Scrabble lunch club at JHS 217

BY ELLEN YAN | STAFF WRITER

November 23, 2004

Newsday is spending a year visiting JHS 217 in Jamaica. This is one in an occasional series.

How many points for l-e-a-r-n-i-n-g?

The low-tech game of Scrabble is alive in literacy teacher Hillary Aleshin's classroom, where a growing number of her students spend fifth-period lunch. Unlike some other circles in Jamaica's JHS 217, here in the Scrabble Lunch Club, it's cool to be smart.

"K-o-b," spelled Robert Emmi, 13, yesterday's Scrabble king, hunched over his letter tiles.

Aleshin, a 9-year teaching veteran, challenged him on whether it was a word, but Robert said he had consulted the "cheat sheet" of three-letter words that she had handed out. There it was, after "koa."

"Kob. A reddish brown antelope," Aleshin read from the dictionary. She teased the boy, "You didn't know that."

Everyone, even the teacher, learns something sooner or later in the Scrabble Lunch Club, where most of the students are more familiar with exercising their thumbs in video games than their spelling and vocabulary abilities.

Aleshin, a long-time Scrabble fan, opens up her classroom four times a week during her lunch period.

In the Scrabble lunch bunch, players who try to make illegal moves are practically branded cheaters so other players can keep a close eye on them. No profane words are allowed.

When eighth-grader Esha Hassan feels bad after getting a low grade in one of her classes, she pits herself in Scrabble against someone who's gotten a higher one.

"When you have low grades and you feel really embarrassed, you want to be in top place," said Esha, one of nine kids playing yesterday.

Aleshin hatched the Scrabble idea four years ago, when some of her slowest learners saw boards in the room and she was surprised to hear they wanted to play. "Kids are so driven by technology today, and to go back to a board game here - nothing flying across the screen - "

To those struggling students, Scrabble was not intimidating. It wasn't going on their report cards, and if things got tough, the dictionary was always at hand.

"They were in their comfort zone," Aleshin said.

She challenges the students to use some of the more complicated words in conversation. Last week, one of them jokingly asked a teacher, "Are you feeling discombobulated?"

Board games in class are not allowed by the Department of Education, Aleshin said, but she got the OK from the principal.

"Sometimes, old-fashioned board games bring a lot of good things, like interaction between human beings," principal Jeannette Reed said. "You can play Monopoly by yourself, but what's the fun of winning Broadway?"