IN THE MIX:Kicking myths out of schools

Every year the TeWinkle Middle School administration conducts a “Myth Busters” night.

The officials invite fourth- and fifth-graders, parents and the community to come learn for themselves what TeWinkle is about. They tell the parents what the school has to offer and what colleges students go off to after Estancia High School. The information is meant to help people separate the truth from the fiction.

Principal Dan Diehl, who will move Costa Mesa Middle School in the fall, said there’s plenty of misinformation to combat.

First of all, he said, the rumors about it being a violent campus are not true. He said there is fighting sometimes like on most middle school campuses, but when something does occur school officials deal with it swiftly.

He said for the most part TeWinkle deals with basic middle school issues like gum chewing and graffiti.

“The goal is prevention,” he said.

Diehl said TeWinkle has 12 people on lunch duty and probably more importantly, educators keep the kids active during the break with a three-on-three soccer tournament.

The school also offers a program called Challenge Days — you may have seen it on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Teachers gather about 100 students for each session and get them to discuss how they treat each other, why and how it affects each of them.

On the issue of how kids treat each other, an interesting thing that the principals at TeWinkle, Costa Mesa and Ensign middle schools said was that there aren’t racial tensions.

They said the kids tend to hang out with the kids they grew up with — which is sometimes along racial lines, and sometimes not.

I had heard a rumor that students at Ensign were self-segregating.

Ensign Principal Ed Wong showed me around the campus and, of course, the groups gathered on the basketball courts were intermixed. I have a feeling plenty of the groups end up looking pretty race-based, but according to the principals, that’s mainly a result of neighborhood configuration and gets pretty jumbled when they mingle in school.

“They grew up intermixed in classes, in sports and in school activities,” he said.

TeWinkle doesn’t have a problem with children self segregating, Diehl said, adding the school has a lot of programs and within those programs there are children from all backgrounds.

Like most educators Diehl is into the idea that getting parents more involved will do wonders for the students. He reiterated what I’ve heard plenty of times now, that many recent immigrants don’t always understand our school system. They expect that teachers will do the educating and they don’t have to keep up with it. But as we know, parents are practically required to have a close relationship with their kids’ teachers and the school in order for the student to do well.

Through the administration and the school liaison from ASK, parents are encouraged to come into meetings with teachers to discuss problems and learn how to help the child in the rest of his or her academic career.

Informing the community about the facts versus the rumors will be the first thing on Principal Kirk Bauermeister’s list when he moves to lead TeWinkle in the fall.

“I think the problem is that people will write this stuff without any factual basis.” he said. “They haven’t stepped a foot on the campus or not for a long time or they had one bad experience.”

But he knows that just because the rumors make the school out to be something much worse than it is, that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement.

Beyond getting truthful information out, Bauermeister also plans to adopt a security system like the one at Costa Mesa High School, and create an atmosphere of listening to the teachers.

He said teachers know what’s going on and what the problems are. He wants to use their knowledge to create the best educational environment for the students.

When Bauermeister became the principal at Costa Mesa Middle School nine years ago, the school was in its second year of “program improvement.”

“TeWinkle is closer to getting out of ‘program improvement’ than Costa Mesa was when I started,” he said.

“I understand that you can work real hard and you’re still not making the grade. It’s frustrating.”

Because so much of the impression people have about a school is based on test scores he said he emphasized to the students how important the tests were and how the improved scores would benefit them. He said the efforts seemed to be successful as test scores went up 100 points in three years.

Like Diehl with his Myth Busters night, Bauermeister wants to get people on the campus to see the kids in the class and see them as good, hardworking students. He wants to meet in large groups to let the community tell him if there is a problem and tell him what they want in a neighborhood school.

“I want it to be the hub of the community,” he said.