Mobile education helps adults, children

Saturday, Oct. 24, 1998 | 12:22 p.m.

Ana Martinez sits at a computer near the back of a utility truck-turned- classroom.

Wearing headphones, she listens to a reading program, then types the words into the computer in English.

While Martinez is learning computer skills and polishing her English, her two children participate in a bilingual preschool class on the neighboring school bus, also turned into a classroom.

Martinez is one of 49 adults in the Nevada Even Start Family Literacy Program, an intergenerational, state-funded program.

In its second year, the literacy program focuses on educating both children and adults. It teaches parenting skills and encourages parent-child interaction.

The Classroom On Wheels bus and the Computer On Wheels truck, parked side by side at Clark High School near Penwood Avenue and Arville Street, are at their last stop for the day. They make four stops twice a week in neighborhoods throughout the valley.

Since 1993, Classroom On Wheels buses have provided free preschool for at-risk and low-income children. The buses, painted like Holstein cows, drive into 21 neighborhoods and serve 378 children, ages 3, 4 and 5.

Aside from the hum of the generator that provides electricity and air conditioning, the interior is like any other preschool classroom.

But children aren't the only ones who benefit from the mobile-classroom concept. While Classroom On Wheels recruits children, Even Start recruits parents, Executive Director Angela Pernatozzi said.

The Even Start grant, one of 13 grants used to fund the entire Classroom On Wheels program, requires parents be in an adult-education program such as basic literacy classes, English acquisition classes, adult high school programs or General Educational Development (GED) programs.

Martinez didn't speak English when she moved to Las Vegas from Mexico nine years ago. By the time she began the program five weeks ago, she was speaking English, but struggled with pronunciation. Her 3-year-old son Walter, in the neighboring bus, speaks only a little English. Together they are planning ahead for his entrance into the first grade.

"Otherwise it will be very frustrating," Martinez said.

Frustrating, but not uncommon.

There are 3,745 first-graders throughout Clark County School District who are in the English Learner Language Programs. The students are non-English speaking or speak very little English. About 90 percent are Spanish-speaking, said Clara Miranda, administrative specialist for the program.

Sandra Verniel, a teacher for Classroom On Wheels, said 99 percent of the students in the Penwood/Arville class speak Spanish.

Verniel addresses the children in English, while Marisella Harmas, a teacher's aide, speaks in Spanish. But by the end of the school year, the children are speaking mainly English, she said.

So are the parents.

While eligibility for Classroom On Wheels is based on income, Even Start is based on literacy needs of parents, such as poor reading skills or English as a second language, Pernatozzi said. Thirty-one of the 49 adults in the program speak primarily Spanish.

Parents also qualify based on GED or skills such as job education, life, computers or study.

There's more than literacy being addressed, said Regina Brandon, program analyst and co-founder of Priori Enterprises Inc., the organization contracted to launch Computer On Wheels.

Only 17 percent of Hispanics and blacks have computers, Brandon said. "If that's not a need, someone needs to tell me what is."

"The children are getting a little (computer) access at the school. The parents aren't getting any," she said. "We're going into a whole new century. If you're not ready, then you're going to get lost. You're going to lose out on competitive wages."

Brandon said 20 percent of parents in Even Start are without a diploma, or some received one in Mexico, which doesn't transfer into the United States.

The biggest challenges with the parents as students are language, education, employment skills, interviewing skills and low levels of literacy, she said.

All of those needs are addressed. One computer disk, "Resume Maker," offers a virtual interview, help with career planning and job hunting.

But in Even Start, parents not only commit to the academic program but also to working with the children; Parents as Teachers is part of the program. "It's basically teaching a parent that they are the child's first and most important teacher," Brandon said.

Parents are taught how children learn and develop, and what to expect at each stage of development. Through interactive classes, the parents are shown ways to encourage learning.

"If you're making parents better, then you're making children better, then you're making communities better," Brandon said. "That's the whole idea."

The program serves as a steppingstone for the parents, Brandon said. "It especially helps with welfare reform. It gives parents an option."

The parents are often referred to other programs: employment training such as Nevada Partners or Nevada Business Service;a college re-entry at the Community College of Southern Nevada; or adult education in the Clark County School District.

The collaboration of the organizations draws different community resources to help individuals, Pernatozzi said.

Christina Vega was a homemaker for almost 30 years before she began training at Nevada Partners last spring in a Women in Transition Program.

After two months of training -- and no prior computer skills -- she is now the computer and bilingual aide for Computer On Wheels. She is also the driver.

"It's a self-contained school," said Verniel, who in addition to teaching, is the administrator, janitor and another driver.

And Martinez, who wants to escape the food-service job she once thought was the only career for which she was qualified, volunteers as an assistant. She is hoping this experience will give her a good start for becoming a schoolteacher.

"With this program," she said, "you don't have an excuse anymore."