Into the Homestretch

VENTURA —  With the school year racing to an end, opportunity is quickly slipping away from Beth Pallares.

For the veteran educator, who just closed out her grade book on the third quarter at Balboa Middle School, time is running out to teach her seventh-grade students all that she wants them to know.

The deadline adds urgency to her work.

“This is the time when you separate the wheat from the chaff,” said Pallares, who in her 14th year at Balboa has taught seventh grade longer than any other teacher at the school.

Against a rising tide of middle school madness, swelled by a coming of age that seems to sweep the east Ventura campus with the coming of spring, Pallares has kicked the seventh grade campaign into its highest gear.

There is no more review in Room 14, no more easy work. Pallares is all business this time of year, frantically scattering seeds of knowledge that she hopes will take root and blossom next year and beyond.

And at this point, her students are either mastering the work or being left behind.

“The final push is here, and I’ve got to make every second count,” she said. “The time I have with them is down to minutes, it’s literally down to minutes, and I can’t afford to waste any of them. Some students won’t be able to keep up. But at this point, I’ve got to focus my energy on the ones who are going to finish the race with me.”

Since the opening bell last September, the school year has advanced inexorably toward this point.

From day one, seventh-graders in Pallares’ class have been building an academic foundation to ready them for the home stretch.

They have studied poetry and classic literature, learning how to guide the rhythm and pace of stories. And they have been transported to distant lands to study the birth of ancient civilizations. The very top seventh-graders have embraced the basics of algebra, preparing them for higher math next year and in high school.

But the stakes are so high now, the urgency to complete the transfer of new ideas so great, that there is barely time to breathe. Students feel the pressure too, but many also seem to understand what’s at stake.

“She’s trying to get us to grow up and prepare us for the eighth grade,” said Diana Miller, 13, a smart, outgoing student in Pallares’ first- and fourth-period classes. “If we don’t know the stuff we’re supposed to be learning, we’ll be in trouble next year.”

A Royal Visit

That is not to say, however, that there is no fun left in the school year. Take, for example, the recent visit of Lady Genji.

For months, Pallares had told her geography students that a member of Japan’s royal family would visit during their study of that country. So to prepare themselves, they learned all they could about that culture.

They prepared questions for Lady Genji. They were reminded to be on their best behavior when she arrived. They were being set up in a big way.

Because on the day of Lady Genji’s visit, Pallares was suspiciously absent. After all, it takes some time to become a Japanese empress. Locking herself in a restroom, she slipped into a kimono, applied a generous layer of pancake makeup and fastened a jet-black wig to her head, complete with a couple of long, wooden hair pins.

Then, balancing on a torturous pair of wooden shoes, she shuffled into Room 14 with a clutch of curious office staff members and students in tow.

“Happy day, happy spring day to all of you,” said Pallares, folding her hands as if in prayer and bowing reverently to her students. “I understand you wish to know about my country of Japan.”

After getting over their initial shock, students played along, peppering her with questions.

“Is there any significance to the color of your robe?” Jennie Trego, 12, wanted to know.

“I’m glad you asked,” Pallares said. “This is a cotton robe, but you see the gold cuff? That means my family is very rich.”

Brett Sinkovich, 13, chimed in: “Do you get to choose who you marry?”

“We do not marry for love,” Pallares answered. “We marry to expand our family.”

Jason Schliecher, 13, wanted to know why her feet weren’t bound.

“Feet aren’t bound in Japan, feet are bound in China,” said Pallares, who eventually slipped out of her wooden shoes and into a more comfortable pair of sandals. “That’s a barbaric custom.”

Then 12-year-old Ricky Matthews asked the best question of all. “Why do you have black teeth?”

“Do you like my teeth?” Pallares retorted, flashing a wide smile that exposed a dark wax that she had applied to her front teeth to mimic an ancient Japanese mark of beauty. “Aren’t they lovely? I think they make me look especially attractive and sexy.”

By this time, the students were rolling, some laughing uncontrollably at the spectacle. The laughter was sweet music to Pallares, affirmation that she had driven home the lesson.

“I want them to know that learning is fun,” she said later. “This is my way of grabbing them by the front of the shirt and saying, ‘You won’t forget what we do in here, will you?’ These things are fun and flashy, but there’s important stuff that goes with them.”

Hormones Kick In

The third quarter at Balboa, from early January to the end of March, is when students digest the meat of their academic work. But for many students, it also kicks off a season of awkward adolescence and high-flying hormones.

“When the hormones start kicking in, their entire oxygen input goes into hormone production and no oxygen goes to the brain,” Pallares has said more than once. “That means when you work with these kids, they are basically oxygen deprived and brain-dead.”

If that’s the case, the air was especially thin at Balboa’s annual Valentine’s Day dance.

Driven by a bone-jarring cadence that rattled windows and jiggled internal organs, dozens of students packed the school cafeteria for the afternoon affair.

Girls danced with each other. A handful of brave couples embraced and spun circles on the dance floor when slow music came on. A row of students too cool to dance sat and watched the whole thing unfold.

Brett Sinkovich hung out with a group of friends who spent the afternoon daring each other to ask girls to dance.

“I asked some girl and she just ran away,” he said. “I just did it because it was a dare. I didn’t do it because I liked the girl or anything.”

Chaperons wearing earplugs guarded each entrance, occasionally leaving their posts to break up conga lines and escort slam dancers out the door. A couple of teachers even took a spin on the dance floor, performing an old-fashioned waltz in an undisciplined sea of modern movement.

At the heart of the action was Diana Miller, working up a sweat when the beat was thumping and pairing with boys when the pace slowed down.

“We’re all just a bunch of friends, we don’t take it the wrong way,” she said. “We just like to go out and have a good time. We’re just a bunch of happy-go-lucky kids.”

That approach to life comes as no surprise to Diana’s mother, Kim Baldwin. She knows that her daughter is spirited and outgoing, and she has seen her social side grow even stronger this year.

Still, Baldwin worries a bit. She knows that adolescence can be a minefield, a period when kids scramble to find their way on unfamiliar ground.

“I’ve noticed her changing this year,” Baldwin said. “She’s not a little girl anymore. It can be a scary time.”

Last week, Baldwin attended the final session of a five-week parenting class--offered free by the school district--to help parents help their kids hurdle the tough times.

“It just deals with the different changes they are going through,” Baldwin explained. “You want to make sure you know what to do when the time comes.”

Cream of the Crop

Back in the classroom, the time has come for the top seventh-grade math students to set their course for next year. Algebra teacher April Miech spent the first half of the year preparing her students to grasp algebraic concepts.

And by the third quarter, they either had caught on and were ready for full-blown algebra next year or were struggling and destined to repeat the class.

“It is for the cream of the crop,” Miech said of pre-algebra. “It has to be, because algebra is even tougher.”

As she flipped a switch on an overhead projector, a long list of equations materialized on a movie screen at the front of the room.

“All right, let’s see what you remember,” Miech said, calling students up one at a time to solve what appeared to be indecipherable jumbles of numbers and letters.

Jennie Trego, a standout in Pallares’ English and geography classes, tackled the first one, reading line after line of equations out loud until she was left with one letter and one number.

“Who else got negative 1/2?” Miech called out, as hands flew up and students erupted in cheers. “Look at all that work, isn’t it beautiful?”

For the leading students, admittance to eighth-grade algebra is important for several reasons. Not only does it allow them to satisfy a high school requirement while still in middle school, but it sets them up to take calculus when they are high school seniors.

Among the mathematically gifted is 12-year-old Maureen Villegas, a straight-A student who is assured a slot in eighth-grade algebra. She is one of two straight-A students in Pallares’ class, an achievement memorialized on a copy of the honor roll prominently displayed in her seventh-grade homeroom.

“Lots of people say I have a good memory. I don’t know,” she said, at a loss to explain her academic prowess. “The work comes easy. I think it’s just because I pay attention.”

Miech said in pre-algebra, hard work and paying attention will get a kid only so far. Students such as Maureen have a natural knack for numbers.

“Not everybody is good at math,” she said. “These are the top, top kids.”

March Madness

On the 1,235-student Balboa campus, Principal Helena Reaves calls this time of the year March Madness. The month began with an orientation for incoming sixth-graders at the east Ventura middle school, the largest in the Ventura Unified School District.

The pace quickened to include basic computer lessons for staff members on tapping the district’s student information system. And already, the planning process is in full swing for next year, including a review of staffing levels and curriculum.

“I go crazy this time of the year,” Reaves said. “We’re busy all year, but the pace really accelerates from February through June.”

Then there are the kids to consider. For some reason, spring seems to promote the strangest behavior and Reaves gets to see a good bit of it.

“Mrs. Reaves, I’ve got a question about the dress code,” a girl asked the principal as she toured the campus one recent afternoon. “I want to dye my hair purple. Is that all right?”

Reaves thought about the question, making sure she understood the request.

“That would not be good,” she said at last. “Purple is not a natural color, but thanks for asking.”

Armed with a dress code that forbids nonnatural hair colors because they can be a distraction, school officials say the student could have been sent home--and perhaps even kept out of school--if she had gone ahead with the dye job.

Nine radio-wielding teachers and administrators prowl the campus during lunch to keep trouble in check. But they can’t be everywhere. And where they’re not, trouble often seems to pop up.

Recently, a spirited water-balloon fight raged up and down the hallways of the sprawling campus. The next morning, a more serious fight--requiring a police response--erupted in front of the school.

The fistfight--involving a Balboa student who is Latino and a white student from a local continuation high school--was actually a spillover of an off-campus fight that had erupted weeks before after racial slurs were exchanged between a group of whites and a group of Latinos. Police were called because the fight had racial overtones, and there have been no similar problems since.

For more minor offenses, Assistant Principal Katherine Reyes reserves space in lunchtime detention, where spring has a way of boosting attendance.

“It started in February with a vengeance,” Reyes said, looking after more than a dozen youngsters doing time for offenses ranging from defying authority to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with offensive slogans.

“The numbers seem to increase exponentially as the school year goes on,” Reyes added. “One of the things this does is keep them from socializing. That’s very painful for a lot of kids, and I’m the pain inflicter.”

Long, Strange Trip

Taken together, these are the rites of passage at Balboa Middle School, a signal that the end of the year is near. And for the 428 seventh-graders--the largest group on campus--what a long, strange trip it’s been.

Recently, the campus was crawling with bell-bottom-wearing, peace sign-flashing hippies as students celebrated Flower Child Day. And last week, seventh-grade home-economics classes closed out the quarter with a candlelight spaghetti dinner.

Even Pallares introduced a new wrinkle to the third quarter, launching a lunchtime Style Club to help students learn about skin care, grooming and comportment.

“If they are not given the right way to do things, then you see the experiments with the wild makeup and the crazy hair,” she said. “I want the kids to come off to the best of their advantage.”

Ultimately, Pallares wants that for all facets of their lives. That’s what makes this time of year so hard.

She knows that she hasn’t reached every student, that despite three quarters of pushing and prodding, some kids are drifting aimlessly toward summer unprepared for next year.

“Maybe I haven’t found the right button or key to press, and the reality is maybe I’m not going to find it,” she said. “You just can’t reach 100% of them, that’s the hardest lesson for a new teacher to learn. But at this point, I have a lot of kids who need my energy and my time. And believe me, they are going to get it.”

ABOUT THIS SERIES * “Coming of Age: Learning the Lessons of Middle School” is an occasional series tracing the progress of a group of students at Ventura’s Balboa Middle School through their seventh-grade year. This installment provides an overview of the third quarter, including the nervous tension of a middle school dance and a frantic push to prepare students academically for eighth grade as the school year races to a close.