By Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – Alex Sanger Elementary School Pre-K Classroom: The tiger on the bus goes, "Roar roar, roar!"
Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: Last fall, these 21 enthusiastic 4-year olds started this pre-kindergarten class in Alex Sanger Elementary School in South Dallas. They qualified for free or reduced-cost lunches, spoke limited English, or were homeless. In a school district where dropout rates can hover at 30% and higher - and where a federal desegregation order's been in place more than three decades - these at-risk children seemed ripe for an effective pre-K program.
Beth Steerman, Executive Director, Early Childhood Education, Dallas Independent School District: The district realizes the significance and importance of pre-kindergarten in terms of preparing children for entering kindergarten as successful readers and learners.
Zeeble: Beth Steerman is the DISD's Executive Director of Early Childhood Education.
Steerman: We know our children who enter pre-K need attention, need to have their vocabulary enhanced, strengthened.
Zeeble: Under superintendent Mike Moses, there's been a renewed emphasis on reading for pre-K students. Experts say everything - even math education - starts there. In Dallas, despite better overall test scores, reading comprehension has consistently been the problem. So the district tried tracking down a program to fix it. Officials found it, already in use, at Head Start. The program's called LEAP.
Steerman: LEAP is the Language Enrichment Activities Program that was developed at SMU by Nell Carvell.
Nell Carvell, Director, LEAP and Head Start Initiatives, Southern Methodist University: When I went out to look at the children, it appeared that what was missing was language. Not phonics, but language. They didn't speak in complete sentences. They had limited vocabularies for 4-year-olds.
Zeeble: Nell Carvell, a longtime early childhood expert and director of SMU's LEAP and Head Start initiatives, says that was the situation more than ten years ago, when she was asked to fix some problems locally within Head Start. She found 4-year-olds were a year behind in their vocabulary, and traced it to their parents.
Carvell: A great majority of them didn't finish high school. They weren't employed. Really, what I consider it is an environment disability. It appears in children as a learning disability. But they don't have a learning disability. They just never had the opportunity to be around books, conversation, and a rich vocabulary. They just were never around that.
Zeeble: So Carvell started developing the LEAP curriculum built on books. Hardcover books.
Carvell: If you say to a kid, "You're really important and I think books are important; they're a gift in our lives." And you give the child a torn-up paperback book, where the pages are dog-eared and dirty. They're not going to believe you. So I wanted to put really nice books in. We average 20 new books a year at all our sites with this program.
Zeeble: In her class, pre-K teacher Sue Hanson is using a hard cover version of Lenny Hort's "The Seals on the Bus."
Sue Hanson, pre-K teacher, Alex Sanger Elementary School: How do they look?
Children: Scared. Surprised.
Hanson: Surprised. Let's see what happens next.
Children: [Squeals, laughter]
Hanson: What did you see? Liliana has her hand up.
Children: There's an animal driving. A tiger!
Hanson: Could this be a real story or pretend?
Children: PRETEND!!!
Hanson: Marvin, how do you know it's pretend?
Marvin: Because lions don't drive, they walk.
Zeeble: Hanson continues the lesson as she corrects Marvin that it's a tiger, not a lion. With more than 30 years experience teaching young children, Hanson knows how to maintain interest, prompt responses from every child, and especially - keep it all fun.
Hanson: Learning is fun. They don't realize we come to school to learn. So we have to make it high interest and use things from home, from their past, that they've learned and then apply it to things in school.
Zeeble: Hanson said last fall, only three children here had any concept of the alphabet.
Hanson: Most don't know letters in their name, or that letters make sounds. That's a lot of what we practice, saying this letter "s." It always says "SSSSSSSS." And we try to tie it into things of interest. For example, we have a girl named Sasha. So "S" is definitely her letter. Every time we talk about S, someone says, "That's like Sasha's name."
Zeeble: Hanson also stresses complete sentences.
Hanson: Okay, let's see what might be next.
Children: Skunk! Eeeewww. Skunk!
Hanson: Would you want to ride on this bus?
Children: NO!
Hanson: Turn your volume down. Alexander, you said yes. Why would you want to ride on this bus?
Alexander: 'Cause, I like the skunk to come on the bus.
Hanson: You would like the skunk on the bus?
Carvell: They give you a complete sentence in response. Oh! That lifts my heart. It is so exciting to see that happen, to have that growth!
Zeeble: Again, LEAP creator Nell Carvell:
Carvell: From having sentences modeled, speaking in sentences in the classroom, just to see that happen. Children constantly watch us as adults. They're learning from us in everything we do. If I'm abrupt and speak in phrases or one-syllable, one-word responses, that's how the child is going to be.
Zeeble: Carvell is now developing a LEAP program for home, to help parents, and a bilingual LEAP, for native Spanish speakers. She says when she started focusing on language use ten years ago, her approach seemed radical for the time. Now, she says Head Start, nationwide, insists its pre-K children learn about the alphabet, and develop an awareness of phonology.
Carvell: That's an education buzzword for knowing when words rhyme, or recognizing alliteration. Tall Tommy tells tales. That kind of thing. Playing with language.
Zeeble: DISD's Beth Steerman says the program has proven itself locally, where 7-thousand district children are now in LEAP programs. Another 3-thousand are enrolled through Dallas Head Start, while an additional 1-thousand get the curriculum through select childcare facilities. It's now spread to nearly a dozen Texas school districts and Head Start programs, and can also be found in other states, including Maine, Virginia, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, and California.
Steerman: Used to be pre-K was where kids went to play - it was fun, and did cute art. Now we know those cognitive skills. They're like little sponges just waiting for you to give them information, and their brain is doing everything it can to make connections so it makes sense to them. We're about building that foundation they can plug stuff into.
Zeeble: At Sanger Elementary, where most of the 4-year-olds have now turned 5 since last fall, they like it that way, even if they've never thought about learning in a formal, serious way.
Children: We all like school. We like school. Ms. Hanson told us how to color. And she lets us sing. And we don't scribble-scrabble like a baby.
Zeeble: Is it more fun at home or at school?
Children: More fun at school!!!
Zeeble: LEAP creator Nell Carvell has testified on Capitol Hill about early childhood education. Two weeks ago, she appeared in northern Colorado with First Lady Laura Bush, who has championed literacy for years. For KERA 90.1, I'm Bill Zeeble.
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