THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 4, 1996 TAG: 9604020142
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
While challenges facing the city's school system can seem overwhelming, Lafayette-Winona Middle School principal Stephen G. Peters has an idea to tackle them - one child at a time.
If adults take time to listen, he said, the children often have the answers.
``Too often we decide what's important to children without checking with them,'' said Peters, keynote speaker at a town hall meeting last week sponsored by the Norfolk-Portsmouth Bar Association. ``Spend quality time with the children to find out what's important to them.''
The meeting, held at Ruffner Middle, centered on the challenges facing schools and the community to educate the city's children.
After Peters spoke, a five-member panel, including school officials and police, fielded questions from the audience of about 100. The questions ranged from school safety and technology to parental involvement.
In his speech, Peters said that in today's society, so oriented toward instant results, adults must help children set long-range goals - and work with kids to achieve them.
Without adult guidance, he said, children are easily led astray by peer pressure in a world of drugs, crime, sex and violence.
To stay on track, Peters said children need a ``hook'' - or a type of reward - that allows them to see value in doing well in school and sticking to a long-term plan. Children who have a long-range goals may think twice before doing something that could get them in trouble, Peters said.
And it takes more than slogans to reach them, he said.
`` `Just say no,' is not enough,'' Peters said. ``That's not real to these kids . . . We need to teach kids something else . . . `If you want those Jordans (tennis shoes), I'll show you how to work for them.' ''
For Peters, who told of growing up in a small South Carolina town, the ``hook'' was basketball: His parents told him he couldn't play if he got a C on his report card.
Peters talked about the success this year at Lafayette-Winona with the ``Gentleman's Club.'' A majority of the 20 or so students in the club, many from low-income families, had a long rap sheet of school problems - truancy, classroom misbehavior, poor grades.
``What we try to do is give these kids constant feedback . . . in terms of success or lack thereof,'' Peters said. ``We teach them there are consequences for the choices they make.''
Students have to maintain a good school record in academics and behavior to remain in the club. With the community's help, Peters said, club members have experienced cultural opportunities and seen a side of the world that may motivate them to achieve more in life.
A Norfolk restaurant owner, for example, paid the club's tab for a $700-plus dinner, the first time some of the students had experienced anything other than a fast-food restaurant meal. Before going, a home economics teacher put the students through a two-week course in proper table etiquette. They wore coats and ties to dinner.
The club also traveled to Washington to attend a Bullets pro basketball game and to visit the Smithsonian Museum. Some of the students had never heard of the museum, Peters said - about half had never been outside Norfolk.
Peters challenged the community to work with schools to solve problems. People may have money or expertise they can offer, he said.
Panel members were Herman D. Clark Jr., principal of Bowling Park Elementary School; Thomas B. Lockamy Jr., assistant superintendent for school governance; James Herndon, a city school board member; Denise Matchen, president of the city council of PTAs; and M.M. Hammond, a Norfolk D.A.R.E. policeman.
During the panel discussion, Lockamy called for more school-business partnerships to ensure that schools had up-to-date technology in the classrooms.
Because computer software and other technology is so expensive and constantly being updated, schools will ``not be able to keep up'' without help, he said. Lockamy said businesses and schools need to launch a ``new era of pioneering . . . because the economics won't allow'' schools alone to meet the demands for technology.
Herndon said teachers in an urban system like Norfolk's have ``to be able to persevere - to not give up on students.''
Clark said his school has increased parental involvement by recruiting fathers. ``When you get fathers active in the school, the mothers will come out,'' he said.
Matchen said PTA membership during the past five years has increased substantially - up to about 13,000 members, from about 8,000. They assist schools in a variety of ways, she said, including tutoring and mentoring students.
Hammond said officers in the D.A.R.E. program, which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, show students that the police are not the enemy. by CNB