After-School Program Heads Off Potential Problems

With a glittering cardboard tiara atop her hair, Rimma Panchenko took on a challenging dual role during an annual Christmas party at the Gardner Street Elementary school in Hollywood.

For English-speaking students, Panchenko, 51, played one of Santa’s elves. For those more comfortable with Russian, she was Snegurochka, a pigtailed fairy who accompanies Ded Moroz, the mythical Russian equivalent of Santa known as “Grandfather Frost.”

While Santa is fat and jolly and makes his entrances via chimney, Ded Moroz is thinner, moodier and prefers to knock. But Panchenko’s familiarity with both characters and her ability to speak English and Russian allow her to help students who might otherwise be confused by the differences.

“Sometimes I see how they get mixed up,” she said, “So I explain to them in Russian.”

Panchenko is an instructor with the school’s Students After School For Enrichment program, run by the Aviva Family and Children’s Services agency.

About 75% of the children in the Gardner Street program are of Russian descent, and they are often the children of recent immigrants, said program director Vernette Tobierre, 31.

“A lot of the students come in not knowing English,” she said. “We try to provide a bridge, to supplement what the school is doing by giving kids extra assistance and helping kids with what they don’t understand in class.”

This year, the program received $7,500 from the Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign, which raises money for nonprofit agencies in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

While Aviva offers care and treatment programs for emotionally troubled children and victims of physical or sexual abuse, the after-school program’s focus is on early intervention.

Every school day after regular classes end, nearly one-fifth of the school’s 500 students file into five grade-specific classrooms, where they participate in a mandatory homework and tutoring session, followed by recreational and arts and crafts activities.

School personnel refer children with behavioral or academic problems to the program, where the structured activities and individualized attention can help to prevent troubles from escalating.

“Whenever you have early prevention, you’ll head off later and more severe problems,” said Ira Kruskol, Aviva’s vice president of community services.

Kruskol, 54, said that Aviva also provides more extensive mental health services to children who need them.

As the room where the Christmas party was being held crackled with the hustle and bustle of pre-adolescent energy, Tobierre’s eyes were drawn to a child engrossed in a quiet board game who has been in the program for five years.

“Five years ago, he was horrible,” Tobierre said. “He was very disruptive, and he would never sit still. Now he’s a model student.”

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