Until two years ago, many students spent exercise periods in their classrooms because the school's gym was being used for regular studies. Dancing the macarena at their desks counted as physical education. Most important, the size of P.S. 14's classes affects the way Rehana Longi teaches and the way her students learn. Angling her body to squeeze between desks, she struggles, unsuccessfully, to give each of her 34 fifth-grade students a few minutes of individual attention. During a 35-minute arithmetic lesson, she gets to check the answers of about 12 students.
Creativity is limited.
It's got to be that way. Not for many children in California. In Los Angeles's Hancock Park Elementary School, teacher Sandy Sutton spots one of the 20 students in her second-grade class struggling with a reading task. Sutton says the shy kids in her class don't fade into the background as they once did. She can pinpoint slow readers within the first days of school and give them special attention.