa Fe Elementary School near downtown Vista. The trailer is stuffed with child-sized desks and chairs. One wall features a map of the world with colored pins designating the different countries represented by students at the district.

Widely Praised

Despite the humble headquarters and a shoestring budget of less than $50,000 a year in local and state-disbursed funds, the Newcomers Center has earned widespread praise from county educators and Vista teachers.

Jim Esterbrooks, a spokesman for the county Department of Education, said bilingual education experts give the Vista program high marks, noting that it touches base with each new student--and the parents--on a comfortable, person-to-person basis.

“We’ve been impressed with it,” Esterbrooks said. “Particularly when people are brand new to a country, there can be a lot of uncertainties. The ability of a school district to answer those questions early on is really valuable.”

Joan Horn, a teacher with the Vista Unified School District’s bilingual education program, agreed.

“It’s wonderful,” Horn said. “It’s just really made life a lot easier. We have all the information we need on a student right from the beginning. We’re able to plug the student right into the program.”

Indeed, the primary goal of the Newcomers Center is to evaluate the students--who range from kindergarten to high school and come from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds--on English proficiency and other skills, then place them in the proper classroom setting.

Personal Touch

Moreover, the program’s staff tries to glean information about a student’s family background, possible psychological disorders, and physical handicaps such as a hearing or speech problem. Those scraps of knowledge can help a teacher get to know the child all the sooner and ease a youth’s transition into a sometimes-intimidating new environment.

“We can pick up on things a classroom teacher might not discover for weeks,” said Marsha Malone, an educator assigned to the Newcomers Center. “The more facts about the student the teacher has, the easier it is for them to provide the proper instruction.”

Malone recalls one tiny immigrant from Mexico who came to the Newcomers Center clutching a stuffed toy dog. When the staff inquired about the dog, the boy’s mother explained that the stuffed animal was a security blanket of sorts to her son. With that in mind, Malone told the child’s teacher to avoid weaning the tot from his prized dog too soon, a bit of advice that easily could have been overlooked in the hustle-and-bustle of the typical school day.

Such seemingly insignificant insights can prove critical when dealing with young children thrust wide-eyed into an unsettling new world, according to Horn.

“That’s the kind of information we love,” she said. “It saves time and saves us from making mistakes that can prove critical.”

The up-close approach to handling immigrant students, however, is rare. Before the Newcomers Center was established in Vista, for example, students from foreign countries could sometimes be assigned to an inappropriate classroom and would be stuck there for weeks before the district’s overburdened tester could administer the required English proficiency exams.

“It could be a long time before a tester got out there,” said Julie Hemenez, director of the Newcomers Center. “In the meantime, the child is just sitting there. And, realistically, it’s very hard for a teacher to stop everything when a new student comes in.”

Patty Kelly, a 14-year-old Latino girl who lived in a Calexico charity home until she was adopted by a Vista family, came with her new parents to the Newcomers Center speaking fluent English. But the center’s staff noted that her writing and reading skills were not as fine-tuned, so they advised her teacher to keep a lookout for problems.

The tip proved accurate. When Patty began struggling, she was quickly switched to a class better-suited for her writing and reading skills.

“Without the Newcomers Center, Patty probably would have been lost in a regular class because a teacher wouldn’t have been alerted to be on the lookout,” Horn said.

Link to Parents

Hemenez, who first suggested that Vista undertake the program, said the center also provides the district with an early bridge to immigrant parents, who typically accompany their children to an evaluation and testing session. Generally, the program’s staff is able to establish a rapport with the parents, making the adults aware of the intricacies of the American educational system early on, she said.

Although the Newcomers Center staff generally is able to spend only a few hours with each student, the benefits to the child are great, Hemenez said. Each of the employees is fluent in Spanish, and volunteer translators in other languages can be called on when needed.

“We’re now able to give new students the individualized attention needed to make them feel comfortable and understand what is expected of them,” Hemenez said.

Saream Rou, a 13-year-old girl from Cambodia, said the program’s staff made her feel welcome when she came to Vista earlier this year to live with her grandmother and aunt.

“They were nice,” Saream said, noting how the staff took time to help her with spelling and punctuation during the short time she was with them.

Hemenez stressed that the center would prove even more effective if the program’s concept was expanded so extra time could be spent with new arrivals, especially those with large gaps in their educational background or lacking even rudimentary English skills.

Such instruction could prove especially beneficial to Latino students, she said. About 90% of the students processed through the center are from Mexico, many of them the children of migrant laborers, Hemenez said. Because of economic disadvantages, these pupils often have not been afforded bountiful educational opportunities and are particularly in need of individualized attention, she said.

In the coming weeks, Hemenez plans to go before district trustees to ask for additional money so the program can be expanded to provide as much as six months of intensified instruction to immigrant children in need of extra help. But with the fiscal outlook bleak for school districts across the state, Hemenez does not have exceedingly high hopes.

“The support is there from the board, but the big question remains: Do we have the money?” she said.

Results Are the Reward

Even if money cannot be found to allow the program to grow, Hemenez said, the Newcomers Center will remain a vital tool for the district. And members of the center’s staff will reap their own rewards.

Hemenez recalls a Mexican woman who brought her three children to the center last year. The woman was pregnant--and nearly out of breath. She said she and the children had walked three miles from their home to the center because the family had no car.

The children, Hemenez said, seemed shy and insecure, not too sure they wanted to stay in school very long. After they were tested, Hemenez drove the family to their home, a small trailer on the edge of town. She sat and talked a while with the mother, listening and offering advice.

A day later, the woman showed up at the center with a bag of avocados and thanks. Still, Hemenez recalls, she did not hold out much hope that the children, like the sons and daughters of many other migrant workers, would stick around too long in school.

But one recent day, Hemenez spotted one of the woman’s children, a teen-age girl, walking proudly along a hallway at a local junior high school. The girl remembered Hemenez and stopped to smile and say hello--in English.

“More than anything,” Hemenez said, “the reward is in seeing the bright face and knowing that that girl is still in school.”