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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 8, 1989)
Page 6 The Battalion Wednesday, March 8,1989 EXPRESS MAGNIFICENT CHINESE BUFFETS Over 20 Selections of Salads & Entrees, Iced Tea, Desserts ALL YOU CAN EAT $6.49 Adoption center provides advice, information on choices for parents Reg. $3.89 & $4.19 11:00-2:30, 4:30-8:30 Mon-Frl. 11a.m.-8p.m. Sat. & Sun. One coupon per person per visit. Valid March 8-March 20 Not good with any other offer. 606 Tarrow 764-8960 By Melissa Naumann h; REPORTER • We Deliver • 846-5273 • We Deliver e 846-5273 • 8&M Steakhouse 108 College Main across from KJnko's Wednesday Special (5pm - 9pm Good Thru 3-15-89) Chicken Fried Steak Dinner includes Baked Potato or Fries, Salad, Texas Toast and Iced Tea $2.99 ^ Best Cheeseburger In Town! 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Sponsored by The International Students Assoc. An unplanned pregnancy can bring confusion and distress, as well as advice or pressure from well-intentioned friends and family members. The Child Placement Center in College Station can help by providing unbiased information on the options available to a pregnant woman, Jaqui Freund, director of the center, said. “Advice is not the issue here,” Freund said. “I’m not going to tell anybody what to do. My job as a social worker is to make sure she’s looked at all of her options.” The Child Placement Center is a state-licensed adoption agency but its services extend far be yond placing children, Freund said. If the birthparents decide to put their baby up for adoption, the center provides free counseling before and after the placement of the child. “For those who choose that (adoption), they need this counseling,” Freund said. “Parenthood shouldn’t be gone into blindly and neither should adoption.” All legal fees and pregnancy-related medical expenses are covered by the center if adoption is chosen. When a healthy newborn is adopted, the adoptive parents usually pay these costs, Freund said. If the child is handicapped, however, the large medical bills are often too much for the adoptive arents to handle. For these children, the center as a bingo fundraiser every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, she said. All children can be placed, Freund said. “Many agencies only place healthy, white new borns, so many black or Hispanic women don’t come in here because they assume there are no Everything has to be her choice and of her own free will.... We’re not here to talk anybody into adoption ... or into abortion.” -Jaqui Freund, center director homes for their babies,” she said. “The only ex ception (of a baby that can’t be placed) is a baby with AIDS.” For those who haven’t decided what to do, the Child Placement Center can help. A Helpline is manned continuely by social workers or carefully screened volunteers. “The main objective is to be there when a pre gnant woman is in crisis and wants to talk to someone,” Freund said. The 24-hour Helpline number is 268-5577. A free support group also is sponsored by the center for anyone who has put a child up adoption, adoptive parents or those considei adoption. The support group will meet tonight, 5:30 at the center, located at 505 University]); East #801 behind Frank’s Bar and Grill. “Many women have the tendency to feel I they are the only ones that have ever done this Freund said. “Their big concern is ‘Will myclj think I didn’t love them?’ They need to other people who are going through the sat; thing.” The Child Placement Center also can adopted children find their birthparents by tt! erring them to other sources. Contacting the center for information, coic seling or just to talk does not obligate anyo# Freund said. “The earlier a pregnant woman contacts the better, but there are no obligations ever,” said. “We’re not pushy and we can make refc rals. Everything has to be her choice and ofht own free will.” Objectivity is one of the most important pects of the center, she said. The goal is toprt. vide information and not to make important^ cisions for other people. “We’re not here to talk anybody into adopti; or out of adoption or into abortion or out! abortion,” Freund said. She stressed that everything the center does confidential. Teacher helps immigrant youth learn ‘’survival English’ to make it in school DALLAS (AP) — Only a few months ago, teen-agers Jose Men doza, Jesus Mata and Ivania Parada were hiding from Salvadoran guer rillas who wanted to force them to take up arms, But like the other students in Manuel Flores' classroom at Thomas J, Husk Middle School, the youths survived the danger and unrest in their homeland and escaped to the United States. Now they face another survival test: learning the English language from scratch relatively late in the ed ucation system. These dozen Central and South American students range in age from 13 to 15; some are enrolled in school for the first time in their lives. They are too old to be placed with el ementary schoolchildren in English classes, but they aren’t advanced enough to keep up with students their own ages who are in the ESL (English as a Second Language) pro gram. Flores tells them if they don’t learn English quickly, they won’t make it to high school. They’ll drop out. Worse, they could turn to crime. But Manuel Flores — a migrant farmworker whose childhood was also one of struggle — is determined not to let that happen. Not the man who could barely carry on a conver sation in English at age 14 and today has 10 years experience in bilingual education. Not the man who dropped out of school to help pay bills and later, at 34, earned a Gen eral Educational Development di ploma and two college degrees. “I relate to these kids. I share their frustrations and I share their dreams,” says the 53-year-old tea cher. Flores is quick to point out that his class is helping only a small fraction of the immigrant students enrolled in DISD. Most simply have to try to keep up in ESL classes. Of the 20,000 DISD students who are in the ESL, about 850 middle- and high-school students have the same background as the dozen Flores is working with, says Judy Meyer, director of bilingual educa tion and ESL for the Dallas Inde pendent School District. They are new to the country and new to the U.S.’s education system. Flores works at Rusk as a coun selor and tutor for students who are at risk of dropping out. And he tea ches English night classes to adults twice a week, Through his counseling, Flores discovered immigrant teen-age stu dents who could speak no English, So he started a class for a dozen of them, first meeting in a portable room an hour before school each day, then getting a classroom inside the school each afternoon. The goal is to jjush the students' language skills far enough to sustain them in ESL classes. Since October, Flores has been drilling the dozen “survival English” students in simple words, phrases and concepts they encounter every day at Rusk. even though they don’t know En glish, that doesn't mean they're infe rior to the other kids," he says, And every day Flores tells the stu dents they can be whatever they want: doctors, lawyers, architects, To better understand the stu dents' background. Flores schedules weekly counseling sessions w: each. "Some of these kids have hi things that are horrifying," heiiji "They arc trying to overcome chological problems because oj wh they've been through." State mental hospital condemned in report “They need to know things like ‘open your book,' ‘turn to page so- and-so,’ T want you to bring your homework tomorrow.' In some of their (ESL) classes it’s sink or swim because of the language barrier, but with a class like this they might be able to stay on top of the water a little longer,” Flores says. Shelda Balcarcel, an ESL teacher at Rusk, has seen progress in the stu dents who attend Flores’ sessions. “Their vocabulary is growing and that helps them better understand what’s going on in their other ESL classes,” Balcarcel says. The “survival English” students say the time spent with Flores is their favorite part of the day. They appreciate his constant reas surances and the fun he injects into his teaching. He makes games of in troducing new words by using pho tographs, drawings and pictorial flashcards. “Cat! Key! Chair! Tree!” come the loud answers in unison from the stu dents who later individually use the same words in short sentences. Their eagerness — hands shoot ing up to answer questions and unf linching attempts to pronounce words — is a breath of fresh air, Flores says. And Flores is a source of strength for his students, a role model they have come to respect. They know that in his classroom they won’t be ridiculed for mangling spoken English. “I try to instill in their minds that AUSTIN (AP) — The superinten dent of Austin State Hospital said long-term care there has improved drastically since January, when fed eral monitors found psychotic pa tients in scenes they described as reminiscent of Bedlam, London’s notorious 18th century insane asy lum. “This scene in the day room Fits the historical descriptions of Bedlam Hospital in England of the 18th cen tury,” the monitors said in a report that will be made public later this week when it is presented to U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders. The Austin American-Statesman ob tained a copy of the report Monday. The monitors came to “an over whelming conclusion that this pro gram is out of compliance with ma jor aspects” of court orders in the 15-year-old class-action suit against eight state mental hospitals. In 1981, the federal court or dered the hospitals to start offering each patient 30 hours a week of the rapeutic programs and to maintain safe and healthy living conditions in the mental hospitals run by the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. Kenny Dudley, superintendent of the mental hospital, does not dis agree with the findings of the fed eral court monitors, but said “signifi cant improvements” have changed the unit drastically since January. He also took exception to the “Bedlam” description. Dudley also said rowdy, disruptive patients now are placed in a room down the hall from the day room, where they color pictures similar to schoolchildren until their behavior is calmer. Most important, Dudley said, th chronically mentally ill patients an given much more encouragementtt attend classes, a key part of the hot pital’s treatment program. Sixty per cent to 70 percent of the patieK now attend some therapeutic dasse compared with only about 20 per cent when the monitors visited, h said. Ci as The report was written by Austir social worker David Pharis, the fed eral court monitor for Sanders, anc Dr. Raymond Leidig of Colorado,! psychiatrist who monitors menta hospitals as a consultant to thecoun Sanders oversees state compliance in the court case. The 1974 suii which alleged inhumane conditioii: in the hospitals, was settled in 1981 hut Sanders has continued to issue orders in response to his monitor; findings. Pharis and Leidig paid an unar nounced visit in January to the tv tended Care Unit, which is coir, prised of two units that each hous- ahout 45 patients. “There were always 30 to 35 pec pie lounging idly or milling arount in the clay room,” Pharis wrote “Many of them were slumped in c hairs sleeping or appearing with drawn and uninvolved. Occasional!' these people would jump up, pact around in an agitated but und; reeled manner and then sit do*: again. Other patients were pacin; around in random, undirected ways.” “The noise in the day room at times reaches above 70 decibels tc the degree where one could not heat the television,” Leidig said. ^Contact Lenses Only Quality Name Brands (Bausch & Lomb, Clba, Barnes-HInda-Hydrocurve) pr.*-STD. DAILY WEAR SOFT LENSES pr.*-STD. FLEXIBLE WEAR SOFT LENSES J pr.*-STD. TINTED SOFT LENSES Daily Wear or Extended Wear *Salc ends March 31, 1989 and applies to clear standard Bausch & Lomb lenses of limited power Call 696-3754 for Appointment Charles C. Schroeppel, O.D., P.C. Doctor of Optometry 707 South Texas Ave., Suite 101D College Station, Texas 77840 1 block South of Texas & University Eye exam & care kit not included ■§• AM/PM Clinics CLINICS Minor Emergencies Weight Reduction Program 10% Discount With Student ID Minimal Waiting Time College Station 845-4756 693-0202 779-4756 Tm aggies DON’T LEAVE DURING SPRING BREAK AND RETURN TO FIND YOUR VALUABLES MISSING! Take items such as TVs, stereos, jewelry and other valuables home during break. Apartments are particularly vulnerable to burglary during the holiday season. Try and have a neighbor watch your home while you are away. Be sure and lock up before you leave and have lights and a small radio put on timers to give the appearance you are home. For more information contact the Crime Prevention Unit of the College Station Police Department 2611 A Texas Avenue College Station, TX 77840 (409) 764 3611 BROW head of tl committe policy of asylum ap should co tral Amer An imr said stopp tract mor United St “Deten solution t up with 1; detention that is no Rep. Bru< Tuesday, finding ti border. The In tion Servi diate det applicant; cation pre leasing tl Border P; zance. Since tl in INS ct Ex- ofl CORPl counselor ing folks and perso A little help you | late profit And lav duce the I Towers sa "Laugh pie" is a Rogers th ences, And he card and « common-: feel more “Stress cups of cc one-liners Last Ju school te; three year [g [•S f