North Las Vegas school principal’s porcine promise
"Kiss that pig!" shouts Mario Mendiaz, while hopping on the blacktop to see past hundreds of classmates outside North Las Vegas’ Scott Elementary School.
His backpack hits the back of his head, but the fifth-grader doesn’t care. "I’ve never seen a real live pig."
It’s a day of firsts for Principal Kristiena Rodeles, as well. She squeezes her eyelids shut as she puckers up to a pink piglet.
She promised.
In August, she said that if her students at Scott Elementary, on Bruce Street north of Ann Road, read 15,000 books before summer break and passed comprehension tests proving they absorbed the material, she would kiss a pig.
"The idea just fell out of the sky. We smell pig daily," she joked. R.C. Farms, the state’s largest pig farm, is half a mile from Scott.
The pig challenge is just one small part of the school’s calculated — and at times unorthodox — efforts to entrench independent reading in students, something staff contends will foster growth in all subjects.
About 47 percent of the school’s 860 students are reading at grade level, and 54 percent are at grade level in math, according to last year’s state standardized test results. The district as a whole didn’t do much better, with 56 percent of elementary students at grade level in reading and 67 percent in math.
The school’s emphasis on reading started this year with a new program, Accelerated Reader. After students read a book, they take a test specific to that book to assess whether they understood and comprehended the material. They receive a normal percentage grade. But students didn’t care about the test scores, fifth-grade teacher Doug Shain said.
"We needed this hook" or hoof, he said.
A school library that students visit once a week with their classes is now checking out 700 books a day because kids are coming in on their own.
But the pig was just the beginning.
Shain created a bracket — like those used in college basketball’s March Madness — in which his students compete in weekly "learnaments." Students advance to the next tier by earning a higher score on reading competency tests than their competitors. Everyone has an equal chance to advance, no matter their reading level.
"We now have to stop them," he said of students engaged in the half-hour reading times at the beginning and end of each school day, which started this year. "We have to do math, too."
Those reaching the fifth-grade class’s quarterfinals receive a free meal at a local restaurant. The winner is handed a championship belt. Two-time reigning champ Kitzia Leyva used to "never read" on her own but now breezes through six chapter books a week. But the shy 11-year-old isn’t one to brag. The belt’s hidden away in her desk.
Jamaries Boney isn’t so modest. When his day comes, he will be strutting around with it on his waist every day, the student said. His garage has become his library, and he takes a book out whenever he is bored instead of turning on his video games.
"Reading’s fun. That’s weird coming out of my mouth," he says and points to his smirk.
It was a surprise to his teacher as well, who noted Jamaries’ remarkable reading skills improvement.
"They can talk better, think better," Shain said of his students.
Their arms are covered in temporary tattoos of cartoon characters and animals. For each 100 percent a student earns on a reading comprehension test, he or she gets a random tattoo.
Jamaries doesn’t wash his arms, which are covered in a dozen tattoos.
One girl wants a "Twilight" tattoo she noticed in the pile. Shain said she could have it after a hat trick of three perfect scores in a week. She hasn’t done it yet.
"But she cares when she doesn’t. She used to be like, ‘Whatever,’ " Shain said.
That shift in students’ attitudes has set the school on path for improvement this year, said Assistant Principal and North Las Vegas City Councilwoman Pam Goynes-Brown. They will have to wait and see what state test scores show.
In the meantime, the principal is planning to make another promise. This time, students must read nonfiction books and pass the correlating tests. Students are already spewing ideas. Kiss a cow. Take a pie in the face. 100 pushups.
"Students always think it’s fun to embarrass the principal," Shain said.
Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.
