Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 6, 1995 TAG: 9507060058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Until a year ago, Jessica Patterson bounced back and forth from the carnival circuit to her aunt's home in Tampa, Fla.
She spent summers on the road with her parents and the rest of the year at home in school.
Thanks to a two-room, windowless trailer parked behind the Salem Civic Center during the Salem Fair this week, her situation has improved.
The 15-year-old still doesn't see her parents often, but now she can stay with the next best thing - her grandparents - because that trailer houses Jessica's new school, the Deggeller Midway Academy.
Jessica's grandparents run the food service for the Deggeller Midway employees. Her parents work for another carnival - one that doesn't have a school.
The academy serves the children of Deggeller workers. It can educate children in kindergarten through 12th grade; it had its first graduate last year. This year the academy's 11 students range from kindergarten to 10th grade, and no grade level has more than two students.
Jessica joined the school last year and completed the ninth grade in May.
"Our school isn't like normal schools," said fourth-grader Carolyn Landsinger.
After all, it isn't in every classroom that a high school sophomore would sit side-by-side with a kindergartner or that a teacher would have to explain how to count money and an algebraic expression almost in the same breath
Still, Sally Schmidt, the school's sole teacher, blanches at calling it abnormal. "Miss Sally" - as her students call her - prefers to describe her multigrade class as "alternative" or "unique."
And unique it is.
When the academy started in 1988, it was the first of its kind. Now there is one other.
Schmidt admits that teaching there presents a challenge.
She has to prepare separate lesson plans for each student. Plus, she sends home a sheet outlining for parents what has been done in the classroom each day and what homework the student has to do. The student has to return it the next day with a parent's signature.
"You never have a parent on the midway that doesn't know what's going on," Schmidt said. "It's not uncommon for me to go and knock on their door to let them know what's going on."
She considers it an ideal situation for a teacher.
"I can give personal attention to students," she said. "I can have them over to my house at night and spend time getting to know them on the weekend."
That extra attention goes a long way with students.
"In public schools, teachers don't care if you do your homework," Jessica said. "Here Miss Sally takes the time out to help you and make sure you do good."
In addition to traditional subjects such as reading and math, Schmidt also teaches music, Spanish and the Bible.
"We're in an old-fashioned one-room school house, and we're teaching old-fashioned values," she said. "It's ironic, because most people feel that the carnival isn't stable or doesn't have any morals. But we're just as stable as any other community. We have our workplace and school. It's a neighborhood and a community.
"We just move a little more."
That's an understatement.
In its yearlong season, the carnival and the Deggeller Academy, which started school Monday, will hit more than 25 cities.
Unlike traditional schools, the academy's academic year starts in July and goes until May, with six weeks off in the winter.
And a school week for carnival kids isn't necessarily Monday through Friday. Sometimes it's Tuesday through Saturday, depending on when and where the next stop is, Schmidt said.
Starting next week, Schmidt said the academy will sponsor weekly Christian-based extracurricular activities.
Those activities won't replace Jessica's days of volleyball, basketball and cheerleading in junior high school, but the sacrifice is worth it, she said.
"The education is better," Jessica said, "and that's more important than fun."
by CNB