By Jules Lindgren
In a mid-sized conference room at Camp Williams, children gather in the morning to begin an informal school organized by the Jordan School District.
One of the educators directs two boys, around 10 years old, to a table filled with notebooks and tells them to pick out a journal. A 7-year-old girl wearing a plastic tiara surveys the room cautiously from the doorway.
Other children are sitting at the tables arranged in u-shape in the middle of the room, talking to each other and to teachers. The room is filled with the sound of chatter, laughter and occasional tears.
While the Jordan School District is waiting for a waiver to begin formal education, educators have set up an informal classroom for children evacuated from New Orleans after the destruction of hurricane.
?That sense of routine and pattern is important for kids,? said Dr. Susan Chilton, coordinator of student intervention services at Jordan School District.
The pattern for children that age is to go to school, she said, and administrators wanted to start the return to normalcy as soon as possible.
The McKinney-Vento Act, signed by former president Ronald Reagan in 1987, prohibits school districts from segregating homeless children. Therefore, the Jordan School District can?t begin formal education unless it gets the waiver administrators are pushing for.
If the waiver goes through, the district would set up a one-room schoolhouse type environment until parents can find somewhere to settle more permanently.
?We?re doing everything we can to expedite it,? Chilton said.
Sen. Orrin Hatch is working with the school district to get the waiver. In a letter dated Aug. 8 to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, he expressed his support of their efforts.
'These displaced and homeless children are not the typical homeless children,? he wrote. ?Nearly all of them are with their families. It is important to keep families together as the Katrina victims receive aid and support, including education and counseling.'
If the federal government grants the waiver, it will be a huge precedent for other evacuee centers around the nation, Chilton said.
In the meantime they are setting up a 10-day assessment period to find out what the academic needs the children have. The children will also participate educational experiential activities.
One of the projects students are working on is a journal called ?My Utah Adventure.? They hope to make them upside down books: read them one way, and they?re about Utah ? turn them over and they?re about Louisiana.
?We?re teaching them what we have, and they?re going to teach us what they have,? Chilton said. ?It?s giving the kids the time to trust us, and they need a little time.?
Forty-two students attended class Thursday, and up to 50 were expected to attend on Friday as news traveled via word-of-mouth and children started feeling more comfortable going.
Not all the kids at Camp Williams, however, are interested in going to school.
?Let me tell you something, we not going to school,? 13-year-old Melissa Stewart said. Her friends, 12-year-old Levatus Collins and 15-year-old Kristie Collins, agreed.
The school is staffed with a variety of educators from Jordan School District, all there to help the children recover from the trauma of Hurricane Katrina.
A lot of the students needed medical attention, but Chilton said that mostly the kids needed someone to listen to them, not necessarily about Katrina, but anything the kids wanted to talk about.
?With what they?ve been through, they?re trying to get them to think at a level other than tragedy,? Red Cross Volunteer Gary Elliott said.
He also said they are trying to bring in some computers for the kids who know how to use them.
Overall, the kids seemed to be doing well.