Lincoln, feeders win grant for college-readiness program

Story by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Feb. 4, 2010, Denver Herald-Dispatch)
(From the Archives about Charles M. Schenck (CMS) Community School)

In Denver, schools have open enrollment, so parents and children can choose which schools they want to go to, including outside their neighborhood. This means that neighbors, friends and former classmates might go to different schools, especially when they transition from elementary to middle school or middle school to high school. This also means that some schools can't predict exactly what their students will need as they move ahead through the school stages because each school is different.

Abraham Lincoln High School Principal Antonio Esquibel wants to change that. He wants students and families to plan on attending Lincoln and then going off to college – and start planning to attend Lincoln and then college when they start elementary school.

Antonio Esquibel, principal, Abraham Lincoln High School
Vertical integration – when different grade levels work together – is pushed on a general level and practiced inside individual school levels. But it's rare among different levels of schools and even rarer among multiple levels.

Esquibel wants to make it happen.

And he's got money to do it and make it a formal process.

The “Lincoln Collaborative” – comprising Lincoln High School, Kepner Middle School, CMS Community School (formerly Schenck) and Godsman Elementary – was approved by Denver Public Schools to get a $375,000 grant for the next two years to work on this project.

If the schools show that the grant is working, the district will release another $550,000 of the grant, a total of about $925,000 for five years.

“This grant will allow us to focus our efforts in a lot of different areas,” Esquibel said. “It's all about getting our kids ready for college in a more systemic way. The district allows for some of this to happen. This grant gives us flexibility for us to do it the way we want to do it.”

Money will pay for extra training for teachers, for teachers and other administrators to meet, and for communication and marketing to families.

There are about 3,600 students, from pre-school through high school, enrolled at the four schools this school year, according to the executive summary.

“If I'm a parent and I have a 4-year-old and I go to CMS, I can ask, 'What can you tell me about my 4-year-old by the time he gets out of Denver Public Schools?' We can show that now in a more calculated way,” said Kepner Principal Frank Gonzales. “We feel we came up with some answers. We can tell parents, 'If you leave your child with us and they continue from fifth grade, they will have all of these skills ready by middle school. When they leave middle school, they will be prepared for high school.'”

By 2014, when the full grant would run out, Lincoln's goal is to increase the percent of students graduating from high school from 68 to 80 percent and to reduce the percent of students who need remediation when they get to college from 78 to 30 percent.

Pat Hurrieta, principal, Godsman Elementary School

The focus for these schools is due to the district's recent general failing in preparing Hispanic students for post-high school educational success. Across the district only 39 percent of eligible Hispanic students went to college from 2002-07 – compared with 71 percent of white students – and half of the Hispanic students dropped out of college within six years, according to the executive summary.

“We're all sending the same message: If you come to our schools, we're going to prepare you for college,” Esquibel said. “If parents enroll their kids in these schools, we're going to make it a priority to prepare them for college.”

Each school would have a group that would meet every other week composed of the principal, an assistant principal, 8-12 teachers, 2-3 other staff members, parents and students. A cohort of representatives from all schools plan to meet about monthly.

“As elementary schools, we pretty much stick to our elementary school. This will provide for an additional push for communication with other levels,” said Pat Hurrieta, Godsman principal.

For the extra money to kick in, all of the schools need to show improvement in learning, attendance, enrollment, behavior and safety, graduation and college remediation.

Kristin Nelson-Steinhoff, principal, CMS Community School

“What we're really going to be doing now is elevating our conversation and include our school staff,” said Kristin Nelson-Steinhoff, CMS principal. “I'm hoping we're going to be able to branch out and connect not only our teachers but also our communities. We all are working with the same community, the same set of students. If we were all on different pages and doing different things, we wouldn't serve the community as well as we could. When those transitions aren't smooth, kids are more at risk of not succeeding and dropping out from school.”

Students are more frustrated and bored when they go through a basic lesson that's exactly what they already know or learn something completely different from a structure they were comfortable and successful with before. The principals are hopeful that won't happen.

“We can figure out how we can align our curriculum better. We can know the instruction and strategies that we use,” Equibel said. “We can set expectations: what do we expect kids to do and master at the end of fifth grade and at the end of eighth grade? When students hit those grade-level milestones, they'll be prepared for the next level.”

Gonzales and Esquibel had been talking about college preparation since Esquibel took over as head of the high school about four years ago. But elementary schools weren't directly connected until Esquibel, Gonzales and a University of Denver professor met with principals of eight other schools in the fall of 2008. That initial group worked for six months determining needs, and the “Lincoln Collaborative” spawned from it.

“The biggest benefit to the community is that our kids will hear the same language from pre-school all the way through high school,” Hurrieta said. “I don’t think that’s always been a huge push in the elementary level. We always just wanted to make sure they get through middle school successfully or get to high school.

“Now we're talking about college. Our parents don’t really hear it. If they hear it for 12 years, it will be a reality.”

From the archives: CMS Comunity School

Story and photos by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Jan. 15, 2009, Denver Herald-Dispatch. Story related to one published in the Feb. 4, 2010, Denver Herald-Dispatch)

CMS Community School brings everyone together



Photo caption: English teacher Ann Larson helps second grader Alejandra Montes, a native Spanish speaker, during literacy. CMS Community School's dual-language program encourages bilingual learners.

On its 50th anniversary, Charles M. Schenck Elementary School changed its name, and it's more than just to ensure that people don't mispronounce it.

CMS Community School's new moniker reflects the growing collaboration and cooperation among and between parents, families, children, teachers and staff.

CMS applied for and got distinction from Denver Public Schools as a Beacon Learning School, earning distinctions and grants to fund various programs that promote its unique situation, including after-school activities, parent classes and seminars, and teacher training.

Teaching children means teaching parents
Although a teacher can only control what goes on in his or her classroom, support in the hours a child is at home only helps a teacher further education goals. All parents want their children to succeed, but often times, either resources may be limited or parents may not know what to do, especially parents that don't know English. In the southwest community, many parents also grew up in a different country and culture, so their expectations of school are different.

“People are eager to help their family and their kids, and it's our job to put it out there,” said CMS Community Liaison Morgain Sanchez.

At CMS, the staff and faculty have reached out to the community on a schoolwide level—not just at parent-teacher conferences, or phone calls or letters home.

All of the parent programs are headed by Sanchez, hired in 2007-08 as the liaison.

In CMS's three-tiered approach, the school provides education for parents, with English classes at different times of the day, and seminars on children's expectations and ways that parents can help with homework. In the second tier, the building is also a place for parents to learn with other families, including seminars on legal issues, exercise, health, CPR and a 12-week class focused on women issues and mental health. Between 15 and 60 parents come to each presentation.

“I like it because it's an open door for the parents,” said Armida Solis, a parent who is learning English and volunteers twice a week. “

After reaching out to help the community, the school then gives parents a chance to give back to CMS. Some parents help in a classroom multiple times per week, and most parents do something at the school at least once per week. Parents run the weekly nacho sale, a fund raiser each Friday after school, currently gaining money for a SMART board in the music classroom. About once a month, parents spend a day organizing classrooms, paper or other materials so that teachers can spend more time on planning or other activities. Annually, the parent leadership organized the carnival.

“You have to get people in the door first,” said Principal Kristin Nelson-Steinhoff. “You have to get them comfortable. You have to create that sense of community. You have to do all of those things before you can talk about schools and kids and academics.”

Photo caption: Maricrus Coria and Brenda Lopez figure out and trace geometric shapes in their first grade literacy squared classroom (Spanish speakers that learn mostly in Spanish through second grade).

Respecting language, respecting culture, respecting each other
When students first learn English in school, they get three years of sheltered learning before they're expected to be fluent enough in English to be in full English classes. Oftentimes, students become proficient readers and writers in their first language only through the third grade, while their English remains low.

“They may speak Spanish when they come out of schools, but their literacy is at a third-grade level in Spanish,” Sanchez said.

CMS is trying to build bilingual readers and writers, not only their skills but also their confidence.

“I don't want my kids to lose their culture,” said Solis, who has three children at CMS.

In CMS's dual-language program, students learn for half of the day in English and half of the day in Spanish. Students are split between two classrooms. One group is strong in Spanish, while the other is strong in English. In the morning, they learn reading, writing and math in their at-home language, and in the afternoon they switch for reading, writing and math in the other language.

For two periods of the day, half of the English-speaking students work with half of the Spanish-speaking students on either Spanish or English (the language for the shared class switches each week).

Spanish-speaking students not only learn from the teacher, but also learn and teach each other.
Sanchez's son Agustin is a native English speaker in second grade of the dual-language program.

“It's the only program where Spanish is honored,” Sanchez said. “Their Spanish is very valuable. My son is fascinated by learning Spanish, and he thinks that the Spanish speakers are geniuses, the kids that are already bilingual are unbelievable.”

Further, students learn a second language at the same rate they're learning a first language. The average English reading level for English-speaking first graders in 2008 in the dual language program at CMS was about the same for first graders at CMS in the normal English class.

In Ann Larson's second-grade afternoon literacy class, about half of the class had a hand raised, eager to share a sentence or story. Larson was teaching English for the native Spanish speakers. Saul, who had been looking at the ground, confused, anxiously raised his hand to share his breakfast. “I eat, uh, eggs (pause) for breakfast,” he got out. Ms. Larson congratulated him for sharing, and a big smile spread across his face.

“Especially the native Spanish speakers, they're talking more,” said first grade dual-language teacher Gina Torres.

Two out of four classes in kindergarten, first and second grade are dual-language classes. One other is a literacy squared class (mostly taught in Spanish for grades K-2), and the fourth classroom is taught in English. The dual-language program started only three years ago at CMS, and it is rolling through each grade until the whole school has it.

“Our vision is, our hope is to create high-level bilinguals, kids that can read and write and speak and understand both English and Spanish at high levels,” Nelson-Steinhoff said. “Those will be our future professionals.”

After the normal school hours, CMS provides dance, gym, sports as well as academic tutoring, all free.

Teachers learning and working together
CMS has also ensured that the teachers are more involved with each other and the students.

Because teachers in the dual-language program switch students in the middle of each day, they talk in the middle to make sure that they're at the same place in the curriculum and that they're not repeating anything.

In December 2007, the Colorado Department of Education audited the school, finding all strengths and weaknesses in the school. All staff members, including the custodians, helped form the action plan on the school's top goals.

Half of the teachers (20 out of 40) started last winter earning a Master's degree in bilingual education together. Instead of traveling to Boulder or to downtown Denver, each Tuesday a professor from the University of Colorado visits the school.

After declining in student population, the school has increased enrollment the last three years. Parents who move out of the neighborhood keep their children at CMS. Teachers have a high retention rate, Nelson-Steinhoff said. And parents are always roaming the school, helping teachers and children excited and happy to be in a positive, caring community.