Spelling Out the American Way : Immigrants Learn More Than English at School District’s ‘Newcomer Centers’

Yellow square, yo-yo, semitrailer truck and window cleaner may not be typical words for a high-school spelling bee, but this was neither a typical bee nor were these typical high-school students.

The nine sweaty-palmed teen-agers took turns stepping to the mike and then, haltingly, uttered letters upon command.

Shoes was the command. “Esch, aytch, ohh, eee, ezz,” was the reply.

“Rhinoceros,” another student was told. “Aarrr, hetch. . . .” he began.

It was the final spelling bee at the Newcomer Center, and the contestants, all recent immigrants to the United States, spelled with a variety of accents the practical words they had learned.

Accent on Success

The center for ninth- through 11th-graders, housed at Crenshaw High School, and a companion program in Bel-Air for younger children were opened by the Los Angeles Unified School District. They aim not only to supply students with no-nonsense vocabularies but also to orient them to this country and provide psychological support and career advice. After a year at the centers, the students will move on to regular schools.

“We want boys and girls to feel good about themselves, because if they do, they’ll feel more successful,” said Juliette Thompson, principal of Bellagio Road Newcomer School for Grades 4 through 8. “When they finish at our school, they will be able to go into any school . . . and operate successfully.”

Thrust into a regular school, children new to America are often ostracized, she said. “Even if they step out onto the playground, (if) they don’t know the rules, how to play the games . . . they’re quickly isolated. They stand under the tree, by the side, in back and don’t feel comfortable.”

Students are eligible to attend the centers if their English is limited and they are new to the United States or to its schools. Most of the students are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. But others are from such places as South Korea, the Philippines, China, Armenia and Bolivia. Some have been in this country for only a few days; others had lived in Los Angeles for more than a year without enrolling in school, said Michael Bujazan, coordinator of the district’s Student Guidance, Assessment and Placement Center, which places the students in the newcomer centers. Students with limited English skills from northeast Los Angeles, parts of Hollywood, and other sections of the city are sent to the guidance center for testing and placement.

‘High-Powered Orientation’

The district has tried to help immigrant students with six-week crash courses in American culture and English, as well as English-as-a-Second-Language and bilingual classes at many schools, but these programs cannot keep up with the need, administrators said. An estimated 62,000 students, or more than 10% of the district’s total, are immigrants who have attended U.S. schools less than three years. The crash courses barely make a dent: for the 1989-90 school year they will only serve a fifth of these students.

The newcomer centers have a maximum enrollment of 450 students. But the centers are more comprehensive than other district programs for immigrants, said Maria Olmos, administrator of the center at Crenshaw High. With a slew of bilingual teachers, aides, psychologists and counselors, the purpose is “strictly high-powered orientation,” she said.

More immigrants are arriving in the district every day. The guidance center tests more than 30 new students daily. They are given options of attending their neighborhood schools if the schools are not overcrowded, being bused elsewhere, and if they qualify, joining the newcomer centers. About 85% of them are eligible for the centers and 99% would be if the centers were open to all grades rather than only grades 4 through 11, Bujazan said.

Because of the 450-student cap, the program at Crenshaw High is being limited mainly to residents of central Los Angeles, the area in the district receiving the most immigrants, said Gloria Sierra of the district’s Office of Bilingual and ESL Instruction. Crenshaw High was selected as a site largely because it had the available space, administrators said. The Bellagio school, which is taking children mostly from northeast Los Angeles and parts of Hollywood and central Los Angeles, had been unused since 1984. Most of the students are bused to the centers.

Rising Enrollment

Partly because of articles in Korean- and Chinese-language newspapers, enrollment at the Crenshaw center shot up from 101, when it opened its half-day, summer session on July 3, to about 225 students from 12 countries by the time it closed last Friday. The center, on the second floor of the high school, re-opens for a full-day schedule Sept. 12. The Bellagio school opened Friday with 225 students from eight nations, Thompson said.

Proposed two years ago by former school board member Alan Gershman, the centers each have annual budgets of more than $526,000 for counselors, interpreter aides, a psychologist, a nurse, and other support personnel, Sierra said. In developing the centers, district officials visited school programs for newcomers in San Francisco and Long Beach.

Many of the teachers are immigrants. At the Crenshaw center, Bob Mei, who came from China last year, said he knows that his Chinese students are used to “just (sitting) straight, (listening) to the teacher solo,” but here, they learn they have to speak up in class. Guillermo Pasillas has photos of Mexican actors Cantinflas and Lucia Mendez on the bulletin board. Pasillas said he empathizes with his 31 Latino students because when he arrived in this country from Mexico at age 9, “I had to learn, sink or swim.”

While the spelling bee continued, other classes at the Crenshaw center played soccer or read stories in Spanish. LaVerne Fisher’s class played a version of bingo with names of fruits and vegetables, in preparation for a field trip to a supermarket.

In the room decorated with charts of U.S. coins, the Pledge of Allegiance and students’ drawings of flags and maps of their native countries, teacher’s assistant Eva Ramos held up placards of beets and pumpkins. Students wrote down the names in squares on their papers. Later, those who know more English read from “Unusual Stories From Many Lands,” while the rest copied the names of more foods.

Several students in Pasillas’ class, instructed to paint something, have depicted their war-torn homelands with stick-figure civilians under a hail of bombs or bullets. Jose Lopez, 16, drew a brown eye crying and a man shooting at a bull’s-eye. In Salvadoran cities, he said, the military comes to campuses after school to “recruit” boys--and if the military doesn’t pick them up, “then the other side, the guerrillas, get them,” he said through an interpreter. He pointed to his painting of an arrow-pierced heart dripping with blood, explaining that that is “what they leave behind.”

One 15-year-old boy and his mother, in fleeing Guatemala three weeks ago, had guns put to their heads at the Guatemalan border, said center psychologist Bradley Pilon. Then their money was taken by Mexicans who threatened to turn them in to authorities. After crossing into the United States with the help of coyotes , people who sneak immigrants across the border for a fee, they were locked in a house several days until the coyotes were paid. The mother now sells bags of oranges at a freeway entrance, Pilon said.

Under such conditions, adjusting to life here can be difficult, Pilon said. A fight erupted one day and he wondered if it was because the students are “more on edge.”

Haven From the Streets

Octavio Rivera, who came by himself from Mexico City two years ago, says he’s bored at school. He would rather work than go to class, but finding a job has become harder, he said through an interpeter at La Posada, an East Los Angeles boys home run by Our Lady Queen of Angels Church.

Before living at the home, Rivera, 17, lived on the streets. He was stabbed in the hand by a robber and worked as a day laborer. School is just a way to kill time, he said, adding that as soon as he can earn some money, he wants to return to Mexico “and never again put my feet in the U.S.”

But many students don’t mind reviewing spelling lists and flash cards of animals, acting out skits about friendship and singing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain.” They see this as part of their ticket to success. Spelling bee finalist Jesus Flores, who studied spelling lists but tripped up on nails , said in English: “I want to be somebody someday--a medical doctor.” He added that he’s thrilled that he’s starting to speak English.

About 90% of the students say that coming to this country was worthwhile because of the educational opportunities, Pilon said. In case they start to doubt that, the center is ready to tout the benefits of schooling. “A high school education doesn’t mean anything in this country in terms of pay,” Pilon said. If a youngster just wants a job, he or she “might as well drop out now. But it does mean something in terms of future opportunities (to attend college),” he said. Scholarships are to be given to four students from the center who enter college, Olmos said.

Most of the students are eager learners, their teachers say. Luis Rafael Bat scribbles down, phonetically, English phrases that he hears outside of class, and then brings them to teacher Pasillas for translation. His steno pad is filled: “Juen Quen Ay Si Yu Agen” (when can I see you again); “five tauson,” (five thousand); “Evry Dey Yu Luk Peri-err,” (every day you look prettier).

They are also quickly forming opinions about living in this country. Bat, 15, who was wearing a “Venice Beach”-inscribed tank-top and black Nike shorts, feels a special affinity to the Batman craze because of his surname. He signs his papers with a bat drawing. “He likes to capitalize on American culture,” Pasillas said. Fisher’s students are allowed to play music tapes of their choice as a reward--and their favorite is rap music. Jesus Flores, who came from Mexico in 1987, appreciates that “in the United States, the police do not just have the right to break into your house.”

Learning About Bias

But Jose Tista, a 16-year-old Guatemalan who lives at La Posada, said that outside of class, he feels discriminated against by Latinos who speak fluent English and are longtime U.S. residents. “The law says that nobody should be discriminated against because of color or what kind of person you are,” he said through an interpreter. But he is put down by Mexican-Americans who know that he doesn’t know much English.

In class, Tista said, it’s different because everyone is a new immigrant. Fisher said she is struck by the students’ cooperation. “They help each other,” she said, adding that students in her honors English classes at other schools “don’t share their answers or their expertise. They’re grade-hungry.”

Fisher’s class and three others have all Spanish-speaking students, but in some classes, the students are drawn from opposite ends of the globe.

In Mei’s class of youths from China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, South Korea, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador, everybody chips in to buy cakes on classmates’ birthdays. Karen Ng, who emerged as one of center’s five spelling bee champs, said she uses Cantonese, Spanish and English to communicate with her fellow students.

“I’ve learned Spanish from my classmates: ‘Good morning,’ ‘How are you,’ ‘friend’ . . . and ‘Shut up,’ ” she said, adding that she wants to major in Spanish and economics in college.

Plans for September

In September, the potpourri expands with the return of the regular Crenshaw students, but administrators don’t foresee any problems. The newcomer students will be taking their own set curriculum of orientation, introduction to U.S. heritage, math and language arts--taught in English with the help of bilingual aides, in Spanish and in Mandarin--as well as ESL and art, Olmos said. But they will join the Crenshaw student body for lunch and physical education, she said. Olmos also wants to start tutoring, a buddy system and a folkloric dance group from among the two student populations.

The center’s students have been encouraged to jump into the mainstream. Junior Tanya Acosta, a star on Crenshaw’s track team, assured Fisher’s students in Spanish that they had nothing to worry about, explaining that she came from Guadalajara a year ago. The blacks and other members on the track team accepted her even though she was the only Latina.

“At the beginning, we didn’t talk a lot--they said, ‘Hi, how are you?’ and I didn’t understand what they were saying, so I didn’t answer,” Acosta recalled. Fisher’s class giggled nervously.

But soon, she said, she had no problems making friends. “On the team, I learned a lot of English.”

The newcomer students, Fisher said, “never think they have the right to join a club, do sports, or to be a cheerleader.

“They don’t think they’re ready to do it, because they don’t know enough English. But you don’t have to know English” to start, she said.

Said Mei, who calls students at home to see if they have questions about their lessons: “In one year, they’ll really be different.”