Gustavo Rojo Dot Com

He told them about himself, how he had been like them. “I can help you,” he said, “I can help you.”One slept. Others stared, bored.He had planned today’s class carefully: His students would relate to him. They would ask his advice about college. Then he would divide them into teams and lead them in a tic-tac-toe spelling game.They would compete fiercely. Excitedly.A girl in the front row studied herself in the mirror of her compact. She ignored him.This was Ricardo Acuña’s third week as a teacher. Day after day, it was growing more difficult. He gave the girl a tense look. Then he wrote her name in red on the board: detention.”Mister! I wasn’t putting on makeup.” She slammed her books on her desk. Then she crossed her arms and slumped in her seat.”If you have an education,” Ricardo told them all, “you can make a difference in your lives and your families’ lives.”The hour passed without any sign that he was making much difference himself. When the bell rang, he forced a smile. “This isn’t me,” he told a visitor, as he gathered an armload of books and a brown briefcase stuffed with papers.He walked down three flights of stairs to another classroom, where he would do the same thing all over again, with no better result.It was starting to take a toll.Ricardo Lira Acuña, 34, had counted on teaching to be satisfying, even inspiring. He was one of more than 200 interns hired each year by the Los Angeles Unified School District through a special program for mid-career professionals and college graduates without education credentials.His wife, a teacher, had inspired him to set aside his desire to write full time so he could teach instead. He took six weeks of intensive training. Then, in August 2003, he went directly into a classroom at John Marshall High School in Los Feliz. Though he faced three more years of training classes at night and on weekends, he was now teaching English to kids he wanted to help.He particularly had in mind kids who were like he had been: poor kids, struggling kids, kids on the margins. But he found problems he had never imagined. Some could barely read. Others were in trouble with the law. One was a mother whose boyfriend was in jail. Several were in gangs. A few were on drugs.For new interns like Ricardo, guidance for handling such problems was limited. That July, L.A. Unified had discontinued mentoring for interns because of budget cuts. Marshall High School managed to continue the program for eight more weeks. But by the time Ricardo arrived, the mentoring of interns had been left up to four teaching coaches responsible for honing the skills of all the other 197 teachers at the school, as well.Moreover, to Ricardo, asking for help would have been embarrassing. Instead, he struggled, fretting over what to teach and how to manage students. Paperwork choked him. The training classes drained him. Nightmares haunted him. He argued with his wife. But he had to admit, even to himself, that he had found something meaningful: the kids. Some he had grown to love.Could he stick it out?Would he be like the 68% of teachers hired by L.A. Unified in 1997-98 who were still in the classroom five years later? Or would he be like the other 32% who left, some for other school districts and others who quit teaching altogether?Coming a Long Way From Humble BeginningsRicardo Acuña was born in Nogales, Ariz., on the Mexican border, a red-dirt town with blue hills and purple sunsets. His father was a migrant laborer who married, bought a mobile home in a trailer park and worked at produce warehouses. His hands, Ricardo would remember in a poem, werecaked with dirt, maps with tiny roads of blood from splinters and metal edges, burned in the sun. Frozen in the warehouse. scented with tomates, calabazas, pepinos, sandias, mangos, jalapeños, aguacates, berenjenas melons, cerezas, limónes, uvas and other produce you and I have eaten without knowing by whose hand we’ve been fed.Ricardo’s parents sent him to a Catholic preschool and kindergarten, but then the money ran out. So he went to a public school, and his mother drilled him in the alphabet and arithmetic. By fifth grade, his academic resume had grown longer than hers. He took honors English and honors algebra. He idolized Alex P. Keaton, the Michael J. Fox character on “Family Ties” who yearns to go to Princeton.A math teacher realized Ricardo was so bright that Princeton was no idle dream, and he introduced Ricardo to a businessman who helped him win a scholarship to Lawrenceville Academy, a prep school in New Jersey.The fall before his junior year, his parents took him to the Tucson International Airport. In his suitcase, he carried two thin sweaters, a crucifix and a new calculator from his mother, though she did not want him to go; she said he was too young.At Lawrenceville, many students wore crisp slacks, polo shirts and penny loafers. Ricardo wore blue shoes and his most expensive shirt from Kmart. His bare wood floor was cold at night, and he cried until the sun rose. He lost his calculator, got a D on his first English paper and called his father collect: He might not make it through the semester.A fellow student helped him find winter boots and a rug for his frosty floor. Ricardo spent every night studying in his room or at the library. He got a B on his next paper. He graduated from Lawrenceville with a 3.7 grade point average and was accepted everywhere he applied, including Princeton, Harvard and Stanford. He chose Stanford because it offered him a full scholarship and the floors would not be so cold.He completed Stanford with A’s and Bs, but he didn’t know what to do with his double major: French and English literature. So he went to Columbia University. He took out $70,000 in student loans and enrolled to study screenwriting. Three years later, he graduated with honors.He wrote screenplays and poems, but he had to make a living, so he took odd jobs, first in Colorado, then in Los Angeles, where he typed letters and assembled reports for a consulting firm. It did not fulfill him. He went to work for the United Farm Workers union as its communications director, but it did not inspire him.In 1999, he met Marvilla Bonilla, a Latina elementary school teacher with soft brown eyes and a smile like a Pablo Neruda poem. He wrote their love story in a screenplay he called “Love Curse.”Ext. L.A. public library - Downtown—dayRITCHI So, what are you working on?MARVIE Oh, boring stuff. New bigger and better teaching theories. I’m always looking for a better way to teach these kids, to really reach them.They married. To Marvilla, teaching was a passion, indeed a calling. She holds national board certification. Her dedication and her enthusiasm were inspiring. She was devoted to her students.She told Ricardo that she held their lives in her hands.Her enthusiasm was catching. He, too, would teach. Ricardo Acuña would be like John Keating, the English teacher played by Robin Williams in “Dead Poets Society.”He would teach his appreciation of Charles Bukowski, John Fante and Jack Kerouac. Many of his students would value him, learn from him especially well, because they shared Latino roots.He was one of them.Struggling to Find a Common LanguageThat’s what we’re supposed to be doing: selling knowledge to kids — possibly the most finicky and reluctant of consumers. That’s the kind of teacher I’d like to be: A dramatic salesman! I’ve even thought about teaching class in a one-hour TV format with commercials and everything! Even pictured myself bouncing off the walls like Robin Williams. I personally want to be inspired and in turn inspire.On July 17, 2003, after six weeks of training in how to make rules, plan lessons and organize classrooms, Ricardo faced his first class as a student teacher.In front of him at Hollywood High School sat 20 freshmen, all Latinos. He asked them each to read aloud one by one from O. Henry’s classic Christmas story “The Gift of the Magi.”He was startled.Every one of them had trouble pronouncing the words. “I realized the reality,” he would say afterward. “Their skills are very low.”It got worse.They refused to pay attention. They pretended to work but didn’t. They hid their faces and threw paper at each other.By the end of class, Ricardo felt defeated.He was puzzled, too. I felt I would communicate with better them because I’m Latino, he thought. But they viewed me as a guest, as an adult. It almost seemed like being Latino didn’t count as much.Two weeks later, still a student teacher, he was assigned to teach a class of seventh-graders at the Foshay Learning Center in South Los Angeles. At his gym the night before, he began planning in his mind. At home, he spent hours reviewing “That Was Then, This Is Now,” by S.E. Hinton, the book he would teach from. He spent another two hours outlining his material.At 5:30 a.m., he woke and put on black Banana Republic slacks, a pressed white shirt and shiny black shoes. He drove his Hyundai Santa Fe to Foshay in time for the 7:25 a.m. bell.”Good morning, class. My name is Mr. Acuña, with a tilde, that good old enya sound. I’m very excited to be here. We’re going to do a review of chapters 1 through 3 before we take the quiz. So can somebody please start by telling me what happened in Chapter 1?”Silence.Students glanced at each other. Some stared into their books, avoiding eye contact. A boy with curly hair sauntered in wearing a Rage Against the Machine jacket. He was five minutes late.Ricardo tried again. “Why did it cause a problem to take that girl home?”"Because she’s black,” someone murmured.Ricardo was relieved.”OK, she’s black. He’s white. There’s racial tension there.”He turned to Chapter 2. He paced. Sweat beaded on his brow. “What do you … what do you … what does Cathy think about Mark? When, um … when, um … when they get to the dance?”"She likes him,” somebody else replied.”How do we know Bryon liked Cathy when he met her at the hospital?”A girl in a pink sweatsuit spoke up. “He was stuttering.”"He’s a lady-killer, right?”Slowly, Ricardo loosened up. He began to praise freely. “That’s great you remembered that. That’s very interesting.”In the back of the room, a reviewer for the intern program wrote into a spiral notebook: “He responds positively to students who are volunteering. He is providing a safe environment for the students so that they will have a comfort level that encourages their participation.”The class recounted all three chapters successfully, took the quiz and made posters based on the book.At 9:32 a.m., the bell rang.”I enjoyed working with you guys,” Ricardo said. “You guys are great.”Confronting Classroom ChallengesToday I learn myself anew, as a teacher, as a person…. Am I ready for this? I have to be a model. Can I be effective, efficient, assertive, flexible, creative and passionate all at the same time?

Ricardo had been chosen from nearly 100 applicants to fill a full-time teaching position in Marshall High School’s English department. He was assigned five classes of freshmen and sophomores, some with 30 students each.”A slam-dunk,” said Kristin Szilagyi, the department chairwoman. Because of his talent, education and ethnicity, “he just seemed perfect.”Ricardo’s first day was Tuesday, Aug. 26. He planned it for hours. What to wear? Definitely a tie. How to greet them? Let them know he was the boss. Don’t smile. Activities? Make signs with the name of an author for each desk. Assign the author names to the students. Hand out a letter to parents.He arrived at Marshall, a red brick building shaded by pine trees, an hour early. Ricardo wore the Banana Republic slacks that had seen him through his good day of student teaching.
Against the wall of his classroom, he propped up his diplomas: Lawrenceville, Stanford, Columbia. On his desk, he put a picture of himself and Marvilla.He printed his author names onto slips of paper and taped them to the students’ desks. William Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, William S. Burroughs, Gabriel Garcia Marquez….At 7:28 a.m., the bell rang.Ricardo was ready.As his students came in, most fixed their eyes on the tile floor. He shook their hands firmly, forcing them to look at him. One greeted him nervously. She was Salvadoran. Her hair was long, brown and swept into a bun, and she had braces on her teeth. She studied him. She would remember the blurred outline of his black hair, his thin lips and his tie. She could not see his eyes.”Good morning, my name is Mayra Ramirez,” she said softly, “and I have a problem with my vision. Do you mind if I sit up front?”Ricardo looked through her glasses at her eyes. They were crossed. He nodded.”Good morning, class,” he said.Not a peep.”I can’t hear you,” he said.”Good morning,” they mumbled.He introduced himself and then asked: “What does freshman mean?”Silence.”OK, I will pick someone. Is William Shakespeare in the house?”A student in a corner raised his hand. “Being new.”"Yes, that’s right.” On the board, Ricardo listed some synonyms: beginner, novice, newbie, frosh. His hands shook. He was conscious of his penmanship. Was it too slanted?”School is your profession,” he said. “It’s your occupation. It’s your job. You should take pride in what you do.”He raised a clenched fist in the air. That, he said, was his symbol for silence. “The reason I am choosing this signal is because it’s a symbol for power to the people.”When class ended, he thought to himself: These kids aren’t so bad.

After three more classes, however, his eyes were watering, and his vision was clouded. His arms hurt from his shoulders to his hands, and his legs ached from standing. His tie felt tight.At 2:09 p.m., his last class arrived like an ambush.They were sophomores. Some cursed. One called another an idiot. A large girl stretched her leg and propped a white tennis shoe on a desk across the aisle. Almost everyone chatted and laughed. Few paid any attention to Ricardo. One called his literary seat assignment a “silly little game.”"All right,” Ricardo said. “I hear people talking. I don’t want anybody talking. I want you to be seated.”He asked them to define sophomore.A girl in a tight jean dress punched a boy sitting next to her. Ricardo saw it out of a corner of his eye. “Did you have a question?”The boy shook his head. “No.” The girl tried to look threatening.”Sophos = wise,” Ricardo wrote on the board. “Moros = dull, foolish.”"So we’re smart idiots?” asked a baby-faced boy with tall ears, a shaved head and sagging pants.”Yes,” Ricardo said. They had survived freshman year, “so you think you know everything. But you’re still learning. You’re still growing.”He introduced himself and asked each of them to stand, in turn, and say, “Good afternoon, Mr. Acuña. My name is…. “”Oh, my God, do we have to?” someone asked.The baby-faced boy with the tall ears complied. He was Latino and sat in the front row at the Charles Dickens desk. “Good morning, Mr. Acuña,” he said. “My name is Gusto.”"Gusto, do you know what that means?” Ricardo asked.Gusto shrugged, raising his thick brown eyebrows.On the board, Ricardo wrote: “Gusto = passion for life, enthusiasm.”Gusto smiled.

Ricardo said he would assign homework every day, including Fridays.”Why?” asked a blond boy, who had introduced himself as Jeremy. He was the only white student in the class. He sat in front, at the Raymond Carver desk. He wore a T-shirt with Che Guevara’s face on it.”I think it will be good for you,” Ricardo replied.Jeremy pointed to one of the classroom rules, which Ricardo had written on the board. No eating, it said, or drinking, or chewing gum.”Why no water?”"There’s plenty of time to drink from the water faucets before and after class.”When students performed well, Ricardo said, he would call their parents and tell them.”Ugh. Why?” It was Jeremy again.”For me as a teacher, it’s important to know your parents and who they are.”"Isn’t that what back-to-school night is for?”No other students had questioned Ricardo this much. He was growing flustered, and some began to giggle. He could tell that Jeremy was smart, curious and skeptical. Ricardo was put off, but intrigued.He thrust his fist into the air for silence.”Viva la revolucion!” Gusto said.”Cesar Chavez, yes,” Ricardo replied. “I used to work with the farmworkers.”Nobody responded. The class seemed unmoved.Like a blessing, the bell rang. The students left, and then there was silence.This class, Ricardo sensed, was going to test him.

Demanding students test their teacher’s resolve
December 20, 2004
Ricardo Acuña began each class with 15 minutes of silent reading. They were his only moments of peace.His students selected paperbacks from racks along the wall behind them. As they read, Ricardo played John Coltrane on a little black boombox. Or Mozart.Or Billie Holiday. Sometimes Buena Vista Social Club.One day, Gusto Jimenez, 15, announced to the class that he had never read an entire book. “I’ve never done it, and I don’t think I ever will.”Everybody laughed.”If you’re in my class,” Ricardo replied, “you’re going to read a book.”That evening, Ricardo perused his own books, lined up along shelves on his living room wall. He passed up “The Beatles Anthology” and “Native Son” and “Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend.”Instead, he settled on “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” The next day, he handed it to Gusto. Gusto rejected it. He said he’d rather read about Latinos.So Ricardo went to the school library and checked out a book about Cesar Chavez. A month later, Gusto had read two chapters. He gave a halfhearted presentation, but it included a poster about what he had learned. The poster showed a Latino couple dancing and an American flag that said: “Free.” Ricardo counted it a victory. Gusto deserved a C at most, but Ricardo gave him a B-minus to encourage him. He got something out of it, Ricardo would recall thinking. The realization strengthened him for the ordeal to come.

*Ricardo Lira Acuña, 34, had switched vocations. He had been a fledgling writer, and creative writing was still important to him. But now, as an intern in a Los Angeles Unified School District program for career changers and college graduates without training in education, he was a teacher.His five English classes at Marshall High School in Los Feliz were a challenge beyond anything he had encountered. Three of his students were especially demanding of his time, his patience, his energy and, most of all, his idealism. In different ways, each was like he had been: None were rich, two were Latino and one was very bright.They and other students, particularly the lethargic, the recalcitrant and the unruly, were wearing him out. Bureaucracy, paperwork and his internship classes at night and on weekends were frustrating him. His most trusted and available mentor was his wife, also a teacher, but his difficulties were affecting their relationship. Writing still beckoned. But so did his students. Ricardo Acuña was torn.

*DISCIPLINING THE CLASS CLOWNGusto avoided work. He was a clown, with energy to spare. He disrupted class with jokes and smart remarks. On Oct. 16, 2003, Ricardo was trying to explain possessive nouns. Gusto sat restlessly in a corner, wearing baggy pants, white Nike shoes and an oversized Ecko Unlimited T-shirt. When Ricardo asked for an example of a noun, any noun, Gusto blurted, “Gangster.”A possessive noun?”This is Gusto’s class.” Then Gusto turned to a nearby student. Repeat after him, he said: “This is Jose’s territory.”By now, class concentration was in disarray. Gusto’s antics were significant. On his information card for Ricardo’s files, he had written in tag, the jagged letters used for street graffiti. When he chose to do assignments, he wrote some of them in tag, as well.He did it so often that Ricardo learned how to read tag.

By mid-October, however, Gusto’s interruptions had become a serious interference. Others simply could not concentrate. When class ended one day, Ricardo asked him to stay. Afterward, they said their conversation had gone this way: Gusto spoke first.”C’mon, Acuña, I’m gonna miss my bus.”"Look, it’s only going to be a few minutes,” Ricardo replied, “and we need to talk.”Gusto paced near the door. Damn, man, he recalled thinking. I gotta go home and eat…. I will just stay five minutes, and then I will jam. Ricardo looked at him. “If you have a question or you need to talk about something, raise your hand. When you start talking to somebody when we’re supposed to be reading, you’re disrupting them.”Gusto gave a here-we-go-again look. “Why don’t you loosen up? Why do you wear a tie all the time? Why are you so uptight?”"I want to be a good role model for you guys. I don’t think it would be cool if I showed up in baggy pants or an athletic jersey.”Gusto said he couldn’t see anything wrong with wearing either one.”What do you want to do when you grow up?” Ricardo asked.”I’m not leaving my ‘hood.”The ‘hood was all that Gusto knew. Gradually, he began to relax. He inched away from the door, then sat on top of a desk, facing Ricardo.Under other circumstances, Ricardo would have told him to sit in the desk correctly, but he did not want to interrupt. Slowly, Gusto began telling him about his brother. He was 23. On Aug. 11, two weeks before school started and one day after Gusto’s birthday, someone knocked on the door and shot his brother six times.Two shots hit him in the neck, one creased his head, one struck him in the stomach, one ripped into his left leg, and one shattered his right hand. His brother survived. But it was a reminder, Gusto said, that there was no easy way out of the ‘hood.It was in Echo Park, in a tough neighborhood he called “Home School.” He said he could not use certain streets or hang out at the park because he might be shot himself. “When you are here,” Ricardo replied, “it shows you a way to get out of there.” “You don’t understand, you can’t get out of there. I’m made.”Made? Ricardo thought of “The Sopranos,” where thugs were inducted as Mafiosi. No, Gusto said, he was not a member of a gang. But he was in a crew. Gangs meant killing. Crews meant baggy pants, Nikes, tagging and fighting. He lived by the rule of the streets, he said. Ruthlessness. Ricardo felt a dash of fear, for Gusto, even himself.”I may not have grown up in your neighborhood, or gone through what you’ve gone through,” he said, “but we started the same. I grew up poor. I grew up like you did, and the only thing I ever thought about was figuring a way to get out of that. I was told education was a way out of that.”The conversation lasted an hour. But Gusto had the last word. “Look, you don’t know where I’m coming from. We’re from different worlds.”Afterward, Gusto wondered why he had opened up. I never really talked to a teacher like I talked to that fool. Ricardo left the classroom and drove a half a mile before taking off his tie.

“I needed to breathe,” he would recall. Usually, he turned on KPFK-FM. This time, he drove in silence. He agonized. I didn’t get through to him. I didn’t understand. He was right, in a sense. I was coming from a different world. Ricardo felt like a bourgeois idealist. He wanted to go home and burn his Banana Republic pants.At home in Eagle Rock, where his furniture was trendy and he was a regular at an Internet cafe down the street, Ricardo never worried about gangs. He leaned against the kitchen counter and watched as Marvilla, his wife, cooked picadillo.”I don’t care about Gusto anymore,” he told her. “If he doesn’t care about his life, I don’t either.”She knew better. He was always talking about Gusto. He even dreamed about him.

*LEARNING TO ADAPT as a first-time teacher, I am grateful that Mayra was forthcoming about her condition and that she is a conscientious student who constantly reminds me about the needed modifications and adaptations. I also find it admirable that she is able to mainstream with the rest of the class and even surpass most of her classmates.— Ricardo’s journal*Because she was legally blind, Mayra Ramirez, 14, needed as much help as Gusto. But she was fiercely independent and full of hope.On Halloween, she came to class dressed as a veterinarian: beige pants and a shirt covered with white, brown and black puppies. Two boys made fun of her, asking, “Hey, Mayra, what’s up with the dog shirt?”Ricardo was about to intervene when she handled it herself. “I like dogs,” she said, matter-of-factly.At age 9, Mayra was diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease, a degenerative eye disorder. A doctor told her parents that she could go totally blind.Too often, her teachers ignored or forgot her special needs. Her sixth-grade social studies teacher was the exception. She was a gentle woman who enlarged Mayra’s workbook assignments on a photocopier, taught her to type and let her lie down sometimes to rest her eyes.One day, that teacher announced to the class that she was leaving. She didn’t say why. Mayra cried.But now here was Ricardo. When other students did not pair up with her on assignments, he offered to be her partner. She was shy and soft-spoken, but not embarrassed. She had clear aspirations, and she seemed confident, even driven. She wanted to go to a four-year college. She told him that she drew strength from a cousin who had died of cancer four months earlier. Mayra said she lived to please him “up there” and added, “I don’t want to feel like just because I have a disability, I won’t make it.” Ricardo admired her strength. He noticed a picture of Eminem on her binder, and he was impressed that she liked such an outspoken rapper. An extraordinary student, he would remember thinking. Wow, this is what I am here for.Each day, he stopped by the photocopier in the main office to enlarge her assignments. He read to her and explained everything she could not see. During a mythology unit, he magnified the characters: Hades, god of the underworld … Poseidon, god of the sea….One day, he brought Mayra a book: “A Little Princess,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was about an orphaned girl who survived hardship by finding strength in her heart and in her imagination.”Thank you,” she said. She was glad that he thought of her, and she read parts of it every day. Otherwise, he treated her like everyone else.”I consider myself normal…. That’s what Mr. Acuña has taught me,” she said one day to a classroom visitor. “He gives me the same work as everyone else. He has taught me to be the same person, and just because I have a disability, it doesn’t mean I’m not going to be able to do the work.”

Ricardo asked everyone to keep a journal. It meant at least one writing assignment every day.Mayra wrote poems about friends, family and love. She wrote about her fondness for cupcakes: They are “as sweet as your future husband.” She wrote about her annoying little brother, her best friends, her close-knit family. One day, she wrote a poem about her cousin:We all have an guadian angelSomeone to love usBut I have 2 angelsMy guadian angel and My loving angel. My loving angel the One who died but guardingme from above.The one I lovedI saw him dieand I also saw himcome back.I can feel him but Idon’t see him.I have my loving angel facerecorded in my head. I have his voice recorded deeplyin my heart.all our conversations wehad recorded on the tipof my heart. I want my angel to comeback. Plese come back to me.Ricardo told Mayra that she was talented, and though he could not ignore her spelling errors, he did not want to discourage her. So instead of marking the pages of her journal with his red pen, he made a deal with her. He would help her with spelling and grammar, and in one year, by October 2004, she would spell 80% to 90% of her words right and use complete sentences.”Yeah, my spelling is not too good,” she said.”Don’t worry. You can do it.”

*TRYING TO ENGAGE AN INTELLECTHere was a student who really talked about authors and caught on to the idea of the author names taped to the chairs. I thought he [too] was the reason I was teaching high school. This is the time students form ideas, and they need to be guided. This is going to be a great class, and Jeremy is going to be a great student.— Ricardo interview*Jeremy Sentance, 17, the shaggy blond kid with the Che Guevara T-shirt, was merciless with his questions. But he would not do homework, despite Ricardo’s efforts to encourage him. Often, he simply goofed off.One day, during silent reading, Ricardo noticed that he had brought in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson.Ricardo was surprised and pleased. “That’s a college-level book,” he said.Jeremy bragged to his parents about the remark.A few days later, he came to Ricardo and read aloud passages from “Marabou Stork Nightmares,” a novel by Irvine Welsh, about someone who hallucinates in a coma.”He’s having an out-of-body experience into this heavenly world,” Jeremy said. “I wish I could get into a part of my head where that can happen.”Then he brought “Trainspotting,” another Welsh book, this one about a clique of hopeless junkies.”When they’re high,” Jeremy said, “they get into that zone where most people want to get.”Ricardo told him: “You can get to that point when you’re sober.”As the weeks went by, Ricardo brought in other books he thought Jeremy might like. “The Motorcycle Diaries” by Che Guevara. “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. “The Revolt of the Cockroach People” by Oscar Zeta Acosta.During silent reading, he let Jeremy play Bob Marley.Jeremy read a chapter of “The Revolt of the Cockroach People.” Interesting, he said, but when he came back to school the next day, someone else had borrowed the book, and Jeremy did not get another one.Ricardo wanted to find out what would challenge him and keep him working. Maybe he was too advanced for his lessons. He might be bored. Finally, Ricardo asked Jeremy to meet with him after school.He and Jeremy recalled their session this way:”You’re a smart kid,” Ricardo said at the outset. “I know you can do well in this class.” Did he want to go to college?”Nah,” Jeremy replied.”You would love college,” Ricardo replied. Jeremy said he had heard plenty of pro-college lectures. He said he wanted to be a musician and a photographer and work at a skateboard shop.”What if you get tired of that?” Ricardo said. He could do all of those things and go to college, too.”I’ll never get tired of it.”Why would such a bright young man reject college? Ricardo wondered. The talk did little good.Jeremy went weeks without turning in his daily journal assignments.” I don’t do journals,” he told a visitor. “I don’t like to write about the day. I would like to keep it in my memory instead. A day, to one person, is a personal thing.”On parent-conference night, Ricardo told Jeremy’s mother her son was getting a D “purely because he won’t do the work.”She said she was not surprised: He was an untamed spirit.”We’ve tried everything,” she would tell the visitor afterward. Jeremy’s father added: “If he said he didn’t want to do [homework] anymore, there was no persuading him.”

A few days later, Ricardo caught Jeremy passing a note to a girl.The note, Ricardo would recall afterward, asked if she wanted to “go out with a white boy.” “No,” the girl replied. “I like Latinos. “Ricardo photocopied the note, marked out Jeremy’s name and the girl’s name and put the note on an overhead projector for each of his classes to read. He made an English lesson out of it. He corrected its punctuation and spelling. He changed white to Caucasian and black to African American.”Hey,” Gusto said. “I know who that white boy is.” Soon everyone had figured it out. The girl blushed, and Jeremy tried to make light of it. “Caucasian?” he said. “Who writes like that?” “I was making a point,” Ricardo said, “not to pass notes in class.”Jeremy had already begun skipping school, and now he did it more often. He would say later that he cut because he had found a good pizza place and that he had better things to do: drumming in a rock band.But Ricardo feared that what he had done with the note had driven him off.When he told Marvilla about Jeremy, she encouraged him. “This is exactly the kind of student you can help.”

*BOTTLING UP HIS EMOTIONSI feel confused, frustrated, unsure. I go … day by day, week by week.— Ricardo’s journal*One day in November, Ricardo walked around his classroom picking up wrappers and other papers. His students were violating his rules, including: “Leave your workspace and the area around it cleaner than the way you found it.”For that and other violations, he had listed 17 students for detention. It did little good, though. Not only were they cutting class, but some were skipping detention, too.His four hours of intern training every Monday night weighed him down. To keep up, he had to read books and write memos, besides preparing for the classes he was teaching and grading his students’ papers. He was not writing anything creative — no screenplays, no short stories, no poems. He had neither the time nor the energy.His intern training struck him as nothing but theory. He could not get practical answers to his questions.Some of his students were not improving. “Boring,” they said. “Who cares about gods?”"Too much words.”"Too many words,” Ricardo corrected. A fellow intern who was a friend complained about her unruly students.He urged her to stick it out, at least until Christmas.Then she was gone. She “left screaming and yelling,” said Kristin Szilagyi, the English department chairwoman.The school principal urged teachers to raise Academic Performance Index test scores.What does this mean? Ricardo recalled thinking. I can’t get these kids to read a book. How am I going to get their scores up?In the past, he could have gone to a mentor for answers. The year before, Marshall had five veteran teachers who each got paid extra to help up to four interns like Ricardo.But mentoring had been eliminated because of district budget cuts. Some schools did without. Marshall found money to pay two experienced teachers over the summer to work with interns and other new teachers, but Ricardo and three others arrived too late.That left the counseling of interns up to four teaching coaches. But they were already burdened with assisting the school’s other 197 teachers. Moreover, one of them helped math teachers only. Two of the other three visited Ricardo’s classes, but just occasionally.Being new could be confusing, so Szilagyi made herself available to Ricardo anytime for advice. She gave him her home number and urged him to call day or night.He would have been too embarrassed. Even as a new teacher, he would later say, he should have known how to solve his problems.Besides, he did not want to be a whiner, a complainer.Instead, he turned to Marvilla.His work was already straining their relationship. Again and again, she had asked him to take her to a movie, or go with her to visit her mother, or walk in the park with her and Ringo, their dog.”No, I have work,” he said. “I have work. I have work.”If it wasn’t work, it was money. L.A. Unified had written to say that just three of the 40 courses he had taken at Columbia would count in determining his pay. That meant his ranking on the salary scale would drop. Already he was making barely $35,000 a year.Why did I go to these schools? Why am I paying all of this debt? Why did I study literature and screenwriting if all I am writing are memos?At night, he jolted awake and stared at the bedroom walls. He shook Marvilla. “I’m dreaming about work.”"Just a nightmare,” she said.He fell back into the same dream. Jeremy’s face glided toward him, smirking. It disappeared. Then Gusto’s face. Then Mayra’s….”I’m getting resentful,” Marvilla told a visitor. “This is never ending. He’s not as talkative. He’s not the same free-spirited personality, which is why I married him.”One night, the tension erupted.Ricardo came home from his intern classes and said an instructor had told him that he was flunking because he had not completed enough of the homework.”I went to the best schools. How can I be flunking out?” he said. I have become my own worst student.”This is not worth it.”Marvilla urged him to stick it out. “Let me help you,” she said. She offered to do his homework for him.”What is the point if I don’t do it myself?” he said.She felt helpless. “Well, maybe you should just quit.” It was a challenge. She thought it might turn him around. “You can’t handle it.”*CONFRONTING THE PROBLEMPart of the reason I became a teacher is because I wanted to connect with students, to find them something to get them interested and excited. With Jeremy, over time, I have just wanted to give up on him.— Ricardo interview*Jeremy, who had been cutting class regularly, showed up one day with a root beer.”No drinks,” Ricardo said and took it away. As he turned to put the bottle down, he heard laughter.Jeremy would later say he had felt hot and thirsty. He had opened another bottle of root beer and was gulping it.”You’re not taking my drink,” he said defiantly.Ricardo would not forget the words. His tie felt tight. His cheeks grew hot. He squinted and crimped his brow. He blurted: “You’re f—ing it up for everyone.”He surprised himself. He said it again. “You’re f—ing it up for everyone.”He glared at Jeremy, then at Gusto. It was always either of them, he would remember thinking. Either Jeremy or Gusto.”Just leave,” he told Jeremy, loudly. “Just get out.”Jeremy grabbed his backpack and his skateboard. He strolled out, taking his root beer with him.Ricardo’s nostrils flared. He clenched his teeth. With his eyes, he followed Jeremy out the door, staring him down.*Gusto’s disruptions became more frequent. He chatted. He joked. He, too, stopped doing his homework. He would not sit still. He squirmed and walked around during class.Ricardo pulled Gusto’s desk up to his own.Each day, Gusto sat facing Ricardo with his back to his classmates. But it did not work. He turned and whispered until he had someone’s attention. Then he joked some more.He refused to read.Ricardo told him he would flunk.Gusto said he didn’t care.I’m going to fail anyway, he thought. Why even try?”He doesn’t like me no more,” Gusto told a visitor afterward. “I’ve been bugging him a lot. I get in trouble. It’s too boring.”I can tell he doesn’t really know how to run his class. He’s, like, too professional, with his tie, or whatever.”*Mayra was Ricardo’s bright spot. She struggled with her vision, her spelling and her grammar, but, when he helped her, she responded.Somehow, despite her blurred vision, she was able to recognize him among the students and teachers who crowded the hallways, and she always said, “Hi, mister.”Every night in her prayers, she asked God to bless him.

Swamped by depression, feelings of guilt, panic
December 21, 2004
It was 6:45 a.m. Ricardo Acuña took his multivitamins with ginseng and gingko biloba. He climbed into his Hyundai Santa Fe and drove. The sun rose behind him, but the December air was thick with mist. He switched on KPFK-FM and listened to the news. Iraq. Fighting. Death.It had been a long semester. Today his students would take their final exams.They’re struggling to read and write, he thought. How are they going to make that leap so they will truly begin to think about what is going on in this world? I can’t bridge that gap. There’s no way.He gripped the wheel with both hands. His back muscles ached, and his eyesight clouded. To his right, the green hills of Glassell Park looked inviting: a place to escape. What he wanted most, he would remember, was to turn the Hyundai around, go home and write — anything: a poem, a story about his life.There aren’t enough Latino writers, he thought. He should be one of them. His voice should be out there, making an imprint in the world. Why am I doing this? I should be working this hard for my writing — and not for teaching.Slowly, quietly, he began to panic. He had gotten panic attacks before, in New York, back at Columbia University, when he was surrounded by too many people, too many buildings. He needed air. He rolled down the windows on the Hyundai. He saw students with backpacks. He took deep breaths.He turned left and saw the big blue M on the concrete wall at Marshall High. Ricardo’s panic grew. Too many kids, too many cars, too many buses.*Could he go on? Ricardo Lira Acuña, 34, had joined a Los Angeles Unified School District intern program for mid-career professionals and college graduates without education credentials. He had set aside writing full time to teach English.He wanted desperately to make a difference, to help all 150 students in his five classes make the leap, as he would put it. But he could see little, if any, progress. Indeed, two of the three students he had made special efforts to help were failing.The third, a freshman who was nearly blind, needed assistance badly. If he quit, what would happen to her? What would become of the other two? What would become of all his students? What would become of him?*SHARING HIS HOPESThe first-period bell rang. Mayra Ramirez was early. She walked toward him quickly. Despite her difficulty seeing, she was gaining assurance.”Here,” she said, timidly. She shoved a red-and-gold wrapped package into his hands. It was an end-of-the-semester gift: a bottle of cologne.Oh no, he thought. Don’t give me a gift. You’re making things worse.How could he be considering leaving? He felt guilty.Oddly, he resented Mayra for making him feel that way. The prospect of quitting still beckoned, a strange comfort.After the finals, he distributed a survey asking his students to grade him as a teacher. He said there would be no homework over the semester break. What if they come back and I’m not even here?Then he did something unusual.”I hope I’ve been able to help you,” he said. He looked at Mayra, but then he skimmed the room to include everyone. “I’m not perfect, and I know sometimes I wasn’t able to help you.”Now his arms gestured swiftly, first closing and then opening, to gather them in and then to let them go. “I care about each one of you,” he said. “And I love you guys. You guys are great.”Love?They froze. He would remember how they looked at him: with wide eyes.*FRETTING OVER FAILUREI have failed with Gusto.— Ricardo’s journal*He gave finals to his other classes and then asked them, as well, to grade him as a teacher. But with the sophomores — including Jeremy Sentance and Gusto Jimenez — he held his tongue. There was no farewell, no “I love you.”Jeremy was absent. After his defiance with the root beer, he had not come back.Gusto was present, however, cocky and blase. “What’s up, Acuña? Are we having a party today?”"No, we’ve got to do a final.”One student had a “Scarface” video. Gusto tried to talk Ricardo into skipping the test and letting the class watch it.”You’re going to take the final,” Ricardo said.Gusto said he did not know the answers. It would be a waste of time. Once more, the class was in turmoil. Ricardo added it to his memorable moments. Gusto, you’ve done it again.He handed out the test.While some of the students were still writing, Gusto got out of his seat to talk to them.”What are you doing?” Ricardo demanded.”Just give me a ‘Fail’ and leave me alone,” Gusto replied. He wanted to talk to everybody, he told a classroom visitor afterward, because it was their last day.Ricardo would not let him.Five minutes before the bell, Gusto tried again. He told Ricardo to ease up. Then he added: “You’re a rookie, Acuña, that’s your problem.”It was as if Ricardo had been punched. His face tightened, his forehead wrinkled. He was hot, as angry as he had been with Jeremy a few weeks before.The nerve of this kid. “I may be a rookie,” Ricardo said, one hand slicing the air, “but what other teacher has taken the time to talk to you the way I have? Who has helped you?”Gusto sat silently. The bell rang. He darted out.”Good luck,” Ricardo muttered.*GRADING THE TEACHERWhen I go home, I’m more stressed and depressed. I want to escape.— Ricardo interview*Ricardo was surprised. Most of his students graded him with 4s and 5s, the highest marks they could.Some probably did it to curry favor, he thought. Others, however, were sincere. He could tell by their comments. Am I doing something right?• Joseph Abunas: “He cares about people who aren’t doing very well in this class namely me. I hope that he continues the great job and stay as the same fun teacher we know.”• Kayla Vasquez: “he never lost hope in anyone of us. He would tell us that we could do whatever we wanted to do.”• Ericka Muralles: “I learned to like reading.”• Astrid Altaro: “I learned vocabulary, I learned lots of new words that I never imagine existed…. I learned how to take out my anger happiness by expressing myself in journals.”• Liela Nelson: “You don’t rush on your teaching and make sure we understand something before you moved on … and you are the only teacher that introduced me to a book that made me want to read it all.”• Gustovo Jimenez: “hes A good teAcher but too uptight.”The last was from Gusto.Because Marshall was a year-round school, Ricardo’s winter break lasted into March 2004. He and his wife, Marvilla, went to Arizona, then Texas, to visit family. They did not talk about teaching.Back home, Ricardo started writing again.”So much is different, noticeably different,” Marvilla told a visitor. “He’s not upset every day.”Nevertheless, one night he had a dream.He was late.All of his students were waiting, some lounging, others horsing around. He bolted out of his Hyundai. He was wearing his tie.Out of the corner of an eye, he noticed his first-grade teacher, Mrs. Karem. She stood among his students, poised and distinguished and silent.”I don’t know how long I’m going to be here,” he said, “but while I’m here, let’s get to a quick lesson.”With a black marker, he tried to write his name on the white lesson board. No ink came out. He pressed harder. Over and over, he tried to write. Nothing. He tried another black marker. Nothing.He went to a small chalkboard and picked up a piece of chalk. It would not work. He could not write his name. Forget it, he thought. “My name is Mr. Acuña,” he said. “Please repeat: Mr. Acuña.”Silence.He singled out students, one by one. “Say: Mr. Acuña.”Each refused.Some stood and walked away from their seats. They talked to each other.He reorganized their desks. The room expanded. One wall bent, leading to another room filled with more students.Like amoebas, the students began to multiply.Mrs. Karem watched everything. Quietly, she wrote in a notebook.”Sit down!” he yelled.The students ignored him.*CHANGING COURSEThis is not something that is going to make me happy. I have not enjoyed this experience.— Ricardo interview*Deciding was harder than keeping Gusto quiet.Ricardo had more than a month of his winter break left. As Marvilla cooked pork loins one evening in late January, he told her that going back into the classroom both terrified and depressed him.He said his inexperience was hindering his students and that he was making no positive impact. It was not worth it. He wanted to be a writer. He had thought he could write part time, but his lesson plans, intern classes and paperwork left no time for creativity. He said he felt stifled and dragged down.”You’re bailing on the kids,” Marvilla replied. Teaching was not about paperwork or money, she said. It was about 150 lives. Because he was Latino, maybe he was connecting with some of the kids and didn’t know it.He and Marvilla argued.Their quarrel rolled like a wave from the white kitchen with its chipped paint into the orange hallway, into the red office, into the living room, the dining room and finally the powder blue bedroom. They would recall their differences this way:Ricardo did not want his students to feel abandoned, but they would be better off with someone who knew how to teach. His presence in the classroom was pointless.Marvilla did not understand. How could he give up?Teaching always brought her fulfillment, she said. Sadly, she conceded, a teacher had to have some kind of a calling or be a workaholic. Teaching, she said, was not like other professions.Their argument seemed to go on for hours. But in the end, it all came down to his life’s dream.He wanted to write.She felt guilty. After all, it had been her enthusiasm and her love for her job that had influenced him to become a teacher. The last thing she wanted was to spoil his vision, his hopes or his future.If he wanted to be a writer, she said, then he should be a writer.She meant it. She would be the sole breadwinner. “We’ll have to count pennies,” she said. “But we can do it.”He was surprised and heartened.He knew he was risking everything: finances, maybe even his marriage. But it was a dream he had to follow.He thought about it for three more weeks. Then, two weeks before the new semester, he reached a conclusion.Ricardo decided to quit.He called Kristin Szilagyi, the chairwoman of the English department at Marshall High School. “I’ve made a very difficult decision,” he said.She listened, stunned.”Would you consider finishing up the year?” she asked.”No,” Ricardo replied. “I really don’t think I can.”No administrators, by his recollection and that of officials at Marshall or in the intern program, called him afterward to urge him to stay.*STANDING BY HIS DECISIONI’m hoping one day I will reach those same students, whom I could not reach through teaching. I want to reach them with my writing.— Ricardo interview*For Jeremy, Ricardo’s decision mattered little. He had dropped out. “School’s not for me,” he said. He planned to get a GED by taking a high school equivalency test.For Gusto, Ricardo’s departure was not a shock.”It’s not like he has anything to do with my life. Teachers come and go. I knew he was going to be gone. He was kind of like me, but Mexicans don’t wear ties and tucked-in shirts.”Still, Gusto said, Ricardo was cool. He had cared, even when Gusto hadn’t. “Tell that fool to come back.”Mayra awoke at 5:30 a.m. on March 8, the first day of the new semester.She put on bluejeans and an orange T-shirt. She carried a worn book, “Life Stories of 100 Famous Women,” including Princess Diana, Oprah Winfrey and Mother Teresa.At her homeroom, she got the first hint that something was wrong.The schedule card showed that her English classroom had changed. She pressed the card flat. She leaned in, her eyes inches from the letters. English 9B. Room 821.”I don’t know where my English classroom is,” she muttered. She stopped abruptly. She picked up the yellow card and held it close to her eyes. She read a name.Fulgoni D.It had replaced Acuña R.Her head snapped up. Her eyes went wide. “So he didn’t come back?”The bell rang.She picked up her red backpack. Her mind raced. She would never forget her anguish. Would her new teacher help her? Where was her classroom? What happened to Mr. Acuña? Was he really gone?How would he help her with her spelling? How would she get 80% to 90% of her words right by October? How would she write in complete sentences?He should have told us, she thought, so we wouldn’t be shocked.Dennis Fulgoni, it turned out, did help her. He, too, let her sit up front so she could see the board. He read his questions aloud for her. He promised to give her his worksheets in advance.But he did not know why Ricardo had quit. Neither did anyone else.When Mayra got home, her mother could tell she was sad. She hardly nibbled at dinner, and she made it a point to fight with her little brother.”Why are you mad?” he asked.”I don’t know,” she said.Alone in the living room, she listened to music.Beyoncé made her realize she was angry at Ricardo. I realized I got me, myself and I, she sang, that’s all I got in the end….Ruben Studdard made her sad. I’m sorry, he sang, I’m sorry 2004. She imagined Ricardo singing it to her.But Amanda Perez made her feel thankful. An angel from the heavens above….”The angel part,” she said, “reminds me of Mr. Acuña.”*COMMITTING THE PAST TO PAPERCould I have done it? Could I have gone back?— Ricardo interview*Bob Grakal, a teaching coach at Marshall, said Ricardo seemed to have been doing well and rarely asked for help.”We went out of our way last year to work with all our new teachers,” he said. “We can only do so much, and there are teachers who fall through the cracks.”Mary Lewis, director of the L.A. Unified intern program, said it could have given Ricardo extra support. “But you’ve got to let us know. We don’t want you to suffer in silence.”At his home in Eagle Rock, Ricardo was writing and revising screenplays that he hoped to pitch to Hollywood. He turned over an idea in his mind for a novel based on his childhood.But he could not help thinking about his students, especially Mayra and Gusto. “I don’t want them to feel like I let them down,” he told a visitor. He worried about Gusto. “Could I have talked to him more?”He steeled his resolve. “There isn’t anything I could have done to help him academically.”Nonetheless, he said, at times, when he was writing, maybe driving, Gusto’s voice echoed in his mind. Aw, see, I knew it, Acuña. You’re a rookie.Still, Ricardo was writing and reveling in it. He poured his emotions into a screenplay that he called “My First and Last as a Teacher.”It featured Ray, a teacher who takes a break from his district intern class to smoke a cigarette. Administrators have taken away one of his classes, and his wife, Marta, wants him to spend more time with her. Tom, an intern friend, approaches.
TOM:First year is the hardest. It gets better. Or so I’ve heard.
RAY:I hope you’re right. I really do.

read / The Los Angeles Times

Micah Grant begins his day under a clock, its hands pointed at 6:41 a.m., his hands clasped in prayer.The 17-year-old is joined by his mother.”Send divine angels from heaven around him,” his mother says. “Keep him in perfect peace and harmony. Keep his surroundings in peace and harmony.”Lord remember his friends today, oh God,” she continues, “remember Washington Prep today.”Micah is about to leave for school. He is a senior at Washington Preparatory High School, located between Inglewood and the Harbor Freeway in one of Los Angeles’ poorest and most violent neighborhoods.Today, as on all school days, Micah must strategize.Will he get the education he is hungry for? And will he make it home?He selects his clothes with precision: Royal blue sweatpants, a safe color in his Crips neighborhood where baby blue implies gang ties. He wears a white T-shirt, a gang-neutral color, with a sports emblem on the back.He doesn’t dare wear red, the color of the Bloods, the Crips’ longtime rival. “I wouldn’t come home,” he says. “I wouldn’t make it.”His mother, Sharon Grant, a post office worker, and her husband, Hervin, a minister, are raising three sons. They weave spirituality into every aspect of their children’s lives. They find phrases from the Bible or from sermons or Jamaican proverbs to cover as many eventualities as possible. That, his mother says, is what keeps them safe.She spritzes the back of Micah’s neck with cologne and sends him off with a kiss on his cheek.Trust in the Lord, and do good.Micah walks with raised shoulders, his college applications stowed inside a book bag. He needs to traverse eight blocks to the bus stop. He passes an empty Heineken beer carton, a sickly stray dog and two men picking through Dumpsters. The sky is the color of pale stones.He walks alone in the morning but never at night.After school one day in July, his friend, Delano Pitts, took a different route, down some alleys and less-traveled streets. Micah stuck to his familiar sidewalks. Someone randomly shot Delano twice, in the arm and the leg. The wounds were not fatal.At the corner of Florence and Western avenues, Micah boards a public bus, paying the $1.25 fare. Students crowd toward the back. He sits in front, near a woman wearing a blazer and a man reading the newspaper. The bus stops at 108th Street and Western Avenue, three blocks from Washington Prep.A pack of students moves one way, to a side street. Micah moves the other way, taking a longer route to school.Shortcuts bring blood; the long way brings sweat.”I don’t take cuts,” he says.Delano is the first to greet Micah inside Washington Prep. They meet at a concrete bench in the courtyard, with a plaque that reads: “Not For Self, But For All.” They wear matching bracelets bearing the words: “One Mission John 14:6.” Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. A surveillance camera points in their direction.Delano is a basketball player. He shows one scar from the July bullet. It looks like a dark ribbon on his forearm. “They thought I was a gangbanger,” he says.Micah is a star track runner. Micah’s friends say he is like a cheetah: He runs fast, talks fast, thinks fast.The bell rings and Micah departs for his first-period art class, passing two more surveillance cameras. Outside his classroom, three uniformed security guards patrol a courtyard.
Two years ago, Washington Prep teachers filed a written complaint with their union saying the campus was “out of control.” They said that students and outsiders regularly beat and robbed other students and that some students had sex and used drugs in hallways.Then, last March, a riot broke out. Officials said a crowd of about 300 to 500 students threw rocks and bottles as two campus police officers tried to restrain a pair of students fighting in the open-air quad. Several students were injured and 11 were arrested.Micah remembers watching the melee break out at lunch. One brawl started in front of him. Another behind him. He ran to his fourth-period teacher’s classroom, but she had locked the door. He pounded on it, but she didn’t open. “She was scared,” he said.Another time, a fight on campus began near him. Police pepper-sprayed the students. The spray burned Micah’s eyes. Now, when a fight starts, he rushes as far away as possible.Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.The district appointed a new principal, Herbert Jones. It doubled the number of armed police officers on campus to two and doubled the number of unarmed officers to four. It assigned six school district police to patrol within a half-mile radius. It spent $37,000 completing the iron perimeter fence. It increased the number of surveillance cameras on campus to 30, Jones said.Jones walks the perimeter before and after school, making sure his students are safe. He worked with the MTA to place a bus stop in front of the school after a student was shot waiting for a bus on a corner last September. In the halls, Jones tells students to straighten their baseball caps, and he sends them home if they wear gang-affiliated attire.He said the potential for violence exists on any campus in America. Washington Prep is just more prepared than others, he said. “We’re ready for Columbine every day of the week.”"Everybody says [why] all those police officers,” Jones said. “Well, how do kids feel safe when they don’t have them there?”If he were superintendent, Micah says, he also would have added the officers. But that doesn’t make the situation acceptable, he adds. “Look at these bars,” Micah says, pointing to the gates surrounding the school.Washington Preparatory High School, preparation for college.”Washington Preparatory High School, preparation for incarceration,” that’s what some students call it, Micah says, adding softly, “that’s pretty deep.”
In Micah’s homeroom, an administrator lectures the class about filling out college applications as the teacher, Angelique Sims, observes from her desk. Micah holds a 3.5 grade-point average and scored 1020 on his SATs. He has already completed his application to the University of California. He listens, flipping an un-stamped envelope containing the application between his fingers. He wears glasses that nudge his ears out slightly.Sims glances at him. Micah is focused, she says. “He’s serious about his education.”It is gratifying, she adds, especially since nearly every teacher at Washington Prep has taught a student who has been killed. Three of hers have been shot and killed. Those like Micah, she says, know “what they’ve got to do to survive.”"It all starts in your home,” she says. “I know he has a strong spiritual foundation.”Twenty minutes later, on his way to government class, Micah passes a group of boys lingering near a door. “Hey,” one of the boys nearby shouts. “We’re some Crips over here.” Micah pays no attention.Fret not thyself because of evildoers.Once, when he was in middle school, he was shooting baskets alone on a court near his home. A group of gang members approached. “Hey, homey, where you from?” they asked, circling him like sharks.The gang members beat him. They bruised his ribs. They pounded his eyes.A police car rolled by. Micah said he shouted for help. Maybe the police didn’t hear. Maybe they didn’t care. Anyway, they did not stop.It was then he decided: “I either give up, or I keep going.”Endure hardness as a good soldier.He kept going.
During third period, the college counseling office pulls Micah out of physics class to go over his personal statement for his applications. When he arrives in the college office, he realizes he has to go back to class to retrieve his book bag.He walks back. The halls are empty.When he turns a corner, leading to a stairwell, four boys are sitting on the steps. They glare. Micah falls silent.Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men.He continues up the stairs, softly saying, “Hey, guys.”One nods. Others glare.Minutes later, after retrieving his book bag, he chooses a different set of stairs to descend. “Let’s go this way,” he says. “It’s not like I am scared of them. I just don’t want to take a chance.”
At lunch, Micah stands alone on the lawn in the quad, away from crowds. His girlfriend joins him. Friends stop by. A school police officer with a gun strapped to his side watches.Don’t trouble trouble, until trouble troubles you.”This is a non-trouble spot,” Micah says. “Over there … the wrong people hang there. Over there under the roof, that’s another hot spot.”One of Micah’s favorite teachers, William Miller, always stays in his room, even at lunch. Some students eat their lunch in his room. Miller tutors them, or they come for refuge.”If there’s ever trouble anywhere, I tell them, don’t walk,” Miller said, “but run to my room because I will be there.”All day, Micah looks forward to Miller’s advanced placement English class, for which he is reading Machiavelli, a character who showed, he says, “you have to do what you have to do to survive.”Miller acts out scenes from “Macbeth,” to his students’ delight. He strains his face as he reads from the book. He ends the act by dramatically throwing a chair. Micah laughs and says jokingly: “I told you he’s crazy.”A teacher at Washington Prep since 1982, Miller said students like Micah overcome “incredible odds” to learn. Teachers here “feel there are a lot of kids who are trying to make something of their lives and they get shuffled to the background.”Washington Prep is one of the L.A. Unified School District’s lowest-performing campuses. This year, the state named it a “program improvement school,” meaning it could face state takeover if test scores don’t improve.Students complain about overcrowded classrooms and insufficient books, Micah said, but they are making excuses. As his mother says, “if there is a classroom, if there are books, if there are teachers, you should be able to learn.”Micah said he would sit on the floor to learn, if he had to.I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.”What is it going to be like when we are at that point where there is nothing good coming out of this community?” Micah said. “I want to be that one exception. If nothing else, to show somebody you can do it.”There are many Micahs in this community, said Jones, the principal, who also grew up in this neighborhood and graduated from Washington Prep. Jones, 47, remembers walking to the store for milk when he was young, being careful “to get back with the milk, the money and my life.”As has been Micah’s experience, every decision Jones made has counted. Now, Jones concedes, the margin for error is much smaller.
Physical training is the last class of the day for Micah, followed by team practice. This is when Micah lets go of stress.Colleges are wooing him for his academic and athletic skills. He is ranked 11th in the state in the 100-meter dash. Princeton, Notre Dame, Columbia and others have sent letters. Micah wants to stay closer to home because his father has battled cancer for a few years.He heads to a tiny weight room. It is already crowded, smelling like sweaty T-shirts.Usually he sprints on the school’s track, a ring of tobacco-colored dirt littered with the occasional potato chip bag. Running here too often, Micah’s coach says, gives athletes shin splints.After weight training, Micah jogs up and down the school bleachers.He would remain for hours if he could. But it is 4:45 p.m. and the sky is turning the color of stones again. He knows waiting for the bus and trekking home will take too long. It would be dark before he got home.He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good.He calls his mother and asks her to pick him up. He waits with friends in the back parking lot of the school. They talk about bodybuilding and a friend in the military.Jones strolls around the corner, walkie-talkie in hand. It is nearly two hours after school let out, but he is still patrolling the perimeter.”I’ve got to make sure my students make it home,” he says, appearing weary.Micah’s mother arrives 20 minutes later, her youngest son already in her Toyota Echo, gospel playing softly on the car stereo. Micah and two of his buddies load into the car. She takes them home too.Once home, Micah spreads college financial aid forms on the kitchen table and begins filling them out, eating a bowl of spaghetti at the same time.He sits under the same clock where he began this day, near a poster on the dining room wall that reads: “This is God. I will be handling all your problems today.”It is 5:47 p.m. and dark outside. Micah has made it home.

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