It wasn’t the season Anthony Armas and his Denair High football players were hoping for when practice began many months ago in the heat of the summer, but it ended on a high note Friday night when the Coyotes played their best game of the year to knock off Waterford 52-39.
The victory allowed the team – and especially its eight seniors – to enjoy a hard-earned road victory over a regional rival while snapping a seven-game losing streak. The Coyotes finished the year 2-8 overall and 1-6 in the Southern League.
After all the hard work and sweat and bruises that are part playing football, winning the final game will be an enjoyable memory to savor.
“I joked with one of the kids after the game that I didn’t think we had scored 50 points in all our Southern League games combined,” said Armas. “I looked it up and it was exactly 52. It was a great way to end the season.”
What was the difference Friday?
“We didn’t make mistakes,” said Armas. “We only had one turnover. We executed our offense. The defense made some big plays and created some timely turnovers.
“I don’t think we ever felt during the game we were going to lose. I’m not sure our kids felt that most of the year. We were feeling pretty good after the game. I think we needed that.”
As usual, Denair endured low numbers this fall. The Coyotes suited up just 16 players Friday night and that dropped by one with senior captain and team leader Anthony Pineda, who plays outside linebacker OLB and RB, suffered a broken collarbone.
“He’s just one of those kids who works his tail off,” praised Armas. “He’s been a big part of our program for four years.”
It was Pineda and the seven other seniors on the team that Armas was thinking of when he addressed the team after the game Friday night.
“I thanked our seniors for everything they did for us. They laid a foundation,” he said. “The seniors, we didn’t have a lot of them, but they went through a lot with the pandemic. This was the first normal year they had. The record’s not what they wanted or we wanted, but given what they went through, we did well.”
Even as players checked in their equipment on Monday, Armas already was optimistically looking ahead to next year.
“Our JV team was 5-5 and we had five sophomores already on the varsity,” he said. “Our numbers might be a little low, but I think we’ll be pretty good pretty soon. I think our program is on the upswing.”
While few parents think of heart issues as something that could affect children, an estimated 1 in 300 school-aged children suffer from an undiagnosed heart defect, many of which could lead to cardiac arrest and death. The risk of complications can be higher for students who are active in sports, gymnastics, dance or other strenuous activities, and the first warning sign is often death.
To help find these hidden abnormalities, the Via Heart Project will conduct a free heart screening open to children 12 and older as well as adults up to age 25. It will take place Sunday, Nov. 6 from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Denair Middle School.
The event is sponsored by EMC Health Foundation, the Denair Unified School District and Gable Heart Beats.
The screening is conducted by volunteer Bay Area health professionals, including cardiologists, sonographers and nurses. It includes a health history review, EKG test and a focused echocardiogram. The entire process takes about 60-90 minutes and is non-invasive — there are no needles or X-ray exposure. Each teen’s confidentiality, privacy and individual modesty is respected throughout. Participants also will have the option to learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) skills during the screening.
This screening is important because some 7,000 to 10,000 school-aged children nationwide die each year from sudden cardiac arrest, often from conditions that could have been detected in advance. Yet neither EKG nor cardiac ultrasound is included in the typical annual physical. Via Heart Project’s screening is supplementary to — but does not replace — a child’s annual exam or school sports physical.
“Any parent who has lost a child to a preventable health issue knows the pain of wondering what could have been done before it was too late. If we can prevent even one family from going through that pain, then what we have done is worth it,” said Liz Lazar-Johnson, Executive Director of Via Heart Project.
To participate, go to http://viaheartproject.org/screeningsto register. Registration is open until noon on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022, and is limited to 500 people.
Some Denair students attend school as many as nine hours a day this year thanks to what is known as the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP), a new initiative from the state that provides additional instruction, tutoring and academic enrichment.
The program is voluntary, but comes on the heels of two pandemic-affected school years with distance learning and other disruptions to class that caused some students to fall behind. ELOP is one part of a many-faceted solution to help catch students up.
At Thursday’s monthly meeting of the Denair Unified School District board, Superintendent Terry Metzger and principals at three campuses described how the program is working so far.
ELOP begins at 7:30 a.m. – an hour before regular classes begin – and then resumes after school until 4:30 p.m. Some students participate in both sessions, while others are enrolled only in the morning or afternoon. Teachers who volunteer for the extra assignments are paid a stipend for their time.
The program is not a substitute for child care, which the district also offers until 6 p.m., Metzger emphasized. ELOP has a strong academic component, allowing students in various grades to complete homework or work on assignments while getting more personalized attention.
Though the state mandated ELOP only from kindergarten through sixth grade, Denair expanded it to its middle school and high school campuses as well.
“We see this program as another way to reach out to our students and families,” Metzger said.
At Denair Elementary Charter Academy, there are nearly 100 students participating in ELOP, with another 15 on the waiting list. Principal Marilu Cano expects to accommodate more students as soon as she can add additional teachers.
ELOP is different from the rest of the school day only in the sense that it tries “to incorporate having fun with learning,” said Cano.
“We want students to want to stay here,” she said.
Across the street at Denair Middle School, there have been 15 to 20 students participating in ELOP – a number that Principal Gabriela Sarmiento expects to increase now that grades have come out and some parents recognize their children need extra academic attention.
“The biggest thing we do is help with homework and mentoring,” she said.
Middle school students have access to an open gym in the morning in addition to instructional support in the afternoon. Sarmiento and her staff have discussed adding ELOP elements at lunchtime for students who can’t participate in the afternoon because they are involved in other extra-curricular activities already.
At the high school, Interim Principal Breanne Aguiar said 44 students are benefitting from ELOP. Like Sarmiento, she also expects that number to increase now that first-quarter grades have been posted.
“Parents who weren’t aware of the program have asked, ‘Where do I sign up,’ and I say, ‘I’ll do it for you,’ ” said Aguiar.
The high school program includes a partnership called College Corps in which CSU Stanislaus students come to Denair to tutor students in specific subjects in the afternoon.
The state provided about $800,000 to fund the program this year, Metzger said. That is based only on the number of children from TK to sixth grade who participate. The state does not require ELOP at the older grade levels, but Denair decided it was important to offer it anyway.
“We’re focusing on academic support and building relationships, and even our older kids need that,” Metzger explained.
In other action Thursday night, trustees:
Heard a report on the district’s special education program, which includes 143 students at all grade levels. That number could go up as Denair continues to “take back” students who have been receiving services through the Stanislaus County Office of Education, said Special Education Director Amanda Silva.
Listened to an update on students for whom English is not their first language from Anajanzy Montoya, English Language Development Coordinator. Of the district’s 1,309 students, 249 are in various stages of learning English, Montoya said. Denair’s services include special programs for those students as well as their parents. Students are tested twice a year on their ability to read, write, speak and listen in English, Montoya said, and can move out of the program once they are deemed to be fluent.
Approved the formation of an eSports and Gaming Club at Denair High School. Speakers said there are about 15 students interested in participating in the online game club.
Perhaps the most important promise made to parents eight years ago when Denair Unified created its Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program was this one: the district was committed to growing the English/Spanish program from kindergarten and the elementary grades through middle school and all the way into high school.
It was an obligation the district embraced and from which it has never wavered. It has endured through leadership changes at the district and school levels, the addition of new teachers each year and a global pandemic that presented its own challenges.
“When I came to the district five years ago, the DUSD Governing Board made it very clear that the Dual Language program was a high priority,” Superintendent Terry Metzger said. “We have families who have already invested eight years in the program. We recognize that our parents trust us as a district to follow through with a comprehensive program that will benefit their children far into the future.”
Today, the first group of DLI students who began as 5-year-old kindergartners are in seventh grade at Denair Middle School. There are now DLI classes stacked up at every grade level behind them – 252 children in all who are in the process of becoming bilingual, biliterate and bicultural.
District officials are very aware that the oldest group of students will be high school freshmen in less than two years. Discussions have begun about what a DLI program might look like at the high school level, though no decisions have been made yet.
“We’re trying to set them up for success in whatever we do,” said Metzger.
One possibility to continue building fluency in Spanish is to have the DLI freshman take Spanish 3, which would typically be the third-year course taken by juniors or seniors. Another option for the most accomplished DLI students would be to move them directly into AP Spanish, the highest level offered at Denair High.
One of the key questions with the AP alternative, middle school Principal Gabriela Sarmiento admitted, is whether freshmen would be “academically and emotionally ready” to take and succeed in any AP course – Spanish or otherwise.
“The pressure is high in AP Spanish and the workload is immense,” Metzger acknowledged.
The larger goal, of course, is to make sure all the DLI students will graduate and be fluent in two languages. The hope is by the time they are high school juniors, they can take and pass the countywide test that will certify them as biliterate, which will earn them a special seal on their high school diplomas and be an asset on their college applications.
“We’re committed to ensuring that our DLI students complete a program that results in not only the Seal of Biliteracy, but also real-world skills that will help them be successful after high school graduation,” said Metzger.
What DLI looks like in middle school
Some of the district’s DLI students come from families who speak Spanish at home. Others are from households where only English is spoken. Regardless, all of them are learning to read, write and speak in two languages – a skill that can only help them well beyond their school days.
There are 21 DLI students in seventh grade. About half – including twins Henry and Brooke De La Motte – were members of the original class. Others, like Isaac Maldonado, have transferred to Denair through the years after beginning in DLI programs in other districts.
Sarmiento, whose son Victor is one of those seventh-graders, said the first group of students will always share a special bond and have developed a noticeable camaraderie.
“Their teachers have said they are very collaborative,” she said. “They’re comfortable with one another and are easy to get along with. And while we don’t want to separate our DLI students (from their English-only peers), they recognize that they have something in common.”
The De La Motte twins come from a family that doesn’t have any bilingual history.
“Our parents thought it would help improve our lives and help us with language skills” by enrolling them in the DLI program, Henry explained.
He said he started really comprehending Spanish in the second grade.
“First, I began to understand words and then came writing and speaking,” said Henry. “Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy.”
His favorite part of learning the language is being able to speak it, something his parents encourage he and his sister to do whenever they encounter native Spanish speakers. Henry also would like to travel to Mexcio one day to use his language skills and learn more about the culture there.
Maldonado joined Denair’s DLI program as a fifth-grader after being part of a similar system in Delhi. His mother is from Mexico, so he had exposure to Spanish before he began school. Moving between the two languages is second nature to him.
“Learning two languages is good. I’m proud that I can do it,” he said.
His favorite class is math – which is taught in English – “just because I’m good at it.”
By design, the elementary and middle school DLI programs are different.
At Denair Elementary Charter Academy, the DLI students at each grade level stay together for the entire day with one teacher. Some subjects are taught in Spanish; others in English. There is more Spanish at the younger grade levels, a ratio that eventually balances out at about 50-50 by fifth grade. Regardless of language, the curriculum is the same as what the English-only students are taught.
Starting in sixth grade at DMS, students begin to rotate among teachers for different subjects. Three of the sixth-graders’ seven classes (Spanish Language Arts, world history and an exploratory elective focused on Spanish literature and culture) are taught in Spanish; all other subjects are in English. In seventh grade, the Spanish elective goes away. That likely will be the case next year as well when eighth grade is added, Sarmiento said.
Sarmiento believes it’s important not to segregate the DLI students from their English-only peers on campus, which can be a scheduling challenge given the campus only has about 250 students. That’s why DLI students are encouraged to join clubs, play sports and participate in other extracurricular activities.
Still, their inclusion in the DLI program always will set them apart.
“They are held to higher expectations,” Sarmiento acknowledged. “There is more work output expected of them. With higher academic words and phrases, they must know and recognize their significance in Spanish and English. By virtue of being in the program, they are forced to work harder.”
Metzger expects Denair’s DLI program to continue to grow as more and more parents recognize the long-term value provided to their children.
“Aside from the fact that having a multicultural perspective helps people be more accepting of diverse viewpoints, the reality is that we live and work in a global economy,” she said. “Speaking more than one language can definitely open up new and better opportunities.”
