Playing at Home All in a Day’s Work

A woman visits 2-year-old Geraldo Montiel’s Pacoima home every Monday afternoon. Toting toys and books, 50-year-old Juanita Valles comes to play.

Valles kneels on the Montiel family’s white-tiled living room floor and opens a pop-up counting book for bright-eyed Geraldo, while his mother, Rosa Montiel, 40, watches from the sofa.

“Do you want to play?” Valles asks Geraldo in Spanish. He smiles and answers: “Si.”

For the next hour, Valles will play with Geraldo while his mother watches and learns. The threesome have been getting together since Geraldo was 6 months old, in an effort to help prepare him for kindergarten, still two years down the road.

Valles is one of nine paraprofessionals trained to teach early childhood education by Los Angeles Educational Partnership’s School Readiness Project. The program serves 70 families in Los Angeles Unified School District whose children will attend a handful of San Fernando-Pacoima schools. The home visits are free.

Participating San Fernando Valley elementary schools are: San Fernando and O’Melveny, San Fernando; Pacoima, Maclay Primary Center, Montague Street, Haddon Avenue, Broadous, and Telfair Avenue, Pacoima; and Osceola Street, Sylmar.

Helen Kleinberg, a director with the educational partnership, said the kindergarten readiness program was developed three years ago after educators complained that incoming kindergartners were unprepared for school. They noted delays in reading readiness and a lack of language skills in either Spanish or English. Both can be addressed by parents early on through structured play and by reading to their children, she said.

But many hard-working parents perceive playing with and reading to children as a luxury they do not have time for.

“We are trying to show these parents that playing with their children is what they should be doing,” Kleinberg said. “Play is work for a child, and that’s how they learn.”

Montiel said she sees a tremendous difference in Geraldo’s readiness, compared with his four siblings, ages 7 to 16.

“I buy books and read to Geraldo now,” Montiel said in Spanish, through an interpreter. “I never did that with the other children.”

During the hourlong visit, Valles showed Montiel how to read to Geraldo, using her finger to point out numbers, colors and objects. She also demonstrated stacking cups and the importance in counting them out loud: “uno, dos, tres,” she said, “one, two, three,” over and over again, much to Geraldo’s delight.

Valles also shows Montiel how to make toys, such as the decorated shoe box she brought for Geraldo to hammer plastic nails into, helping develop hand-eye coordination.

The $300,000 program, which serves children 3 and younger, is funded through a grant from the Prudential Foundation, a division of Prudential Insurance Co. of America. Organizers hope the grant, scheduled to run out in December, will be renewed.

For more information, call the Los Angeles Educational Partnership at (213) 622-5237, Ext. 275 or 278.

KUDOS

After nearly missing the entry deadline, fifth-graders from Oxnard Street Elementary School in North Hollywood took the top three prizes and one honorable mention in the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico billboard design contest.

Ten-year-old Adrian Arevalo’s colorful design of a dancing woman is on a billboard half a mile from the school, promoting the Sept. 22-24 Universal Amphitheater appearances of the dance group that performs depictions of Mexico’s culture and folklore.

Teacher Arlene Delaney, who has entered her class in the contest for the fifth consecutive year, said registration materials somehow got lost in the mail. She called contest officials and learned the deadline was only two days away.

“The kids had one day [to make their designs],” she said, leaving one day to ship them.

“This is wonderful for their self-esteem.”

Other winners were: second place: Liliana Guzman, 10; third place: Jefferson Garcia, 10; and honorable mention: Eliana Martinez, 10.

PROGRAM NOTES

Home Visits: Seven schools in the San Fernando Valley will receive state grants this year to fund home visits by teachers to help build communication with parents.

Valley schools receiving the Nell Soto Parent/Teacher Involvement grant are Burton Elementary, Panorama City; Patrick Henry Middle, Granada Hills; Canterbury Avenue Elementary, Pacoima; Dyer Street Elementary, Sylmar; Glenwood Elementary, Sun Valley; Morningside Elementary and Vaughn Street Elementary, San Fernando.

The grants, which range from $25,000 to $40,000 based on school enrollment, are intended for all students--but especially those performing below grade level. Teachers will receive hourly wages for their visits, which will occur evenings or weekends.

“[This grant] will make schools more like a community again,” said Dore Wong, a retired school district administrator who is helping coordinate the program.

The home-visit program was tested in Sacramento last year with improvement in parent participation, as well as student grades and test scores.

Based on its success, Gov. Gray Davis earmarked $15 million last year for a one-time grant for elementary and middle schools statewide.

District schools received $629,991 of the grant for 19 schools.

Class Notes appears every Wednesday. Send news about schools to the Valley Edition, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Or fax it to (818) 772-3338.

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