SACRAMENTO — Each morning the students at Ventura's E.P. Foster Elementary School pledge allegiance to the flag and then pledge allegiance to their better selves:

I will listen to what others have to say.

I will treat others the way I would like to be treated.

I will respect the diversity of all people.

I will remember that I have people who care about me in my family, school and community.

I will try my best.

That daily pledge — coupled with the other elements of a schoolwide life skills program that is unique in California — has helped transform E.P. Foster, lifting it from one of the district's lowest-performing and problem-plagued grade schools to a statewide model.

On Wednesday in Sacramento, school officials shared their story at a statewide conference designed to promote proven practices that are succeeding in closing the chronic achievement gap between white and Asian students and Latinos and blacks.

The life-skills program at E.P. Foster, known as Lesson One, was implemented in the 2001 school year. The year before, the school's base Academic Performance Index was 617 on a scale of 1,000, and Latino students scored 84 points below the statewide performance goal. Last year, the school's API was 726, and its Latino students scored 79 points above the state goal.

The annual number of school suspensions has plummeted from 19 to two. "Little by little, we're creating a culture within a culture — a culture that's strong enough to withstand the outside," school counselor Maria Aviz told an audience of about 100 elementary school teachers and principals. "In this culture they're receiving a repeated message that disrespect is OK. We have to give them a direct, repeated message that it is not."

The workshop presented by Aviz and her Ventura colleagues was one of more than 100 such sessions conducted at the two-day summit convened by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

More than 4,000 educators attended. O'Connell said he planned to gather the information presented at the conference and distill it into specific recommendations that he would present in his State of Education address in January.

Plan to expand program

California Lutheran University Professor Diana Stephens said she was sold on the effectiveness of the Lesson One program two years ago before she even knew it existed. She said she saw the evidence from the parking lot on her first visit to E.P. Foster. "I was waiting in my car, and I saw an energetic quality I cannot describe," she said. "I saw second- and third-graders moving from class to class. They weren't running, they weren't screaming, they weren't pushing."

Stephens has since become a champion for the program and is leading an effort to obtain foundation funding to expand the program to the three other elementary schools that feed into Ventura's De Anza Middle School — Lincoln, Sheridan Way and Sunset.

She expects the training at the other three schools to begin either in January or at the beginning of the next school year.

The following year, Ventura Unified School District officials hope to extend the program to the middle school.

Stephens notes the program is used widely by schools on the East Coast, but that California has been slow to follow, in part because it has long had the fewest school counselors per student in the nation. An expansion of school counselors coupled with new counseling guidelines developed by O'Connell earlier this year could begin to change that trend, she said.

"Social emotional curricula should be embedded in schools," said Stephens, who for 25 years worked as a clinical social worker in South Central Los Angeles before changing her focus to school counseling. "Little-bitty ones don't know what to do with their emotions, but everybody has them. Our emotions are going to find a way to express themselves."

To be successful, she said, schools must teach children ways to recognize and then deal with their emotions with self-control. She calls it "moral purpose leadership."

In addition to the Pledge for Success, the program includes a three-times daily exercise in self-control. When students return to class after recess and lunch, they immediately spend three minutes doing a silent deep-breathing exercise that helps them prepare to resume their studies.

Third-grade teacher Pam Hunter said a girl in her class once succinctly described the value of the exercise. "She said, It helps you get all the recess out and all the learning in.'"

Training is essential

Aviz said teachers are naturally resistant to new programs that take time away from academic instruction, but the net result of Lesson One has the opposite effect. "One of the teachers told me she has to prepare a lot more instruction because she has so few disruptions."

Stephens said the key to successful implementation is staff training so everyone at the school — from teachers to custodians to the office staff — speaks the same language of self-control and mutual respect.

Principal Michael Tapia said many schools attempt to teach character traits through periodic assemblies and special events "which are like the flavor of the month." The E.P. Foster program is more effective, he said, because it incorporates character instruction into the daily routine of the school. "It does take time to practice the language, but once you have it down, you own it," Hunter said. "It does become part of you. The atmosphere on our campus is one of family."