Students’ efforts suit teacher

Third-grade teacher Norma Arnold swam with whale sharks off the coast of Honduras.

On Monday, the teacher again donned scuba gear before joining a group not quite as exotic but perhaps just as elusive -- high-performing math students.

Her appearance in wet suit and face mask at an awards assembly for Gene Ward Elementary School was her students' reward for learning their multiplication tables.

Las Vegas might be built on over-the-top entertainment, but the novelty of seeing his 58-year-old teacher in a black scuba gear and air tank still impressed Victor Lopez, 9.

"I always wondered what a scuba suit looked like," the third-grader said.

His mother, Maria Quiroz, recalled telling Alex, who came up with the idea for the scuba appearance, "Don't put your teacher through this."

Arnold said she wasn't afraid of whale sharks because they're such shy fish, but she was apprehensive about the scuba appearance at school. Encouragement came from Principal Maria Chavez and Assistant Principal Phyllis Morgan.

"We were like the kids," Chavez said. "Go for it!"

The administrators have risked stunts for the sake of education too. After students completed a school goal of reading 5,000 books, Chavez and Morgan agreed to play basketball against a teacher and a local poet who tower over them. Both women are about 5 feet tall. They suffered a substantial loss against teacher Susan Scharmka, who is 6 feet tall, and poet Shawn Gullatt, who is 6 feet 5 inches tall.

"We would have rather kissed a pig," said Chavez of another option they offered as an incentive to students.

Arnold knew the scuba stunt would get the kids talking to their parents about math. Parental involvement is key to helping students learn the multiplication tables, she said.

Ward teachers and staff know their students face more challenges than memorizing multiplication tables. More than half of Ward students speak English as a second language, Chavez said. Many students start school not knowing any English.

All students at the school, on East Hacienda Avenue near South Tamarus Street, qualify for free or reduced lunch. About 43 percent of Ward students leave or change schools before completing a full school year.

Because of such challenges, administrators and teachers said they are proud of the what the students have accomplished. Ward has shown adequate yearly progress in meeting the federal standards of the No Child Left Behind Act for two consecutive years.

Thirteen of Arnold's 18 third-graders met or surpassed their math achievement standards for the year. That news comes at a time when Clark County School District middle schools and high schools are reeling from poor scores on end-of-semester math exams. Arnold said that her students are learning the basics in elementary school.

Arnold encourages her students' imagination by hanging pictures of exotic fish in the classroom. She first took up diving seven years ago when her children moved out of the house. Her first plunge was into Lake Mead.

Once summer school wraps up in July, Arnold is taking a vacation to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

When she showed students how her scuba gear functions, Arnold passed along another lesson: Scuba diving is a "lot like life. There are a lot of rules you have to follow."

Contact reporter James Haug at jhaug@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4686.