Coming into the Light at Chartwell, Monterey County Herald

Coming into the light at Chartwell

Jerry Gervase Central Coasting

For the second straight year I was a substitute grandparent at Chartwell School's annual Grandparents Day and I had as much fun as last year. If news of this remarkable school has escaped you let me clue you in. The school's goals are best summed up in their mission statement: "... to educate children

with dyslexia and related language learning disabilities in a way that provides them with the learning skills and self-esteem necessary to return successfully to mainstream education."

Children are the emphasis at Chartwell. A dedicated and professional staff provides the learning tools and how to use them. Self-esteem is the natural byproduct of the learning.

Last year, Dean of Students Judy Gaughf assigned me to Sam Foster. Sam is now attending Salinas High School because Chartwell does not have a high school yet. This year, Christian Rosa (pronounced ros-ay) got stuck with me. Christian is a 13-year-old seventh-grader. He's 6 feet tall, with wavy blond hair, and Leonardo di Caprio good looks. He loves to play lacrosse. Christian landed at Chartwell almost two years ago because of dyslexia.

I asked him to describe his experience there.

"Totally awesome" was his typical teenager's reply. "Typical" is the key word because he was anything but that before Chartwell. Once again, I was deeply impressed with the organizational issues tackled by the teachers. Order and strategy, common to us but atypical to dyslexic children, are stressed in every class.

In Brandie Schafer's Language Arts class we heard the students recite poetry they had written about the school and the effect it has had on them. The poetry was emergent as one would expect from kids their age, but the thoughts expressed were beyond their years.

Brittney Miller compared the school to a lighthouse and the students as ships being thrashed about in a storm:

Every one of the students is on the few ships that find it./Long dark storms/Start to calm. /Lights come on through the storm's black clouds./Somehow, Chartwell finds us, /Saves us from that storm.

In her poem, "Chartwell is a Garden," Mika Kimura writes:

Many seeds are planted into the garden. /We water and tend to the garden. /Each and every day you can see them growing in the bright sunlight. /With work comes progress./ When they are ready they will be picked /And add color to others.

Christian compares dyslexia to being in the dark. Listen to these lines from his poem, "The Darkness," and tell me a 13-year-old wrote them:

You are lost in the darkness/You don't know where you are/Or how you got there/Just darkness/You can't see the light/Because there is none/You try to escape it/But it always pulls you back in.

Everyone who attends Grandparents Day knows there is a fundraising aspect to the day. This is never a problem since all the grandparents can attest to the life-changing results they've seen, not only in the students, but in entire families as well. A much needed new campus is going up at Fort Ord, so if you have an extra mil sitting around doing nothing, toss it in Chartwell's direction. I'm sure Executive Director Doug Atkins (394-3468) will put it to good use.

Fortunately my own grandchildren don't need the special programs available at Chartwell, but if they did it is reassuring to have this "totally awesome" school right in our own backyard.

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