Just Their Size Early Childhood School In Millwood Gives 4- And 5-Year-Olds A Learning Environment Ideally Suited To Their Age

Joel Brazington has an amazing amount of flour jammed in his right ear. But no one in Deralyn Nord’s classroom is worried.

After all, give 4- and 5-year-olds a tub of flour to play with, and it’s going to go all over.

By now, Joel has left the flour table. He’s engrossed in an alphabet game on the MacIntosh computer. “Orangutangs oversleep. Penguins paint.”

This is one of five multi-age classes at the Millwood Early Childhood Education Center in the West Valley School District. The school contains 360 children mostly kindergarten age and younger. This year, two firstgrade classes were added.

Eight years ago, the district was grasping for ways to cut costs. Officials decided to put the kindergarteners in one building and assign an assistant superintendent as half-time principal. That saved the cost of a principal.

No one envisioned a school that would provoke unusual affection from its parents, gain statewide recognition and give early childhood teachers a cherished chance to brainstorm better ways to teach.

Joel’s teacher, Nord, wears an apron bright with colorful handprints. It goes well with her morning’s project: making handprint wreathes. She presses each small hand sopping with green tempera paint, palm down, over and over in a circle onto burlap squares.

Tomorrow, the kids will dab on red “fingerberries” to finish the wreathes. And home they’ll go as Christmas presents.

Nord progresses through the art project, encourages calm among the “limbo people,” who turn out actually to be “duck-duck-goose people,” and occasionally breaks into vigorous song.

“It’s time to put our toys away, toys away, toys away. It’s time to put our toys away, so early in the morning.”

Magic. The dawning chaos subsides.

Her eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head manner is explained thus: She’s taught in West Valley for 19 years. And she has five children at home, the youngest of whom is 5. All that, with no grey hair and, this morning, only a dab of green paint on her forehead.

At the end of the morning, her room empties of floury elves and Nord ticks off the advantages of the early childhood school:

All the money for gym and playground equipment goes to stuff geared toward 4- and 5-year-olds. Other schools have to divide their money among different age groups.

Ditto for the school library. At Millwood, the 3,700 volumes all are for little ones.

Assemblies are all for 4- and 5-year-olds. No bored kids sitting through assemblies geared for third- and fourth-graders.

The noise level. “We can be loud,” Nord says, unapologetically. A school just for little ones “lets us leapfrog down the hall, make a flour mess, keep guinea pigs. Do things we couldn’t necessarily do with older classes in the building.”

Kindergarten teachers at conventional elementary schools can be isolated from other teachers because of different lunch and recess schedules for their tiny students. At Millwood, teachers routinely trade ideas during their planning time together. “Often in a regular elementary, with only one or two kindergarten classes, there’s no one to do that with,” Nord says.

Principal Dan Kelly, who doubles as the district’s director of special education, makes a few more points about the school, located at 8818 E. Grace:

Parents are included in the school to an unusual extent, making policy and planning how to spend money.

All special education students are in regular classes. “All children have the right to be educated in their natural environment,” he says. Also, Kelly knows that regular kids learn as much from special needs kids as the other way around.

Cerebral palsy keeps Sarah Graham, 4, from communicating easily or controlling her muscles well. But she learns from Nord’s stimulating classroom, and the other kids learn from her.

“When Sarah first came, the other kids thought she was a baby,” Nord says. Now, they know that she understands plenty, but can’t do all the things they can.

Nord’s class is more than fun and games. She gets out a stack of student journals. Some are almost all artwork, with explanations dictated by a student to an adult. Some pages show pictures, with captions that read like a string of consonants. Those letter strings are a child’s early step toward writing. “HS W 20WNDOS.” Nord puzzles for a minute. “Oh, a house with 20 windows.”

The journals and other logs keeping track of students’ reading are designed so that youngsters with a variety of starting points can all progress in reading and writing.

Kelly, who’s been principal here for six years, receives a barrage of “Hi, Mr. Kelly” as he conducts a building tour. He’s short enough that some kids can hug him around the waist and do. Others settle for a one-leg grab. Some try both. “That’s enough. Just one hug,” he says mildly.

He thanks kids in each class for Christmas cards they’ve made him. “Are you my boss?” one child asks Kelly. “No,” comes the answer.

Kelly stops in the family room. It is office size, cozy with couches and comfy chairs, a VCR and TV. “This is a place for parents to relax,” he says. It’s more than that. The room is a library of parent resources, created by one committee of the school’s Parent Teacher Organization. Last year, parents decided it was a priority.

Another priority has been getting families help they may need from other agencies. Every month, parents, staff and social service agency representatives meet to try to broker the services that a child or family may need.

Some parents meet staff or a volunteer to set goals for their children. Sometimes, it’s as simple as setting an early, consistent bedtime. Sometimes, goals are academic.

This mix of schooling, parenting skills and social services has won Millwood a statewide reputation.

Chris McElroy, in the state Superintendent of Public Instruction office, regards the school as a model, because it puts so many services for young children into one place.

There are a couple of down sides to the center.

Communication with teachers in West Valley’s other elementary schools has been a struggle. The Millwood building isolates its teachers from their colleagues.

“Over the years we’ve made great strides at it,” says Sharon Mowry, assistant superintendent for instruction in West Valley.

Giving first-grade teachers a clear view of just how the 5-year-olds are being prepared for first-grade - and giving kindergarten teachers a clear view of just what the first-grade teachers expect - has taken some stretching on everyone’s part.

Another difficulty is that kids are bused in an awkward, two-legged route via their neighborhood schools. That’s a price that parents are willing to pay.

Last year, a three-month look by the district at re-configuring the elementary schools came up with a clear message from parents: Leave it alone.

Bottom line for the homey, little kindergarten campus?

Nord says, “It’s a great place to be 4 and 5.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos (1 color)