`DO IT FOR MOM' IS JUAN'S INSPIRATION.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

NORTH HILLS - It didn't take Cathy Nachum long to see a pattern emerge as she began reading the hundreds of letters on her desk. The kids were giving her all the politically correct answers. The answers they thought she wanted to hear as a teacher.

They were telling her how they needed to study harder, pay closer attention in class, not talk so much and come to school regularly. Preferably, ready to learn something.

Nowhere in these letters was Nachum finding the kid whose passion would help turn her school around. The spark that would ignite a fire under the other more than 2,500 kids who attend Sepulveda Middle School in North Hills, and lift it from the bottom of the Stanford 9 test score pile to the top.

OK, maybe not the top - that would be asking too much too soon, Nachum knew. But certainly these kids could rise high enough to get off the state's endangered species list as one of the 430 schools in California designated for immediate intervention because test scores were so low.

Finding the motivation, the spark, to begin that climb was Nachum's job as testing coordinator. It was a new position created by incoming Principal Barbara Charness, who like Nachum had just come over a few months earlier from Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, where she was assistant principal, and Nachum a classroom teacher for 18 years.

A couple of veteran educators looking for new challenges - going from a school where test scores were high and success often taken for granted to a school where the scores were very low, and failure was often taken for granted.

``There's one main goal,'' Charness said Monday. ``That every student in regular school here has the same opportunities and chances to succeed as the kids in magnet schools have.''

That was the goal. This was the reality - Cathy Nachum combing through hundreds of student-written letters on what they thought it was going to take to start that climb from failure to success.

Looking for some motivation to start a fire under them. For the one kid who would talk from the heart, not the textbook.

She found him in Juan Hernandez. His short letter was written half in Spanish and half in English, which he was just now learning.

He was a 13-year-old eighth-grader who had been in this country for only seven months. His mother was a seamstress who worked long, hard hours to support him and his three brothers and sisters. His grandmother also lived with them.

``My name is Juan,'' he began. ``I think to improve my grades I need to put forth more effort. If I do and I succeed, it will make life better for my mother.

``She works very hard for all of us, and I know I should work hard for her in school. I want my mother to succeed, so I have to succeed. I have to work harder to get better grades.''

Nachum put down the letter and smiled. She had found her spark. Now all she had to do was start the fire.

She and Charness knew that Juan's story was not unlike most of the stories behind the kids going to school in this mainly transitory, low- income community of families where education often runs a distant second to getting by.

But Juan was the only student who had spoken from the heart and articulated what these women knew was true for every student.

There was not a kid at their school who sought failure. They all wanted to succeed, whether it was for a mother, a father, a grandparent, a sibling or simply for a better life for themselves.

They just had to be convinced that success wasn't something only for the magnet schools and smart kids to enjoy. That it was within their reach, too.

So, that's what's going on over at Sepulveda Middle School right now. The building blocks to self-confidence to turn those low Stanford 9 test scores around.

Every morning in their home room classes, the kids spend 20 minutes on nothing but self-esteem and motivational issues, including writing letters and talking to each other about all the things they have in common and what it's going to take for them to be successful.

One of those things is scoring well on tests, and understanding that tests don't end when school does - that there are tests for jobs and a lot of other areas of adult life.

``Teaching our kids how to take tests has to become part of our educational curriculum and how we do business around here,'' Charness says. ``It's not just something to be taught two weeks before a test.''

School has to work for all these kids, Nachum adds. It has to be a place where they're comfortable, confident and in the right frame of mind to learn.

Do that, she believes, and good test scores will follow.

So the testing coordinator at Sepulveda Middle School combs through hundreds of letters looking for a spark that will start a fire under these kids.

She thinks she's found it with a boy who wants to succeed for his mother.

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Photo:

Middle School student Juan Hernandez, 13, flanked by Principal Barbara Charness, left, and testing coordinator Cathy Nachum, holds the letter in which he articulated his reason for working hard in school.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer