The Whiz Kids of Watts Prove Academic Win Was No Fluke

Who’s Bad? The academic pentathlon team at Markham Intermediate School of Watts, that’s who.

For the second year in a row, this team from the inner city has won the Los Angeles Unified School District Pentathlon Super Quiz, the crown jewel of the five-event academic competition that pits the district’s 79 junior high schools against each other.

Last weekend, this group of youngsters, many from some of the toughest housing projects and neighborhoods in the city, bested students from gifted magnet programs and schools with top academic reputations.

Hip to Be Smart

They also have made it hip to be an egghead at Markham. Last year, 120 students tried out for the 12-member team. That’s almost double the number of youngsters who tried out for Markham’s prestigious basketball team.

“The impact of the team’s win on the school has been awesome,” Principal Hal Kimbell Jr. said Thursday. “It says that it doesn’t matter where you come from, if you are committed, dedicated and work hard, you can do anything that you want.”

Markham’s back-to-back wins are no fluke. They are part of the academic turnaround going on at the Watts school. Once plagued by high absenteeism and student failure rates, Markham’s staff has introduced several innovative programs aimed at solving these problems.

For one thing, Kimbell last fall moved homeroom, a 15-minute class where attendance is taken, from 9 a.m. to 8 a.m. “When homeroom is at 9 a.m., you are telling the student that you don’t expect them to be here until 9,” he said.

The change worked. The absentee rate has fallen from 17% in November to less than 9% in February.

Saturday Classes

To help potential dropouts improve their academic performance, Markham started holding classes on Saturdays. The voluntary program helps students improve their reading and study skills and attracts about 70 youngsters to the campus each weekend.

The school also has started a campaign to improve the student body’s self-esteem. Called “Markham’s Straight A’s,” students and teachers sport yellow-and-black buttons emblazoned with the slogan “Achievement, Affirmation and Attendance.”

“The Super Quiz wins fall right into place with the Straight A’s program,” said Kimbell. “The wins show that the kids have achieved. Their victory is an affirmation of how good they feel about themselves and the pentathletes are kids who have no attendance problem.”

Team members do not see their success in such lofty terms. They talk about long weekends and holiday study sessions on the U.S. Constitution and its history, the Super Quiz topic.

They laugh about the time eighth-grader Cyrell Williams called Greg Johnson on the telephone and abruptly asked, “What year was the Constitutional Convention held?”

Nonplussed, Johnson answered, “1787.”

Team members point to Nam Che as the “quiet leader” of the team, while Williams is known as “the joker.”

Seventh-grader Marlene Bowman was the only girl among the six Markham students on this year’s Super Quiz team. Marlene is the second member of her family to win a place on a Markham pentathlon team. Her sister, Paulette, was on last year’s winning team.

And the only people higher than team members about the second win were coaches John Hernandez and Alfee Enciso.

“This is a great victory that shows that it doesn’t matter where the kids come from,” Enciso said.