2 Sisters Turn 2nd-Graders Into Readers

Lou and Irene Chahinian hope to change children’s lives one word at a time.

The sisters are volunteer reading tutors for a second-grade class at Granada Elementary School in Granada Hills. They have been doing it for three years, ever since a third sister, working on her teaching credential at the school, noticed a boy struggling with his reading and falling behind.

“You could be helping this boy,” she told them.

Restless in their retirement from surgical stenography at hospitals in Los Angeles, the Chahinian sisters contacted the school and have been tutoring children in Room 4 ever since.

“The boy couldn’t read or write at all,” Irene said. “But by the time we were done with him, he knew the alphabet . . . he had learned.”

With each school year, the Chahinians, who are Northridge residents, have helped teacher Barbara Winters transform struggling students into proficient readers.

“It’s not much, what we do,” Lou said recently. “But it’s a lot for a little kid. It takes so little and yet it means so much.”

The children, even those who read well above grade level, clamor to work with the sisters each day under a shade tree in the playground.

“Having them here is so wonderful,” said Principal Richard Duborow. “Their commitment is inspiring. The kids love the individual attention.”

On a recent sunny day, the two started the afternoon working with four children.

As one boy’s feet dangled, he sat close to Lou on a bench and followed her finger along the text of a second-grade reading book.

“Very good. Very good,” she said.

The sisters spent half an hour with the foursome, reading about caterpillars and Benjamin Franklin.

Toward the end of the session, Irene pulled out a stack of index cards bearing words the boys had stumbled on recently, including “invention,” “tennis,” “small” and “smile.” Together, they reviewed the words.

“I feel this helps their teacher,” Irene said. “And I know that in the future, we will see the rewards. Reading will help them in all they do.”

KUDOS

Top Robot: The Chatsworth High School Robotics teams won the top honor at the recent 2000FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition for Science and Technology) National Robotics Competition in Orlando, Fla.

The Chairman’s Award recognizes the team that best integrates cooperation and team building in designing a robot that can compete in a high-tech sporting event against other robots.

This is the first year the students--47 team members in all--made it to the finals, held at Disney World’s Epcot Center. About 15,000 students from nearly 400 high schools competed, said Chatsworth High robotics teacher and sponsor, Wendy Wooten.

“What the kids did in earning this award was incredible,” Wooten said. “It’s a year’s worth of work.”

Water Lessons: Students from Granada Hills and North Hollywood high schools were among 125 participants from the Los Angeles area in the fourth annual Student Water Forum, sponsored by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

This year, students brainstormed ways to decrease salinity in the Southern California water supply and presented their strategies to experts in the agency’s downtown Los Angeles boardroom.

Ideas included developing salt-absorbing vegetation, ocean water desalination and water quality checkpoints along the Colorado River, a key water source for Southern California.

“The students tried to tackle very difficult economic and political concepts, but they always kept consumers in mind,” said Russ Donnelly, the agency’s manager of education programs.

The daylong forum completed a special curriculum called “Water Politics,” developed by the agency for high school students. Free materials include a teacher’s guide, lesson plans, videos and work sheets representing contemporary water problems. For more information, call Russ Donnelly at (213) 217-6398.

END NOTES

Choirs from North Hollywood High School, Canoga Park High School and Robert Frost Middle School in Granada Hills were judged superior at the recent 53rd annual Band, Orchestra and Choir Festival, sponsored by the Los Angeles Unified School District.