"I've seen kids who've gone to four or five different schools, who don't have a chance because they just acted out too much and no one wants to deal with them," says Dierke.
When he came to Visitacion Valley six years ago, the middle school was broken, test scores were plummeting, and behavior in the classroom and the hallways was out of control. Since then test scores have dramatically improved; he's achieved 98 percent daily attendance, and turned a school in one of the city's toughest neighborhoods into a place where teachers and students look forward to coming.
Paul Trapani
Apollo Madayag stands before a special day class
filled with students who need extra attention.
Paul Trapani
Principal James Dierke had 15 years' experience as a
special ed teacher before taking charge of a troubled
school.
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"Listen, do you hear that?" asks Dierke, a tall, kindly-looking man with a graying mustache. He is standing in his school's hallway holding a hand to one ear. "It's quiet." He smiles proudly as if this were the most novel thing in the world.
Dierke has a right to be proud. Walking through the front doors you can feel it. The hallways are bright, safe, and stress-free. Dierke points to a collage of artwork on the hallway walls drawn by sixth- and seventh-grade special day class students. "Where else are you going to find that?" he asks, referring to the way in which special ed students usually are tucked away, their work not proudly displayed for the rest of the school. He tries to limit the number of kids in separate special day classes and works to "mainstream" or to include his special ed students in regular education classes as much as possible.
Will Smith teaches one of the two Visitation Valley classes devoted entirely to kids classified as emotionally disturbed. His classes are almost 100 percent African-American. These are kids who have been kicked from class to class or school to school, where teachers just didn't know what to do with them. "When the school district makes this a dumping ground, we have to deal with it," he says. "Maybe a kid brought a weapon to school, or hit a teacher. We get more of them than others," Smith says.
At this school, while students might be in a special day class for a large portion of the day, many take classes throughout the school; a few are even in honors classes.
The school has gone on lockdown three times this year already due to gang violence, and last year two teachers were held up at gunpoint. "But these kids are not bad kids, they just don't have time for nonsense. They test people a lot," Dierke says.
Against the odds, Dierke has found ways to give these students and his teachers what they need to succeed. He has put together a creative variety of resources, like individual mentors for students, tutoring before and after school, a program for kids whose parents are in jail, all-school assemblies and activities, and field trips throughout San Francisco. Dierke encourages his special ed students to get out into the environment, to view the city, to see what high schools and other opportunities are out there.
Jerio Lee grew up in Bayview-Hunters Point and was placed in special ed. "I always noticed that it was nothing but African-American kids with the exception of maybe one Latino guy, and maybe one Chinese girl," he says. "I just think that if it was a white person, they would do something more extreme to help the situation. But that's just me." Lee, who was adopted at age one by a single mom (his biological parents were drug addicts), was diagnosed in school with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and as "emotionally disturbed."
When Lee came to Visitacion Valley, he was uncontrollable. This is what Apollo Madayag thought when he was first assigned to mentor him one-on-one. "He had the police chasing him around the school when I said, 'Oh no, is that my first student?'" Madayag, a former marine who fought in the Gulf War, is a full-time special day class teacher.
"Apollo would help me out in class, would always be there for me when I needed some advice," says Lee, who now attends EMT classes at a community college. "I wanted to succeed, but I'd never had someone who would care so much to teach me and make sure that I would do good."
Madayag still keeps in touch with Lee, and is proud of the man he turned out to be.
"The idea is we move kids forward, there is progress," says Dierke. "We try to prepare them for the next level. Every day there is a little victory." As for the challenges, Dierke's school is threatened by decreasing enrollment, budget cuts, and possible closure, like several other schools in Bayview-Hunters Point. In other neighborhoods, parents are sending their kids to charter schools or private schools.
"But the working poor depend on the school district. There is a tremendous trust factor here," Dierke says, shaking his balding head. "They trust that the school district is going to do the right thing for their kids."
