When Kaitlyn Glynn started at Sadie Saulter Elementary School on Monday, her mom, Susie, was in the next chair.

Clingy kindergartner? No. Helicopter parent? Hardly. The mom's presence was part of the school's new "mother-tongue" approach to music and foreign language.

Sadie Saulter has begun violin and Spanish instruction in an effort to attract parents and students to this, the most under-used of Pitt County's public schools. Though enrollment figures will not become official until later this week, the new magnet-school approach appears to have drawn more than five dozen students from other area elementary schools to Sadie Saulter.

The school, which also has the county's only elementary school drama program, this year has added Spanish language immersion and individualized Suzuki violin for students as young as kindergarten.

Parents like Susie Glynn were won over by not only the school's new offerings in the arts, but also the promise of smaller class sizes. The school has committed to 15 students per class in kindergarten, first and second grades and 18 students per class in grades three through five.

Glynn, who lives in the Wintergreen school district, brought Kaitlyn and her older sister, Bayleigh, a fourth-grader, to Sadie Saulter through the school system's open enrollment offer.

"We chose to come here because of the opportunities," Glynn said. "My fourth-grader's main interest in wanting to come was because they offered Spanish and drama. I'm excited about the class size. There are so many opportunities that you would not get in your typical school."

Darnell Parker enrolled sons John Henry Parker, a kindergartner, and Darin Stallworth, a third-grader who attended Ayden Elementary last year. Both boys are enrolled in the Suzuki violin program.

"We just moved to Greenville," Parker said. "This was an opportune time to take advantage of the violin classes that are offered here at this school. We actually live outside the school district. We were going to enroll the children here regardless."

Last year's redistricting, which drew complaints from parents in several schools within the city, left Sadie Saulter far short of capacity and with the least diverse student population among the county's 35 public schools. Many parents affected by the redistricting chose to home school their children or send them to private schools to avoid attending Sadie Saulter, complaining its Flemming Street location in west Greenville was not a safe neighborhood for their children.

Shannon Hall, whose son, Ben, is starting kindergarten at Sadie Saulter, said many of their neighbors sent their children elsewhere.

"The kids next door are homeschooled and the kids two doors down, went to private school," Hall said. "Some other kids we know go to school with their mom, who teaches at a different school."

While Hall said she and her husband, Jeff, were hesitant to allow their 5-year-old to travel across town on a school bus, they wanted to give Sadie Saulter a try.

"We kind of feel strongly about public schools and wanted him to be in there," said Hall, who volunteered at Sadie Saulter's media center to help prepare for a career in education. "Just because one school is in a section of town that's not appealing to some people doesn't mean there's something wrong with the school."

Hall, now a stay-at-home mom to Ben and his 3-year-old brother, Graham, said the student-to-teacher ratio is as good as what Ben experienced in private preschool last spring. Still, she said, the most appealing aspects of attendance were violin and Spanish.

Jane Austen Behan, arts education director for Pitt County Schools, is not surprised.

"Every school should have a rich arts offering because it does give such strong support to core (subject) areas," she said. "That's why we're really proud of this school.

"We wanted to get children beginning school to experience the music and the language," she said, "because it really wires the brain for learning when you have this kind of study at such an early age."

Spanish teacher Carolina Herrera, who has taught middle-school language classes at Ayden and Grifton, begins Spanish instruction the same way she learned English in her native Costa Rica — total immersion. Except for explaining classroom rules on the first day of school, Herrera almost never utters a word of English to her students.

Instead, in 45-minute sessions twice a week, Herrera uses gestures, flash cards and other visual cues, as well as music to prompt her students to speak Spanish.

"I really think that's the way it works," she said. "If you say, for example, 'rojo' and say you say, 'red,' they disconnect. They say, 'She said the word in English, so I'm not going to listen to the Spanish part.' ... I learned through immersion; it was just a life process."

Sadie Saulter Suzuki violin instructor Glenna Theurer said when music instruction begins in early childhood, it becomes as natural to the child as speech.

"It's called the mother tongue approach," said Theurer, a former instructor at J.H. Rose High School, who has worked with young children in Suzuki programs in several states. "You try to teach in a similar way that parents teach their children to talk. It's very positive and encouraging."

The Suzuki approach requires parents to attend lessons once a week at school with their children. Despite the demand, by mid-summer, all 48 of the school's Suzuki violin elective slots were filled, and other would-be musicians in kindergarten through third grade had to be placed on a waiting list.

While larger groups meet once a week, most of Suzuki lessons involve groups of three students and their parents. Theurer leads the students through various exercises, and parents are given the task of reinforcing the lessons at home.

"That's the only way to be able to give them the individualized instruction to start it right," Theurer said. "It's such a complex skill."

"(But) every child can be successful. ... This program is guaranteed success if the child attends, if the parent attends and if they work at it at home. It's not magic. They have to reinforce these things. They have to listen. They have to practice. It's hard work. It involves a lot of time and commitment on the parents' part, but to be successful in anything, I think we need to do that."

Principal Ferdonia Stewart hopes Suzuki violin will translate into parents who are active in their children's education.

"The parents that came out this morning for violin ended up staying for lunch," she said. "They're here in the building on a weekly basis. They get a chance to see the good things that are happening in the school."

Kim Grizzard can be contacted at kgrizzard@coxnc.com, or 329-9578.