Little Big Kids : Teacher Stays Calm, Firm in Face of 6th-Grade Tumult

Wielding a fat piece of pink chalk, sixth-grade teacher James Azevedo scrawled the first vocabulary word of the new school year on his blackboard.

PHILOSOPHY.

“I believe we all have to have goals,” he told the class of 11- and 12-year-old students at Park Oaks Elementary School in Thousand Oaks. “If you don’t have goals, you probably won’t succeed. Sixth grade is a strange year and a great year, but it is also real important.”

Turning to face the board again, he wrote another word in big pink letters: PIVOTAL. Then another: CHOICES.

“Why are you here today?” he asked.

“Because they made us,” a freckle-faced student piped up.

But if Azevedo succeeds, the raison d’etre of sixth grade will become a lot clearer to his 37 students as the year progresses. It is the last year of elementary school and the final stage before the leap to junior high school, with its more free-form approach to academics.

As Azevedo and his students embark on the new year, challenges abound.

A veteran teacher in his second year at Park Oaks, Azevedo, 47, started the semester facing the largest class he has ever taught.

And this year, for the first time, his class includes two students with learning disabilities who have been mainstreamed as part of a special-education pilot program at two elementary schools in the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

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For the students in Classroom 14, the sixth grade offers a farewell of sorts to the comparatively structured academic environment of elementary school, and a turbulent nine months to prepare for junior high.

And this year, they’ve finally reached the top of the elementary school heap. Next fall, they’ll start at the bottom of the junior high school pecking order as lowly seventh-graders.

“It is a huge stepping stone,” Azevedo said. “Success in high school starts in junior high, and success in junior high starts here in sixth grade.”

Last week, five days into the new school year, some of Azevedo’s students offered their opinions on what sixth grade means in the grand scope of their educational careers.

“You have to decide whether to behave or not and whether to have confidence in yourself,” said Courtney Johnson, 10.

Although she was a little puzzled by Azevedo’s opening remarks on Sept. 8, 11-year-old Heather Dillon said she knows this will be an important year.

“Pivotal was a new word for me, but I understand about choices,” she said. To get into college, Heather said she must develop good study skills.

Some students, however, are less interested in academic pursuits.

“It’s the first day of school and I already hate it,” one boy grumbled.

Education experts single out sixth grade as a significant academic year because of the physical and emotional changes children experience.

“It is an interesting age,” said Millie Murray-Ward, an associate professor of education at Cal Lutheran University. “The kids are going through so many transitions . . . the body changes and the brain too. At one minute, they are children, and the next minute they are 35-year-olds.”

Some students, however, are not looking forward to the physical changes that signal adolescence.

Recently, while sharing their apprehensions about the sixth-grade year, a group of girls grimaced at the thought of the end-of-the year health videos detailing the stages of human development.

“Developmental films!” 11-year-old Amy Bishop squealed.

“Eeeeww!” the girls shrieked in response.

Azevedo said the sixth-grade ritual is purposely scheduled in late May, since getting the class to concentrate on anything else afterward is virtually impossible.

Spring will offer other, less traumatic, experiences. The students will leave the tiny campus to study science at a weeklong camp in the Santa Monica Mountains. And they will visit the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu.

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Educators look for ways to ease the transition into adolescence. Across the country, many school districts have followed a trend toward middle schools, which groups elementary schools to include kindergarten through fifth grades and middle schools to include sixth through eighth grades.

Conejo Valley Unified converted a former junior high school to a middle school starting this year. But for now, Colina Middle School is the district’s only experiment with the configuration.

“The developmental characteristics of 10- to 14-year-olds are the basis for the middle school reform effort in California,” said Mary Ann Overton, a middle-school consultant with the state Department of Education.

Some educators contend that the configuration more closely groups students according to physical, emotional and intellectual development. But others argue that middle schools push children too soon into the more sophisticated junior high school setting.

“In sixth grade, they still need that last-minute nurturing,” Park Oaks Principal Rachelle Morga said. “They still have those maternal (needs) going on.”

Many elementary students are accustomed to having female teachers in that nurturing role, although Azevedo is one of a number of male teachers in Thousand Oaks elementary classrooms.

For many years, Park Oaks had only one male teacher, Morga said. This year, five of the school’s teachers are men.

Some of Azevedo’s students said having a male teacher is a big change. “It’s awkward,” Heather said. “I’m used to having a woman teaching me.”

But Morga believes the more balanced ratio is a boon for Park Oaks, a small 550-student campus of newly painted blue-and-white buildings on Calle Bouganvilla.

One of 18 elementary schools in the district, Park Oaks has an increasing number of students who come from single-parent families and homes where both parents work, school officials said.

“You have homes with children without fathers,” Morga said. Consequently, more male teachers provide “a nice balance for children,” she said.

Hiring Azevedo was a boon for Park Oaks as well, Morga said.

“He involves students and he truly listens,” she said. “He plays ball with the kids during lunch, and he’s playing ball, not just blowing a whistle--they respond to that. It is not like another adult patting them on the head. He was the best-kept secret in the district.”

Azevedo moved to Ventura County two years ago with his wife, Helen, and their two children after teaching in inner-city San Diego schools for more than a decade.

Unable to find a permanent teaching position during his first year in Thousand Oaks, the former General Motors credit representative began substitute-teaching for Conejo Valley Unified in the fall of 1992. The district offered him a full-time job at Park Oaks last school year.

During his years in San Diego, Azevedo taught junior high school as well as fifth and sixth grade. It was there that he developed his teaching philosophy.

“I think kids at that age don’t want to be treated like kids,” he said. “They are so gawky and strange, and their hormones are so strange, but you have to look past that.”

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After 18 years in the classroom, Azevedo has developed a calm, disciplinarian approach. He is soft-spoken, rarely raising his voice even in reprimand. He has a list of classroom rules that he states only once, on the first day of school.

“I believe (students) like knowing where their boundaries are,” he said. “They feel much more secure. If they don’t know . . . they keep pushing, keep exploring. And exploring is great. . . . But you still have to have rules.”

Azevedo’s room is an expression of his teaching style: orderly and quiet. An army of blue and yellow chairs encircle five clusters of desks. The chairs sport colored tennis balls on their feet to prevent noisy scraping across the new linoleum floor.

One wall boasts neatly lined-up portraits of 38 U.S. Presidents and various historical figures, including Ben Franklin and Napoleon. Albert Einstein stares at the class from a poster above Azevedo’s desk, next to a “Go Bruins” banner, touting the teacher’s alma mater, UCLA.

A large American flag is mounted in the corner, and every morning after the bell rings at 8:25 a.m., all 37 students stand and repeat the Pledge of Allegiance.

While the world inside Classroom 14 might seem old-fashioned, reminiscent of an elementary classroom 10 or 20 years ago, school officials, students and parents have embraced Azevedo’s structured environment.

“Kids want discipline, they want structure,” Morga said. “It is like holding a baby. If you hold that baby strong in your arms, it won’t wriggle.”

Billy MacKelvey, 11, said he likes the class so far. “Mr. Azevedo is strict, but he’s fair,” he said.

Billy and seven other boys and girls share a table in the back of the class, where they work individually and together, correcting one another’s math homework or participating in larger class discussions or games.

“It’s pretty fun,” Billy said of the class setup. “Mr. Azevedo lets us play games, but when he does, they are educational.”

Jeffrey Maffuccio, 11, also likes the class, but he misses his old school and friends in Tulsa, Okla. “It was better than California,” he said. “The weather was a lot nicer and the people were nicer.”

Jeffrey and his family moved to Thousand Oaks just before the start of the new school year. “I started making a lot of friends there,” he said. “It’s been kind of hard to leave.”

An aspiring race-car driver, Jeffrey enjoys drawing and, after lunch every day, joins many students in the class who draw while Azevedo reads stories out loud.

“They really watch TV so much they don’t imagine anything,” Azevedo said. “Some people think sixth-graders might be too old, but I’ve read to eighth-graders before, and they like it.”

But selecting reading material for his young students can be tricky. On the first day of school, Azevedo read a Finnish folk tale about a boy who outsmarts an evil troll. At least one parent whose child told her about the story was upset at the grisly ending, in which the troll unintentionally cooks his wife and eats her. After placating the parent during a telephone conference that same night, Azevedo said he will take more care in choosing selections.

Fortunately, things got off to a smoother start in other areas.

So far, the effort to mainstream the two learning-disabled students is going well. One of those students, 11-year-old Chris Pentis, said he is happier in Azevedo’s class.

“It’s better because I’m switching classes and meeting more people,” said Chris, who has an attention-deficit disorder.

Chris spends four hours a day in Classroom 14 and another two hours at Park Oaks’ new center for special-education students.

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When the students in Classroom 14 go to science or physical education classes, which are taught by different teachers, the learning-disabled students are included.

“Last year, people would think we were in the retarded room,” Chris said. “Now, this time they won’t make fun of us.”

Chris’ mother, Patsy Pentis, said she is also pleased with the change. “The fact that he is being put (in a class) with his peers has helped him tremendously,” she said.

Pentis was one of about 25 parents of children in Classroom 14 who went to back-to-school night Tuesday, where Azevedo outlined his plans for the school year.

“I think communication between you and I is vital,” he told the moms and dads in attendance.

Some of the parents were impressed.

“I really like his philosophy about teaching and discipline,” Pentis said. “I think he stirs their interest.”

Parent Janet Selby said she appreciated Azevedo’s concern for parent-teacher communication, but added that such a relationship should be expected.

“Even if he hadn’t said that, I would have sought it out,” Selby said. “I feel there is nobody to look after your children except for you.”

Parent Tambi Fisher said Azevedo’s tutelage has helped her 11-year-old daughter, Kelsey.

“I just wanted someone who would nurture her self-esteem,” Fisher said. “I really think he generally cares about the kids, (and) I think (finding that) is far too infrequent.”

Fisher, a former third-grade teacher at Santa Rosa Elementary School in Camarillo, said she likes Azevedo’s structured classroom setting.

“I think he is encouraging kids to grow,” Fisher said. “It is kind of cutting the apron strings. . . . Kids tend to get in junior high and they don’t know how to handle it because they have not been given those guidelines.”

But even Azevedo’s structured and seemingly safe classroom environment can’t guard the innocence of his pupils.

Kelsey, Tambi Fisher’s daughter, said she worries about school safety when she attends junior high school next year.

“I’m afraid that a new kid who grew up in L.A. and was taught about violence might come here,” she said. “And they might have a gun.”

Last week, Azevedo directed the class through a three-page list of punishable campus offenses, including everything from sexual harassment to climbing trees.

“No gum, no toys, no tape recorders, no radios, no hats,” he intoned.

“No smoking, no heroin,” one boy chimed in from the back of the class, triggering giggles from a group of other boys.

Azevedo said some sixth-grade students are eager to get out of childhood and latch onto adult words or try to act in ways they perceive to be adult.

“It always seems to show up in sixth grade,” he said. “There is always pressure to hurry up and mature.”

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On the first day of school, demonstrating the scope of maturity levels in sixth grade, a girl in Azevedo’s class raved about seeing the movie “The Lion King” this summer.

Meanwhile, a group of 11- and 12-year-old boys shared criticisms at recess of Oliver Stone’s bloody, R-rated film “Natural Born Killers.”

State education consultant Mary Ann Overton said instances like these speak to the differences between sixth-graders today versus pre-adolescents 10 years ago.

“I think they have in many ways matured more rapidly due to the effects of television,” Overton said. “They know much more about the world than many of us would like them to.”

Murray-Ward, the Cal Lutheran education professor, agreed.

“There is a lot of stuff that has changed,” she said. “In many ways, they do grow up faster. . . . I think in some ways, childhood starts to end.”