I feel as though you should not recieve a diploma which is saying that you are educated in math, English, and science unless you are. So, in other words, whether you are black, white, or green by taking a test to measure whether you are knowledgable in those areas shouldn't be a problem. We definitely shouldn't be saying that because a person is black that they shouldn't have to take the test because they have a 70% chance of failing and therefore won't recieve their high school diploma. In other words, you are saying let's just give them their diploma even if they can barely do 6th grade math and have a reading level of a 4th grader. You are just setting them up for failure in the real world. What kind of job can someone get with that lack of education? If it were your school, would you be proud of your diploma that you worked hard for if it were given to a student who lacks that knowledge. With this said, I am definitley for the California High School Exit Exam.

sent 9/5/03
The Influence of Those Who Teach

Dear Carlos,

I am sorry your experience at St. Emydius School had such a negative affect on your youthful existence. It is asham that the comments of these two teachers affected your life as dramatically as they have.

However, you are making some broad generalizations about St. Emydius School and the student body. You are making assumptions about the entire population of the school by classifying them as poverty stricken, sheltered and easily influenced because of their lack of world experience. You are generalizing and expressing your opinion as fact. Where are the responses from these two teachers? How many students have graduated from high school, college and are currently living happy successful lives. How many of Ms. Dee's students have become successful law abiding citizens with bachelor's degrees and more? This is a research paper, is it not? Where is the research? Did you interview past or present students to determine their level of self-esteem and self-efficacy and how much could be attributed to the school? I know for a fact I never received a call or a questionnaire? I was not asked about my experience at St. Emydius school, with Ms Dee as my teacher.

What I do know is that St. Emydius School is a welcoming and safe learning environment. I was apart of that community as a student and as a teacher. As a student, I served as Vice-President of the school which required me to work with Ms. Dee on a daily basis. I was also a student prior to double grades, so we spent double the amount of time together. I know that my experience was a learning experience and that Ms. Dee had high expectations, not always expressed in soft sensitive ways, but always expressed out of care and concern for the students and the school. I also know for a fact that I am not the lone success story of St. Emydius School. I am not the only student to experience the frustrations and life lessons learned from high expections and a variety of forms of encouragement and discipline. There are many success stories occurring now and have occurred throughout the years at St. Emydius School. These date back to times before Ms. Dee, continue now, and will continue long after Ms. Dee.

To this day many students return to the school just to visit and express gratitude to this teacher that you unfairly portray.

You probably would like to know a little about me. I am a former student of Ms. Dee's. I graduated from St.Emydius school in 1984. In 1998 I returned to what is my foundation to teach, I taught for four years. I returned to the school after my father died and received the same kindness and compassion that I did as a child. I was born in Maywood and raised in South Gate. I did not live a suffered existence. My parents worked hard and paid for my education! I went on to achieve a scholarship, diploma, and a couple of degrees. I recieved my Masters degree while teaching at St. Emydius. I currently am an Associate Professor at Los Angeles Valley College. I am a success and I am not alone.

Do your research! There are many of us St. Emydites (as Ms. Dee called us) that have gone on to schools such as UCLA, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, USC, Berkeley, scattered throughout the Cal State system...need I go on.ot O YOUR RESEARCH! THERE ARE MANY OF US ST. EMYDITES (as Ms Dee called us)THAT HAVE GONE ON TO SCHOOLS SUCH AS UCLA, STANFORD, COLUMBIA, YALE, USC, BEREKLEY, SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE CAL STATE SYSTEM, NEED I GO ON!

I will pray for you and for your unfortunate experience. However, you're experience is not a reflection of what St Emydius is or has been and it is unfortunate that your research is incomplete and stated as fact. I first learned how to research at St. Emydius and as a child I knew to have facts to support factual statements. I later learned to not write research that is based on emotions, emotions alone are not fact.

I hope in time your Catholic background will allow you to forgive, recover and gain perspective.

God Bless,
Ms. Garcia

sent 8/8/03

As a local student in LAUSD, I have a great concern with what's occuring in our district. With the budget cuts being made and funding that isn't necessary, I feel it would be best to eliminate JROTC from all LAUSD schools, stop police funding, and end racist standardized testing. Too much money is being given to these issues and do not even help out our community/district. It's very sad to say that LAUSD receives funding --> $3 million per year, but 1.3 million is given to JROTC. This is crazy! JROTC is a racist program that brain washes minority students into joining the armed forces. You wouldn't find JROTC in "white schools," e.g. Beveryly Hills High.

sent 5/8/03

Interview with Wayne Johnson
I am going to school, hopefully to become an elementary school teacher. I think that before they think of laying off teachers (especially in "poor neighborhoods), they should be laying off incompetent administrators and staff at schools and school districts. I am surprised at how administrators blame teachers for everything that is going wrong, but commend themselves for everything that goes right. There are too many administrators and not enough teachers anyway.

sent 4/24/03

The feature Rating Teacher Quality: An Interview with Ken Futernick represents several troubling aspects of our current system. The first is the inablity for those inside of the school system to incorporate information outside of their normal mindset. In other words, I think there is a lack of understanding here on what reality is for teacher potential, and a complete misunderstanding of the lost teacher opportunities as a result of public education's inability to relate to the outside world.

For example, in my first bachelor's level college; and many others; if you are a female majoring in education, it is assumed that you are seeking a "Mrs." degree, a.k.a. looking for the social network to find a degreed husband, with no other serious educational goals. Many women who are educationally serious turn to other degrees because of this perception. These women may be very talented, very capable teachers, but they will choose a degree of their interest instead. This also adds to their employment options, a key for many college students. Someday they may wish to teach, but if you follow this artical's advice, they never would be able to for having not chosen the 'approved' major in school.

Another point to insert here: Many people, like myself, feel that it is important to have a career outside of academia prior to teaching in order to be a more well rounded person and, thus, better prepared to teach future leaders. The logic goes like this: "How can I teach life success if I haven't proven myself in the 'real world,'" a.k.a, "How can I teach business leaders if I haven't been one?" Again, by becoming overly concerned with broad bureaucratic qualifications we miss out on the chance to have an important type of teacher in the classroom, one with a diverse background in terms of experience and education. A school with diversity in its types of teachers will foster a better learning environment and pool of knowledge for children than a school who does not capitalize on its pool of potential teachers who, for whatever reason, might consider a second career in teaching, but won't if they have to have aquired a major in the subject.

I am an example of this. I hold a Bachelor in Business Administration, Cum Laude, and I am in pursuit of my Master of Science in Community and Regional Planning. I have a diverse background of experiance outside of the educational setting, but my hobbies have often drawn me to work with kids. I have a little experiance with children and substitute teaching and I think I would really enjoy the opportunity to teach Science at the high school level. However, I am not going to put myself through an entirely different degree to do so. I am willing to take the needed Science classes, some of which I already have, but I intend to keep acquiring degrees in the subjects of my diverse interests. Having a different educational background should not be a nail in the coffin of opportunity when teachers are so badly needed and when, in fact, it makes for a more enriched teaching pool for students to access.

As a side note many people who could not afford to take the pay cut needed to teach early in their lives may be able to, or willing to, at a later time, if the doors of possibility remain open. Such also applies to me. A primary reason I steered away from teaching early on was due to the fact that teachers are paid just above the poverty rate here, and I felt I needed to establish and support myself more first. Now, I am at a place in my life where it is possible for me to meet my family needs on a teacher's income (or lack there of). Please don't underrate my love for/interest in teaching because I ran the numbers before getting the degree and made a determination based on the survival of my family. You will cut yourself out of a number of stay at-home-moms-turned-teacher this way.

I have several other concerns with this article. First, while I think it is very valid and needed to evaluate schools in terms of teacher retention, or availablity of experienced teachers to intern, let us call that something other than teacher underqualification. School underqualification might be more fitting, and the problem should be addressed as such: a school wide issue.

Another issue I take with here is the familiar cry that a lower student teacher ratio will solve the problem. In fact, we have some statistics from earlier days showing a higher educational attainment with a higher teacher student ratio. While a lower one can be a benefit, it is not often a reality in terms of budget concerns, and it is unfair to appoint a lower ratio to a certain school because of its racial or ethnic make up. Once we venture down that path, we can easily get lead astray. What is to prevent the next wave of scholastic solution finders from saying, "Let's make the most of our money and increase teacher resources/availablity, etc, for the successful schools where we know we can affect a positive result and turn out productive leaders." See how this gets us into an ugly battle or resource allocation based on race, or ethnic background, or any other number of standards that shouldn't be used?

I don't have all the answers, by any length, but I have heard the same solutions over and over again for countless years, and watched the taxes increase time and time again, all the while educational standards/success decrease, or at least remain unaffected.

sent 4/6/03
Educate Don't Incarcerate!

Thanks, Cynthia. On our side of the pacific (New Zealand), we too feel the effects of social oppression of minority races and especially its effects on the youth. You have helped gain a better perspective of this oppression if not in a geographically different context. I hope your endeavours and ambitions will stand testament to a necessary and important struggle.

sent 2/13/03

I am very pleased to learn of this school in Lawndale in "Learning Beyond the Classroom." As the chair of Ecopedagogy for the UCLA Paulo Freire Institute, I am helping to coordinate another charter effort in South Central that will involve both Freirean community components and the ecological aspects of Humane Education. Certainly, as southern California finds itself in a schooling crunch, examples such as these point to the progressive hope that charters may represent for less wealthy, urban districts. This is worth further examination.

One thing I found missing in this piece on the Lawndale Charter was any real statement regarding exactly how they are implementing "environmental" themes into their work...beyond that their schooling extends out into the community (which is important). Environmental Education is presently a movement in crisis within the United States. On the one hand, though it has gained an increasing following and legitimation over the last 30 years, it continues to lack anything close to widespread implementation. Recently, the Bush administration has moved to have EE virtually disbanded as a program of action -- this despite a growing ecological crisis worldwide and an unprecedented level of species extinction. On the other hand, the many thriving Environmental Education programs that are functioning are often at the direction of state and national standards that (at best) represent a sort of technocratic environmentalism...thus, the move in more radical circles to the language of "Ecopedagogy."

I sense from this piece that there is good work going on in Lawndale, however. I just wish I knew exactly what it was, so that we could demonstrate it as a successful model for other urban schools to emulate.

Thanks Teaching to Change LA for all your hard and inspired work. You are a class act and a real gift to the Graduate School of Education. Keep it up!

Yours,

sent 1/19/03

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for the hard work and research you are doing. I am a high school teacher at Huntington Park High School and have referenced and used your web site for in class lessons and writing that I'm doing for the National Board Certification. The work you are doing is so valuable and needed here in L.A. and in other urban centers.

I would like to be more involved and/or have my students involved in your project. Do you ever send guest speakers around? If so let me know details we'd love to host you.

Keep up the good work! Also the most recent papers on "Paths to College" I would like to distribute to my students/parents. Is that a possibility, would I need permission and is it translated in Spanish?

Thanks again,