These Kids Know Write From Wrong

Students at Marine View School in Huntington Beach look no different than most other eighth-graders in Orange County.

They wear casual, bright-colored clothes. They smile a lot, frequently flashing metal braces. They occasionally are awkward and self-conscious--the universal signs of junior high adolesence.

But the eighth-graders at Marine View School are different. In the state’s new California Assessment Program (CAP) scores for writing ability, the eighth-graders at Marine View topped the charts in Orange County. The statewide average for the writing tests was a score of 250. Marine View posted an average score of 331. The county’s next highest-scoring school, Thurston Middle in Laguna Beach, averaged 308.

In interviews at the school Monday, this is how eighth-grader Jack Brady, 12, summed up Marine View’s writing program:

“Writing is good at this school because students do a lot of it,” he said. “The teachers make us do a lot writing (and it) becomes easier. . . .”

Principal Robert Vouga pointed out that Marine View has an above-average student body. Of the total eighth-grade students, 58 are classified as mentally gifted. Those 58 are in Ocean View School District’s Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program.

“Our school is expected to do well,” Vouga said.

And English teacher Jana Fillbach added: “The writing of the GATE students really does stand out.”

But Fillbach and Vouga also pointed out that about half of the eighth-grade students at Marine View are not in the mentally gifted category. The non-GATE students are the children who live in the middle-class neighborhood surrounding the school at 5682 Tilburg Drive, about half a mile south of Meadowlark Airport. The GATE students come from all over the school district in Huntington Beach.

“Our school district started a special writing-training program about five years ago,” Vouga explained. “Writing is the main event in our English classes, but it’s also an important event in social studies, in science, in history, even occasionally in PE (physical education) and math.”

Vouga said that all the students, and not just the gifted, benefit from the emphasis on writing.

In teacher Rod Collier’s eighth-grade class Monday, students hunched over their desks as they revised historical essays about some event in their lives. Jennifer Allen, 14, worked on a paper she entitled “Gaining a Friend.”

Jennifer’s essay read:

In kindergarten I always hated a girl named XX. She was a bully, and she picked on people, especially me. The girl never left me alone, so one day I decided to obtain revenge.

It was about the second month of kindergarten, and our class was planning a field trip to the tide pools. . . . On the day of the field trip, XX was being really mean to me, and on the bus, she started calling me names. When our class was all assembled on the rocks, our t e acher read off our group assignments. My heart sank as she read XX’s and my name off in the same group. . . .

Jennifer then related how she had deliberately tripped the bully kindergarten girl that fateful day on the tide pool rocks. The girl complained, but she later became more considerate of Jennifer. They became friends. Jennifer, in retrospect, said in her essay: “I know now that I didn’t do the right thing (in tripping the girl).”

Sitting next to Jennifer was Holly Perkins, 14, who was writing an essay on why she decided to go into the GATE program several years ago.

Asked if she likes to write, Perkins laughed and said: “Not really. But it’s OK, and I can do it. At school here, we learn how to write descriptive and narrative and stuff like that. We do a lot of writing.”

In a science class Monday morning, other eighth-graders said writing plays a big role in that subject matter, also. The students said the teacher, Jay Duval, requires a research paper.

Mark Wilson, 13, said his paper discussed how acidic factors hurt bone composition. “Yeah, it was difficult to write,” he said. But he said Marine View’s teachers had helped make writing less of a problem for him. “They teach us style and stuff,” he said.

Adam Chiles, 14, said: “My paper was on teeth--on how they’re formed, and stuff like that. It wasn’t hard, really.” But he added that the science paper would have been very difficult had he not learned many writing skills while at Marine View. Asked if he likes writing, Chiles said: “It’s OK. It’s not that exciting. You have to learn how to know how to do it. It seems we have to write a story in every class. The hardest thing about writing, I think, is getting a good topic and then writing something meaningful.”

Charles Schultz, 13, said: “I wrote how colors mix (for a science project). There were quite a few books on it. . . . Writing hurts your fingers because you’re using your pencils, but it’s fun when it’s done. I always write at least one rough draft. We do a lot of rewriting.”

Later, on the school playground, the eighth-graders played as energetically and carefree as any group of young adolescents.

Vouga watched the outdoor scene with pride as he reflected on the good showing the students had made on the CAP scores. “The fact that we have such a high percentage of capable students, both resident (from the neighborhood) and from GATE, and the fact that we don’t have the difficult task of starting from ground zero in teaching them English allows us to focus our energies a little bit more on the top academic end,” he said.

And he added: “This school has very high expectations.”