The Spokesman-Review from Spokane, Washington • 6

Page AS Sunday, December 18, 1994 The Spokesman-Review From the Front Page Vi. Vv map AREA I linteslTOoiniM Garfield Road U9 Iv a Fuclid Road Lyons Deno Road 9 'i 12 1 Great Northern School! Districtboundaryp taffi was 0 k. Mile Airway Hefghts QI a mess 9 t'l ir- School: Three classrooms hold 36 students i Continued from A1 i and no gymnasium. The disadvantages of being small are outweighed by huge advantages: individual attention from teachers and a family atmosphere. Test scores are good.

This years fourth-graders (five of them) tested above their grade level in language, math and science, and exactly at grade level in reading and spelling. There are only 36 students in three classrooms. Kathy Vela teaches 13 kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders. Across the hall, Dave Sproul teaches 13 third- and fourth-graders. Simpsons 10 students include 11-year-old Dominic Cattadoris, who came from a larger school to Great Northern this year.

Im learning more here, he says. Its almost like having a personal tutor, but its not. A visitor standing in the hallway can hear the whole school learning at once. The sound is mostly childrens voices, soft music and the footsteps of teachers walking from desk to desk giving individual help. The school has a longer school day than most, from 9 a.m.

to 3:30 p.m., but thats not for educational reasons. The longer day accommodates the only school bus and its 110-mile route that takes older students across the district border to Medical Lake. Driver Dale Solverson has to pick up middle school students in Medical Lake before he picks up the elementary students. The main thing is how much quicker we can get through the curriculum, says Vela, who taught in Tacoma before coming to Great Northern three years ago. That leaves time for hands-on projects.

Vela says. For example, students devoted weeks preparing for a centennial 1 open house Thursday. One class made displays of 20th century inventions. Another class recreated a classroom from 100 years ago. Simpsons students studied famous people of the 1890s and assumed their characters for the evening.

Marya Lahti-Lamb, 10, the only girl in Simpsons class, chose womens suffragist Susan B. Anthony. The teacher turned the girls choice into a Im ramm late 9 dramatic moment. I took her by the arms like this and I said, Its because of you that I can wear pants! Its because of you that I can be a married teacher! In another project, alumni relived fond memories on videotape as students interviewed them. Madeline Maguire Dellwo, 76, mother of state Rep.

Dennis Dellwo, D-Spokane, remembers straight pens, ink wells and performing operettas on the schools small stage. She wonders what happened to the heavy canvas stage curtain printed with advertising from the businesses that paid for it. Dellwo was a Great Northern student in the late 1920s. Twenty years later, she was the schools only teacher with a class of 10. This young teacher would take her group and go hiking and sleigh riding, Dellwo says about herself.

They gained something besides books, I thought. Ada Currie Pepin, 83, watched five siblings go off to school before she got her chance in 1916. That morning she burned her fingers on the wood stove and her mother almost kept her home. I cried and I cried, not because my fingers were hurt but because I so much wanted to go to school, she remembers. My mother bundled my hand up, put some medicine on it, wrapped it up and sent me off.

School Chairman Pegg attended Great Northern in the 1960s and now has two sons there. He has strong memories of his teacher in fourth, fifth and sixth grades, Viola Roth. She was bullish on developing a lifelong habit of learning, questioning and wanting to know, Pegg says. She was worth her weight in gold. A better teacher never walked.

Pegg, a Kaiser Aluminum executive, marvels that he got where he is without graduating from college. The skills I use every day are the ones I learned in grade school at Great Northern. The district doesnt appear to be in any immediate jeopardy. A bill that would have required small districts to consolidate failed in the Legislature 1 last year. Families living outside the district are discovering the school.

Eleven of the students are attending under the states choice law, which allows students to attend any school in the state as long as there is room. The district recently hired Glenn Frizzell, a retired Spokane School District business manager, as its part-time superintendent. Frizzell, 63, can be filling out state forms one minute and washing the face of a boy who fell off the merry-go-round the next. With the school board, he is talking about strategic planning, technology plans and more testing of students to find out if small class sizes really do make a difference. Not that we want to lean across the back fence and say, Ha, ha, ha.

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