Ageless Lessons

From the 18th century well into the 1940s, the one-room schoolhouse was a fixture of American culture. Now, a number of elementary schools in the San Fernando Valley are joining a nationwide trend in revisiting the educational model long considered obsolete.

The contemporary version--known as multi-age learning--shuns the segregation of pupils by grade and promotes an atmosphere in which children of varying ages and skills can learn from each other and boost their self-esteem.

“This program understands that children of one chronological age may have more in common with children of other ages,” said Susan Gilliam, a teacher at Roscoe Elementary School in Sun Valley.

Though not a districtwide program, multi-age learning has found popularity in the Valley, where an estimated half-dozen schools are currently practicing the method and several more plan to start. Roscoe, Telfair in Pacoima, Dixie Canyon in Studio City, Maclay Primary in Pacoima, Haskell in Granada Hills and Camellia Avenue in North Hollywood all have multi-age classes.

Noble Avenue School in Panorama City, a year-round school, will implement the program in three classes in July, adding to the more than two dozen schools throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District that have adopted the idea. Camellia Avenue School administrators also are considering expanding the method’s use from three classes to all of its kindergarten through second-grade classes.

“One of our missions is to have all of our children on [their] grade level for reading, and grouping the students according to their abilities, we think, is one of the best ways to do that,” said Noble Avenue Principal Ruth Jackson.

Most mixed-age classes group kindergarten through second-grade students because their developmental levels tend to be more diverse. A few, however, extend the group classes to fourth and fifth grades. Unlike conventional classes in which children in different grades are taught from separate curricula, the multi-age method offers students the same lesson using different exercises, depending on the child’s developmental level.

For example, if a class of kindergartners through second-graders were learning about mathematical measurements, younger students would be taught to measure using paper clips and cubes, while older children would use rulers, explained Bev Maeda, a teacher at Rolling Hills Elementary School in Fullerton who has been teaching multi-age classes for 22 years.

“The idea is to work off a broad theme and have everyone work at their own level,” said Maeda, who has instructed teachers on multi-age learning throughout the state.

In Robert Argote’s bilingual classroom at Haskell Elementary School, fifth-grader Blanca Velasco, 11, recently led a group of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in an animated discussion on how to lay out an imaginary city using the fractions and measurements they had learned moments earlier.

Third-grader Yesenia Ibarra looked on, a bit perplexed. By next year, Argote said, Yesenia should have a better grasp of fractions and might lead a group herself when the exercise is repeated. She will be in Argote’s class again, since multi-age teaching pairs the same students and instructors two or three years in a row.

Across the schoolyard in May Yee’s class, first-grader Raquel Estrada and second-grader Crystal Martinez read together from a second-grade book. When Raquel got stuck on a word, Crystal helped her sound it out.

Sometimes the girls aid their kindergarten classmates with math problems or other exercises. “I like to help them because they learn a lot and it makes me feel more grown up because I can help,” said Crystal, 7, who has a kindergarten-age brother in the same class.

Grouping younger and older kids mirrors real life and helps students develop better, both socially and emotionally, proponents say. None could point to test scores showing that multi-age classes have helped students improve academically, but they contend that it is not a mensurable teaching method.

“You can’t really measure social growth on test scores,” Gilliam said. “Parents should be asking themselves, ‘Is my child becoming an avid learner? Is he more motivated to learn?’ ”

Benefits also include better tracking of a student’s progress from year to year, she and other supporters say.

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Among multi-age instructors, Jane Raphael’s classroom at Wonderland Elementary School, just south of Studio City, is considered a textbook example of how a multi-age class should look, and Raphael herself leads an informal network of multi-age instructors.

The room is packed with materials and exhibits from Play-Doh and crayons to live turtles, lizards and frogs. The class is divided into several learning stations where students work on one of their four “must do” assignments--math, reading, writing and “buddy groups,” in which older students help their younger classmates.

In a far corner recently, Chloe Cohen, 5, reads aloud to Emily Wasson, 7, during their “buddy reader” time.

Despite such individual successes, however, multi-age learning is not without critics and has so far failed to become a districtwide program with a centralized office and curriculum. Some say it’s an educational fad that doesn’t focus enough on improving students academically.

“I don’t think all of these new changes always result in higher and better learning,” said Elaine Kleiger, principal of Beth Meier School in Studio City. “We’ve changed ideas of how to teach reading and math and oftentimes we’ve returned to the beginning and what we had used before.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s 1991 report on education reform, “Children Can No Longer Wait,” mentioned using multi-age learning to improve students’ achievement levels. That year, the district used grant money for a yearlong project in which 16 teachers from eight schools attended monthly workshops. But it dropped the effort after the money ran out.

“When the funding dissipated, it was up to the individual schools to implement the program,” said Amelia McKenna, assistant superintendent of instruction.

Skeptics of the approach include Nancy Hunt, who recently removed her twin daughters from a mixed-age class at Dixie Canyon Elementary School because she was concerned about academics.

“I don’t see people covering a really wide range of curricula in these classrooms,” said Hunt of Van Nuys, who enrolled her children in conventional classes at Riverside Elementary School.

“My feeling is, there is a body of knowledge and skills that come with kindergarten and there is a separate body of knowledge and skills for first grade,” said Hunt, a professor of special education at Cal State Los Angeles. “I am not assured by what I see in these classes that my kids will get all that.”

Multi-age instruction began in pockets around the country in the late 1980s as educators looked for ways to meet the needs of students’ varied abilities, said Jim Grant, executive director of the Society for Developmental Education, a New Hampshire-based teacher training group. The approach is slowly catching on in many public schools in Vermont, Oregon, Colorado and Tennessee. Kentucky mandated multi-age learning in 1990 from kindergarten to the third grade.

Some private schools, such as the Waldorf School-Highland Hall in Northridge and The Accelerated School in South Los Angeles, a charter school, also use the teaching method. Waldorf schools have been grouping students of different ages with the same teacher year after year since they began operating in 1919.

There and elsewhere, the curriculum is always a blend of basic academics, group projects, individual exercises and tutoring sessions between older and younger children. The students are expected to attain a set of goals over the three years they are in a class before progressing to the next level, said Grant.

The classes provide a predictability for students that they don’t receive when they switch grades each year, said Grant, who has written four books on multi-age instruction.

“The longer teachers and children stay together over time, the better the discipline situation, the better students learn,” he said. “They know the routine and it’s comfortable and reliable.”

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Some object to pairing a student with the same teacher year after year, especially if the relationship is not ideal.

One Valley parent said she changed schools years ago because she was concerned that her daughter, a kindergartener at the time, would get lost in the mix of students in a multi-age classroom.

“When kids are getting primary reading instruction, parents wouldn’t want them to get lost in the shuffle,” said the parent, who did not want to be identified.

Multi-age classes can also increase a teacher’s workload, according to several advocates who suggested this may be another reason for its lack of popularity.

“This program is three times more work than traditional classes,” said Haskell teacher Kim Robertson. “Before you just taught one lesson for a whole group of students. Now you have to come up with multiple exercises to intermix the students.”

Proponents admit that multi-age education has its kinks. But they contend that parents and teachers also need to open up to new ways of learning.

“At no other time in our lives are we corralled by our age,” Raphael said. “When you go to a meeting you’re not divided by 35-year-olds here and 30-year-olds there. So why separate what happens naturally?”