This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success.

Alexandra Chavez teaches at and helped develop SAGE, a social and gender equity magnet school in Los Angeles Unified School District that draws students from across the city. (Alexandra Chavez)

For Alexandra Chavez, having seen the challenges her brother with special needs has to face was her biggest driver to become a teacher seven years ago. She thought the profession would allow her to play a critical role in the lives of students like him.

She recalls how she and her brother grew up attending the same schools and how that allowed her to experience firsthand how teachers impact students’ lives.

“He was deaf and on the autism spectrum and so seeing how some of his teachers would bring him to my classes to deal with his behavior or help him understand something. I really felt that I could make more of a difference in students’ lives, like my brother’s life, if I became a teacher,” Chavez said.

Now that she is teaching at SAGE, the first-of-its-kind social and gender equity magnet school in Los Angeles Unified School District, Chavez believes her job can truly be transformative.

Chavez grew up in the San Fernando Valley area north of Los Angeles and attended LAUSD schools. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a degree in English and education. Before joining SAGE, she taught English language arts and English language development at Stevenson Middle school in East L.A., Vista Middle School, and Sun Valley High School.

Before SAGE became a magnet program, Chavez helped with a gender sexuality pride club on the Milikan campus because she said that many of her students felt left out of the curriculum. The principal then saw an opportunity to expand the club into a program for the whole school.

“I think honestly it’s about how this curriculum is trying to get the students to feel accepted in it and to reflect them and include them and consider them at every level. That is just such an engaging idea. It’s a novel concept,” Chavez said. “I mean, why not reflect all of our students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences in what we teach them? It seemed kind of like a no-brainer.”

SAGE incorporates gender studies and social justice themes into all of its academic courses. It’s located on the campus of Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks. It opened this school year, serving 70 sixth-graders and will expand by a grade level each year for the next two years. Millikan is an affiliatedLAUSD charter that is also home to a Performing Arts Magnet and Cinema Arts Academy.

SAGE offers a unique curriculum, designed to teach middle school students strong academic and social skills. The magnet program also offers its students a three-year program in speech and debate along with opportunities for community service and activism. Students practice yoga daily to develop physical and social-emotional strength.

“We are committed to serving all students and celebrating each and every student as an individual,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said in a news release during a visit to the school in October. “In a time when Washington seems to focus on conflict and differences, we must teach our students that the best way forward is through better understanding, kindness and inclusion.”

LA School Report asked Chavez about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Can you share more about this magnet program and how it works on a daily basis?

I think that one of the big tenets of this program, in general, is the idea that we’re not just incorporating the academic component of the student, but it’s really education of the whole child. We’re incorporating that social-emotional aspect as well through yoga, through the mindfulness that we practice in class. So we’re teaching them civic responsibility, critical thinking, computer literacy, but we’re also encouraging them to be well rounded and know how to take care of themselves emotionally and mentally. I think that really sets this program apart. A lot of programs are just academics and rigor. For us, we do that as well, but it’s really focusing on the social-emotional aspect as well.

What is the profile of the student population you’re serving?

Oh, my kids are great. Yeah, I mean our kids are a variety of kids, so they come from anywhere. One of the really great things about being such a unique program is that we attracted kids from everywhere, from all sorts of neighborhoods, which made us really stand out for the district. It was the first program of its kind, and so my kids come from all over LA. They come from an hour away to maybe five minutes away. So their backgrounds are really diverse and so there’s no real one way to meet their needs. But we’re lucky enough that we have a Chromebook cart in class every day. So I’m able to customize to our LMS, our Learning Management System, what they have access to, so I can meet every kid or at least ideally every kid at the level that they need in order to access the curriculum best.

They use their Chromebooks every day to supplement our Learning Management System, Schoology, which is kind of like a college course. You can post assignments, you can create tests, quizzes, documents. So that’s kind of where computer literacy kicks in. As an instructor, I can assign an assignment for Sally that’s different from Bobby and Sue. … Some of them come from really difficult backgrounds. They maybe have one parent or one of their parents is really ill or they’re home alone a lot. So it makes it easier for me to customize my lessons to have them meet me where they are and then I can add more supports as we go.

It has only been five months since the program started its first year, but how are your students responding to the curriculum?

When we first started discussing these concepts in this curriculum, we had so many people saying, ‘Oh, these kids, they won’t know what to do with it. They won’t understand it. They won’t be able to do it.’ But that’s really not the case. I mean, these kids have voices, they have strong opinions, they have strong ideas, and they’re more than willing to showcase it. So I think that the most amazing thing and the most surprising and rewarding thing has been just the investment that these kids have in talking about the concepts that we’re talking about.

Doing the service-learning projects, doing the mindfulness. They enjoy it and they’re engaged because of it. That has just been the most rewarding and I think the most amazing thing to see, especially when that wasn’t something that many people thought about our program.

• Read more: All in: A Southern California school with a radical — and successful — vision for students with disabilities

How is the school district supporting you or what can the district do better to support teachers in general?

I would say that keeping lines of communication open is really important. Making sure that there’s a voice of representation for everyone at the table that is making decisions is super important. But in terms of support for the program, the district has been great. I mean they have really kind of helped us navigate this first year of development and the planning and the approvals. It’s been a lot of support and outpouring of support really from all different parts of the district.

What do you think is the most common misconception about the teaching profession that you get to hear?

One of the biggest ones is all we do is grade papers, because that’s all we’re good for, is just grading papers. I think something that’s important for people to understand is that teaching isn’t just, I send my kid to school, they sit in my class. Education itself is a dynamic process. It changes from class to class. It changes from student to student, it changes from teacher to teacher. It’s constantly changing. I think it’s important to understand that education isn’t perfect. It’s growing, it’s learning. And every new generation, every new class of kids really makes it different from an experience that has come before. So the conception may be that I’m sitting as an English teacher, grading essays and I don’t take the time to get to know my kids or I don’t know how they can handle classes of 40 and have 200 kids and know all their names. But, we do and their kids are like our kids.

So I think it’s really important for people to realize that we care as much for our students as their parents do — if not more. We spend eight hours a day with them and we try our best to use the time that we have with them effectively. So I guess that’s a really big takeaway is that the conception is that teachers — that just their students are bins that you put in information, but it’s a process. I’m learning from them as much as they’re learning from me. So I guess that’s important for people to recognize, that it’s a dynamic experience.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Ednovate’s Kyle Perez-Robinson on mentoring 19 girls through all 4 years of high school, breaking down barriers for future Latina scientists and missing her students over summer break

What do you think parents can do better to support teachers?

I think in general parents really should talk more to their kids. Engage with them about what they’re doing in classes, ask questions if they’re unsure, really make every effort to get to know the teachers, get to know the curriculum because we’re a team. It’s not pitting one parent against the teacher. It’s, ‘How are you?’ and supporting the growth of your kid. I think if parents really listened to what their kids have to say, there’s no way that we can fail them.

What would you say has been one of your biggest accomplishments as a teacher so far?

I would say being a part of this magnet (program) is one of the biggest accomplishments in my career. It’s a really young career, so being able to bring something to life that really does reflect mindfulness and responsibility and equity is super important. It’s been transformative for me as an educator. It challenges me every day. That’s the highlight of my teaching career thus far, my ability to participate and help develop this program.

What’s your main goal or goals as a teacher for this school year?

I would say this year my goal is really to embrace change and be flexible. We’ve had a lot that has happened this school year, districtwide and statewide that has really impacted instruction. Just knowing that sometimes a kid’s emotional and social health is a little more important than the dynamic and awesome standards-based lesson I have planned. Just being flexible with what’s going on for them or what’s going on for myself. I’m just wanting to, I guess, to be patient is a really important goal this first year of development and prep and planning.

This interview is one in a series spotlighting Los Angeles teachers, their unique and innovative classroom approaches, and their thoughts on how the education system can better support teachers in guiding students to success.

Manuel “Manny” Albert III teaches STEM at Bloomfield High School, part of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools.

Manuel “Manny” Albert III experienced what it was like living in two very different environments early on in his life when his family moved from a disadvantaged community in South Central Los Angeles to the more affluent city of Cerritos, 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

“My parents and my sisters and I, we still went to South Central on weekends, family events, church, and it was like living in two different worlds,” Albert said. “It was a completely different demographic, culturally, just everything.”

He attended LAUSD schools in his early school years, but when he began attending public schools in Cerritos, a city where the majority of the population is Asian, he saw “dramatic” differences.

Once he graduated from high school, he enrolled in a six-year doctorate in pharmacy program, obtained his license and worked as a pharmacist for 10 years in New York City and New Jersey. But he returned to South Central Los Angeles often for the holidays and family celebrations.

“Talking to my cousins and hearing about my nephews growing up, they told me that the schools that they were in in the neighborhood were not getting better and, in fact, were getting worse,” Albert said. That motivated him to enter the teaching profession.

“I would come home and see and hear all these stories about what’s going on in classrooms, what’s going on with my own relatives concerning their careers, and it really provoked me to really think about, ‘Am I doing professionally what I can do to help my family? But also even at a bigger scale, to help my community?’”

In 2015, Albert joined Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to teach for two years in low-income schools across the country. He started teaching STEM at Bloomfield High School, part of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools charter schools network, in Southeast L.A., where he is in his fifth year as a teacher.

Albert said he has plans to pursue an administrative or leadership position in education because he believes he can have a bigger impact on fixing some of the things that need to be changed in the public education system in California: assessment metrics, lack of community partnerships and the need for a greater focus on social-emotional learning.

LA School Report asked Albert about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for the 2019-20 school year. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you choose to teach at the high school level?

I was like initially, well maybe I can teach at the college level. Then when I thought about it further, I was like, well, if I teach at the college level and people that are coming from my community end up being my students, just the fact that they’ve made it to college is a huge deal. They’ve already overcome some huge major barriers. I want to target the ones that aren’t able to even make it to college, based on the barriers that they’re facing within the schooling system, within their community and to be able to help really move the needle in order to be able to do it in that manner. When I realized where it was I wanted my focus to be in order to change my community, then it became clear that in order for me to move the needle, I needed to teach at the high school level. Because from my experience, from hearing from my family members, and just what I was seeing in my old community, that was the area that it seemed at the time was failing my community the most.

What have you found in common with your students?

I think for me the biggest commonality that I share with them is that there is a huge need for students, especially African-American and Latino males, to receive motivation. As much as we purport to do our best, which we do as teachers, to revise curriculum, create curriculum, and to teach the materials that the state of California requires, there’s an intangible, almost critical need for motivation to also be built into the character of whoever the teacher is — male, female, whatever ethnicity — in front of the kids. I think that all kids, including me growing up, need motivation in order to either remind themselves of how strong they are and that they can do it, whether it’s an older student or a younger student, that regardless of whatever situation or your socioeconomic status, your immigration or citizenship status, that this is an opportunity that you have the most control over, especially being under the age of 18.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: STEM Prep’s Daniel Lieu on removing racial barriers to STEM careers for his students, balancing rigor with caring and sharing snacks

What do you think are the main challenges your students face in school and in their communities and what do you do to support them?

For so many of my students, who are coming from families who are immigrating to this country, they’re being first-generation or trying to navigate through the citizenship process and the immigration process, which now that I know more about it is just extremely difficult to navigate through under the best circumstances. Then you have family members that are forced to move frequently as well. Huntington Park has a very transient population as well. So there are all these additional variables that make it cloudy sometimes for students, who are used to, unfortunately, dealing with trauma on a daily basis, to be reminded that there is motivation that’s available that’s within each of us, but sometimes you need people to help stir it and sometimes you need people to help build it.

Just having someone, or a group of people, whether it’s me, whether it’s a group of teachers, and all of the teachers at our school, we were placed in a situation where we all truly believe that about our students because it first starts with caring. Part of that caring is mentorship. A lot of teachers balk at the idea of mentorship, because technically as a teacher you’re not trained to be a mentor. It’s not part of your requirements in terms of your job description. And I get that, but we’re in a situation, especially in low-income urban areas, where mentorship is such a powerful tool. Even if it’s just something like a student seeing you at their games or having dinner with a student’s family to show that you’re invested, not just in them as a student at your school, but them as a person and what it is they’re capable of becoming. I think that’s a game-changer for a lot of students at our school, and especially our young Latino males. Our school is 99 percent Latino students.

Do you have enough support in your school or room to be innovative or do the things you need to do in the classroom to serve your students better?

The answer is a resounding yes. I really think that’s because we have a principal who truly stands behind that. Our principal would tell you that when she was the same age as our students, she literally had teachers tell her, ‘Don’t worry, you don’t really need to learn that. You just need to sit back in the back of the classroom and we’ll just make sure that as long as you’re not disruptive, then we’ll pass you with a C.’ Even now when she talks about it to this day, you can see in her mind that she’s reminded of how she felt as a student, as a person, as a woman, as an immigrant coming from an immigrant family of people who came to this country. And it’s real. So for us, one of the great things is that she allows us, whether it’s by departments or in our individual classrooms, to really figure out for ourselves what works best in our opinion for our students.

I’m one of the three teachers that’s currently on the executive board for the school. I’ve been on the executive board for going on almost five years now. So even at the highest level in terms of budget, in terms of LCAP (Local Control and Accountability Plan) and LCFF (Local Control Funding Formula) funding, we’ve had situations where we can say, ‘We need to hire a full-time psychologist. We need to hire another counselor because we noticed that there’s a lot of trauma that, as much as we can try to address it during class instructional time, you just can’t because you’re also instructing students based on a curriculum that you want them to learn to get them prepared for college and beyond.’

What kind of challenges do you currently face as an educator or what kind of issues in the public education system do you think need to be addressed?

If I had to narrow it down to three things, I’d say funding at the federal and state level is very heavily weighed on math and English scores. There are a lot of metrics that are just, unfortunately, not taking into consideration, that are going to be frustrating points for a lot of teachers, administrators, policymakers, all the way up the food chain. So I feel like number one, being able to effectively compare based on metrics coming from either state or legislative levels are always going to be a challenge until we really begin to have the true conversations about what really makes a school effective and what are all the components outside of the more traditional attendance rates and test scores on a standardized level.

Number two, I would say one of the things I think that is failing almost all public schools is a lack of community partnerships. A lot of schools are very bent on, ‘We need more money, We need more money,’ which is true. I will also argue that education from a public perspective is still drastically underfunded. But there’s also a great opportunity for communities, no matter what community you live in, to be more connected to the schools in order to provide more opportunities, whether it’s internships, whether it’s actual work experience, or whether it’s just plain exposure to either jobs or the careers that are available within that area.

And then the third component, I feel like that is failed, unfortunately, is the socio-emotional learning piece. There are so many schools that really, strictly based on funding, don’t have the resources in order to incorporate effective socio-emotional learning skills and personnel into the school workplace in order to help serve students that are walking around with all of this heavy trauma, that can’t even begin to process what’s being taught in the classroom until the trauma portion of their lives that they deal with on a day-to-day basis at home is dealt with.

I think if we attack those three, I feel like the world of education will be in a much better place. And there are many other things that could be mentioned, but I feel like in my heart as an educator, and as a person who’s been doing this now for going on five years, those are the things that I constantly see on a day-to-day basis that are things that I would want to change.

What do you think parents can do better to support teachers?

I would say just by following up with even their children on things like assignments that have recently been assigned. One of our big pushes was whenever we have a parent forum, one of the big things we do is at our school we provide the parents with their own login username and passwords to PowerTeacher, which is a tool where we house all of the grades for all students. So not only is it students being able to check their grades, but really empowering parents to be able to see based on labels, based on our numbering system, what assignments have been assigned that maybe are missing, meaning the student hasn’t turned it in, and what are the assignments that maybe have been turned in late, versus assignments that maybe were turned in on time and maybe students just didn’t do as well as they wanted to.

• Read more: I know how much this pandemic has devastated undocumented families because I grew up in one

A lot of parents either struggle with speaking English or are intimidated by a group of teachers who all speak English only. Or in addition to that, they’re working two jobs, or working three jobs, or they’re dealing with multiple children that they have, and so it’s not as if they don’t want to be more involved directly with teachers. But by empowering them to just give them the tools to check whatever is happening with their son or with their daughter, it helps bridge the conversation so that in the event that the teacher does want to message us, email us, or call us directly here at the school, that it creates a more comfortable environment where now they’re more knowledgeable. Now they know either what to ask or they know what it is that their son or daughter needs to do to improve academically … having a conversation with them so that your son or daughter can also learn how to become more accountable.

Being a TFA corps member, do you plan to continue teaching?

The Teach for America contract, in collaboration with the AmeriCorps Grant, requires that all Teach for America corps members stay at their school site that has been designated for a two-year term. I came in in 2015, my contract and term with TFA ended in 2017 and I’ve been here ever since. For me, I love teaching and one of the great awesome things about our school is every TFA corps member that has come through our school has stayed after their two-year commitment. TFA has been criticized on both sides of the fence. They’ve been criticized because teachers come in and they leave. They’ve been criticized for teachers coming in and supposedly not being as trained or dedicated as teachers who’ve gone through a more traditional credentialing program. And I understand the criticism from both sides.

One of the things I’ve also been able to do within TFA is bringing those concerns so that we can change the program for Los Angeles to make it so that teachers are coming in being as prepared as possible based on them moving into this new career of teaching. That’s been my angle, but I also feel like as an educator, once I started teaching, I understood that although I love teaching, that my focus shifted to being able to go from impacting students that were in my class to wanting to impact students that were in multiple classrooms across multiple school sites.

Would you like to pursue other paths in education?

I was able to do a fellowship through LAUSD with Nick Melvoin in Board District 4, and what I learned from that was there are all these major decisions that are impacting millions of students that I wanted to be a part of, to be able to positively impact their lives and their communities outside of just my immediate community at my school site. I want to be able to influence them for the betterment of the community, many other communities and many other students as a result. So this year, I am planning on taking the CPACE (California Preliminary Administrative Credential Examination)exam so that I can become an administrator at some point in the near future with the hopes of being able to potentially be a superintendent, or work at the district office, or be in a position to where I’m able to influence either policy and/or instruction at a larger scale.

I also decided to go back to school to get my doctorate in education and so I’ll be finishing my doctorate in the education program at USC in 2021. What I desire to do now is to take the experiences that I’ve had as a teacher and now use them to expand that knowledge, that insight, that perspective into a larger arena.

What is your main goal or goals for this school year? 

As a teacher, I want to increase the percentage of my students turning in quality work on time. And so one of my individual goals for my classrooms is I want to raise my classwork and homework being turned in, their on-time percentage, to 85 percent by the end of the year. So we started out the semester at 65 percent, we’re now at 72 percent going into now almost the end of February. So we’re slowly climbing.

As part of that initiative, I’ve become more proactive in sending out notifications to parents. Also, increasing my frequency of calling parents. So, I try to call at least 30 parents a week to let them know, give them updates on their kids, because parents like to hear about how their children are doing, especially for those children who are struggling the most with turning in their work. Those are the ones that I typically target first and so far, it’s working.

Number two, trying to get students involved more with major decisions that are happening with the school. So one of the recent changes that we’ve had is we’ve had a reconfiguration of our executive board where now we have two students who are represented on the board who have just as much power as we as board members do. So really encouraging the students to speak up and just speak their mind, so really trying to empower students to have a stronger voice and to be more comfortable being able to understand that their voice matters.

And then I think the third thing that I would say that I’m focused on is really trying to get students, especially seniors, to hone in on their ability to become critical analyzers. So taking information that we’re seeing that’s coming from anywhere — news sources, newspapers, information that we’re seeing that’s coming from people making statements. … So really trying to get the seniors, especially, to think outside of the box. They’re very, unfortunately, accustomed to taking things at face value, which is good, but being able to help them read between the lines and to understand everything that is being said or everything that they’re reading, whether it’s a text, whether it’s information that they’re trying to craft or having to put together for a debate that we’re having in our class. But being able to really hone those skills in order to make them successful after they leave us and go on to college next year.

Magda Vargas’s daughter, a fifth-grader at LAUSD’s Elizabeth Learning Center in Southeast Los Angeles, being homeschooled. (Magda Vargas)

Updated April 2

Parents of the nearly 700,000 students attending traditional and charter schools in Los Angeles are facing an unprecedented disruption of their children’s routine and their daily lives with the shutdown of L.A. Unified School District’s more than 1,000 campuses.

One of the main concerns for district officials and educators trying to control the spread of the coronavirus was to make sure remote learning could be in place. That has turned out to be a significant struggle, with the Los Angeles Times reporting last week that some 15,000 L.A. Unified high school students had been absent online and failed to do any schoolwork while more than 40,000 had not been in daily contact with their teachers since the March 16 closure.

In a school district where over 80 percent of students live in poverty, the concerns for most parents are overwhelming. They range from keeping their kids safe and healthy, first and foremost, to how they will be able to juggle homeschooling while holding onto now-tenuous jobs that allow them to put food on the table and pay rent.

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom indicated last week that the school closures could extend to the end of the school year — and state schools chief Tony Thurmond echoed that on March 31 — parents’ anxiety soared.

“The governor’s saying that basically the school year is over, that schools won’t be ready to open back up until the fall. That came with a different sort of devastation,” said South L.A. parent Tunette Powell, who serves as chair of the school site council at her children’s school, LAUSD’s Baldwin Hills Elementary. “I think for multiple reasons. There’s the factor of just homeschooling your kids and parents being forced to do something that they’re not credentialed to do.”

Powell said she initially thought she was ready to handle homeschooling for a few weeks. But when she learned that may extend to April, and then days later, possibly until the end of the school year, everything changed for her.

“It’s very stressful. We’re new homebuyers. My husband and I just bought a home, so your bottom line is, there’s a mortgage in front of you that has to be paid, and there are kids in front of you who don’t deserve any of this, so they still have to be happy and they have to be content. And I think what I’m really trying to do is … My struggle is more so emotionally and internally with myself,” Powell said.

LAUSD and most school districts across the state — 99 percent of which have shut down, — are offering laptop computers and educational programming on TV so students can continue their education at home, along with a long list of online resources to keep their learning going. LA Unified and independent charter schools combined have opened a total of 144 “grab-and-go” drive-up centers where families in need can pick up bags with breakfast and lunch for their kids.

In the first week alone, L.A. Unified reported that almost a quarter of a million meals were served, more than any other food bank in the country, according to the district.

L.A. Unified reported that as of Friday almost a quarter of a million meals were served, more than any other food bank in the country, according to the district.

• Read more: Amid COVID-19 Crisis, Closed Schools Converted to Grab & Go Food Centers Across Los Angeles Are Saviors to Children and Adults Alike, ‘Bring a Little More Normalcy’

The district also announced a deal with Verizon to provide internet connectivity for all students who don’t have the service at home. “The digital divide is very real, as many as 100,000 of our students lack access to the internet at home,” Beutner said.

While access to technology and school meals are crucial, some parents said they feel more concerned about their children’s mental health and social-emotional stability during this crisis.

Mireya Pacheco, a mother of students attending schools in Pacoima, in the northern San Fernando Valley, said she is already feeling the frustration of not being able to ease her daughters’ anxiety.

She has two girls, one in 11th grade and the other in third. Her older daughter got really worried when she heard that the school closures may extend until the summer.

“They constantly ask questions about the news, they say they miss their friends, they worry about getting sick, about not passing to the next grade… homeschooling is not hard, but there are so many other things in their minds that distract them from focusing on learning,” Pacheco said in Spanish.

L.A. Unified announced that it was opening a phone hotline on April 2 that students and families can call “for help to manage fear, anxiety and other challenges related to COVID-19.” The hotline, at 213-241-3840, will be open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays, the district said, and will be staffed by counselors and mental health professionals providing support in both English and Spanish.

Beyond those anxieties around school, Pacheco said her family worries that, on one hand, her husband could lose his job in a carwash, and on the other, that he could get sick with the coronavirus if he remains working.

“Frustration hits me really bad, she said. “He is exposed to the virus every time he has to get out to work, but at the same time, we need him to work so we can pay the rent, the electricity bill, food.”

She has been picking up school meals as a way to help the family save money for rent, in case her husband does get laid off in the days ahead.

Pacheco says she’s been relying on advocacy organizations such as Families in Schools for information and resources. She thinks they’re doing a good job, but believes the need is big and the response slow in coming.

She said that in her community, many people have already begun losing their jobs and have had to apply for unemployment benefits.

“That’s a big concern because many immigrant families don’t want to apply because they don’t want to become a public charge and affect their status,” she said, referring to the public charge immigration rule employed by the Trump administration, which penalizes immigrants who seek public assistance from federally funded programs such as Medicaid or food stamps by reducing their chances of obtaining a green card or fixing their immigration status.

Great Public Schools Now (GPSN) and over 20 non-profit organizations have collectively launched We’re One Family Los Angeles, a fundraising effort to help LA families most economically impacted by the coronavirus pandemic to cover food, rent and medical care.

Since launching on March 16, the fund has raised approximately $150,000 from nearly 300 individual donors with a match of $48,000 from Great Public Schools and additional donations coming in daily. In collaboration with the California Community Foundation and other groups, the distribution of those funds will be available as soon as possible for families that apply for assistance, a GPSN spokesperson said in an email.

“We saw an urgent need in the community and felt compelled to leverage our professional and social networks to do our part to provide some immediate relief to these families,” Ana Ponce, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. “We hope this collective action inspires the public to support our efforts so we can assist as many families as possible during this pandemic. ”

Powell thinks that community-based organizations and cities are doing what they can to support families but they are limited by public health mandates in not being able to offer spaces such as libraries and museums, to support remote learning. “It feels isolating.”

“I want to do well for my kids but I’m trying to balance teaching them under these very stressful conditions and I feel like trying to balance that, my own sanity, with also trying to teach, so trying to worry about the job market, also trying to finish a program as a full-time student, that is where my stress lies,” Powell said.

She has three children, ages 5, 8 and 10. She thinks homeschooling the two older ones won’t be as hard because they already have a foundation, while getting her 5-year-old ready for kindergarten will be more of a challenge since children that young have very short attention spans.

One of Tunette Powell’s sons does his school work at home. (Tunette Powell)

Powell said that her third-grader was a little behind academically, so along with his teacher they have created a plan for him to catch up for the next few months to make sure he’s ready for fourth grade. He was also undergoing different tests for his hearing and speech, she said, because there are a lot of sounds that he can’t pronounce yet. The school district was providing those services, but now she will have to see if the family’s insurance will cover it.

Powell works as a program director for the UCLA Parent Project and is a doctoral candidate at UCLA in urban schooling. Her current job and her ability to finish her degree, which requires working with schools, and land a full-time position both depend on schools being open.

Powell is also a parent leader of Speak UP, an LA-based parent advocacy organization that joined the We’re One Family Los Angeles effort after hearing the struggles its parent members were facing.

“Families are just beginning to come to grips with the anxiety of potential illness, the demands of working from home or losing employment income because businesses are closed, while also making sure their children feel secure and are not losing valuable instruction time,” said Katie Braude, Speak UP founder and CEO. “We are working hard to help families find resources to address these unprecedented circumstances … to be a strong voice in that effort.”

United Way of Greater Los Angeles has also launched a Pandemic Relief Fund to support L.A. County’s unsheltered residents who are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus, and low-income individuals, students and families at imminent risk of homelessness.

“As our communities with low-income working families face job losses, school closures, and health care challenges, and our homeless neighbors and partners face unprecedented challenges during the pandemic, now more than ever we need to support those in need,” said Elise Buik, president and CEO of United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

Last school year, LAUSD reported that more than 17,000 students were considered homeless. United Way estimates that currently, an estimated 59,000 people in Los Angeles are experiencing homelessness on any given night, without the ability to obtain consistent shelter or health care, and 1.7 million working families in L.A. County struggle in poverty.

United Way created a $250,000 fund from emergency reserves to spark additional donations that can be used to prevent a spike in homelessness by supporting low-wage workers, including domestic workers, street vendors, day laborers, and workers in severely impacted industries. The fund had passed $700,000 by late March, with contributions from the Blinkoff Corngold Charitable Fund, The California Wellness Foundation, Wells Fargo and anonymous donors.

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said that the city was issuing a moratorium on residential evictions for people who lost their jobs or whose wages will be diminished due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Beutner announced an emergency investment of $100 million to be spent on making sure that every LAUSD student has a device and WiFi to access to learn from home as well as training for teachers and families. He also announced the creation of a fundraising effort to help students most in need during the COVID-19 crisis.

“Schools are the center of the communities we serve, and provide an important part of the social safety net for many families and their children,” Beutner said in a news statement announcing the LA Students Most in Need fundraising effort. “On an ordinary day, we serve more than 1 million meals to children. These are not ordinary days and we must continue to support those most in need.”

The Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation, the Ballmer Group and Richard Lovett, president of Creative Artists Agency, have each contributed $250,000 to start the fund. Tax-deductible contributions can be made to the California Community Foundation.

Gov. Newsom has ordered all 40 million Californians to isolate inside their homes until further notice and said that restriction could last “many, many months.” The governor said the state projects that 25.5 million people in California will be infected over an eight-week period.

“We are devastated by the news that this virus has reached this far to affect our children’s education as well as the society as a whole,” said Meshell Baylor, an LAUSD parent and member ofFamilies In Schools. “It may seem difficult to keep our children out of school, but I’d rather them be safe than infected. In 2014, when RSV virus hit my youngest son, he tested positive for it and we were quarantined at a children’s hospital. I understand this is difficult, but LAUSD is taking safety precautions to protect our children and faculty.”

The Education Trust–West released six specific steps schools can take to promote instructional equity and preserve student well-being, including ensuring equitable access to learning materials and addressing the specific learning needs of students with disabilities, English learners, and students in temporary housing.

“Schools closures are sweeping the state. These closures will have a wide-ranging and unknown impact on students, families, and educators. To mitigate negative effects, it’s critical that schools do everything in their power to ensure that closures do not exacerbate educational inequities,” executive director Elisha Smith Arrillaga said in a statement. “It is up to state officials, community members, school and district leaders, and teachers to work together to support all students, particularly the most vulnerable, during this trying time.”

A mom and daughter picking up grab-and-go breakfast Monday at The Dream Center Los Angeles, which provides educational services and assistance to those dealing with homelessness, hunger, poverty, addiction and abuse. (Socorro Cruz)

For LA parents, the schools’ closure has set a new normal, especially for working parents. They’ve gone from spending a few hours a day with their kids to spending at least 8-12 hours trying to homeschool them, feed them, entertain them, keep them active and find some type of fun for them within the wall of their homes. And outside when possible.

A walk outside the home for a few blocks down the street and back or riding in the car for a few minutes is now the new major reward for kids — and their parents, too.

Powell said she will continue to pick up grab-and-go meals because at least for now that’s been a fun time for her kids.

“To be in a line somewhere, so even though we stay in the car, it’s still kind of fun for my kids. It’s fun for them to just ride in the car and do something rather than just stay in the house.”

More frequently, schools are giving the co-teaching model a chance but at CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School, a charter elementary in northwest Los Angeles, the model is far from the latest innovation.

Since its founding in 2001, teachers have used the Universal Design for Learning approaches and the co-teaching technique to offer students with special needs a unique opportunity of inclusion in general education classrooms.

Esther Nodal, a general education first-grade teacher at CHIME, and Kristin LaFirenza, a special ed kindergarten and first-grade teacher, have been co-teaching alongside one another at the school for the last three years.

“Students with disabilities are included in the classroom full time. Also in our classroom, we have students who are at risk, students who are on grade level, students who are above grade level. So I think the co-teaching model is very beneficial to help with all of those needs and abilities in the classroom,” Nodal said.

Nodal has been teaching at CHIME for the past 17years while LaFirenza’s teaching experience began at CHIME four years ago, so the co-teaching model is all she has experienced as a teacher.

“I feel like all students have really benefited from having two teachers and two people that they can go to. And also as far as from a special education standpoint, being in multiple classrooms gives me a lot of really good techniques and strategies that I can pull into other classrooms,” LaFirenza said. “So I feel like the co-teaching model has been wonderful.”

Both agreed that more schools should explore it since it allows not only for more innovation to take place in the classroom, but also fosters inclusion.

LA School Report asked LaFirenza and Nodal about their goals for the 2019-20 school year and what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom. Their answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell me a little bit about your students and your school community?

LaFirenza: The school community is really diverse. I think we have a population of students with a varying range of abilities in our classrooms. We also have students of different backgrounds, different socioeconomic status. They travel around. I mean… some students live close to our school and some don’t, they have to travel to get here. So it’s a wide range of abilities and backgrounds. I think just like with most communities they have lots of challenges and successes. I think in school we have students who struggle a lot, whether it’s at home or at school, academically, socially. And we also have students who excel in those areas. So I think having a community of learners that are diverse, which kind of models and mimics the actual community in the outside world, is really beneficial to them. And I think that it provides a lot of really good modeling and peer modeling for students who struggle, who do have disabilities. I think to have those peer models that don’t struggle in those areas, or have strengths in those areas, are like really great models for each other and peer support for each other.

Nodal: Another big success that I had seen across the board is, you know, a lot of the students show tolerance and acceptance and kindness and cooperation and you know, they show genuine care to help each other. And I think that that’s something that is really valuable here. I have both of my children go to this school. I have a first-grader and a third-grader. I think seeing them grow up in a community like this, as inclusive, they have friends with disabilities, they have friends without disabilities. I think it’s really created tolerance in them and open-mindedness. And also they don’t really notice that much of their differences. They just think they’re all kids and they’re all the same. Seeing my own children come through the program and the school, it’s pretty great.

How does the co-teaching model work on a regular basis? 

Nodal: So, for instance, during our morning time, which was our math, I did small group math centers and the kids rotated and during our co-teaching time and where we’re each at a center. So I led it. I had one center and Kristin and I led one center. We supported the kids that way. And then later in the day, we had a paraprofessional who called out sick today. So then Kristen came in and her role changed. At that point, she was helping us (with a) substitute paraprofessional and supporting her to support the students in the classroom and the things that she needed to know when she was in our classroom. So her role was as a co-teacher with me, we led centers together and then her role switched and she’s like directly supporting and training for a paraprofessional.

LaFirenza: Right. And then throughout the day with, so I have four different co-teachers. So in the mornings, I definitely make it a point to check in with each of them and make sure that they have what they need for the day or if they have any questions or need any type of support throughout the day. I can make sure that I get that on my plate first thing in the morning and I can work throughout the day to make sure that they all have that they need. Then throughout the day, I have a co-teaching schedule, which seems a little complex when you look at it but… so it shows on Mondays and Wednesdays, I’m in kindergarten. So my day is solely based in kindergarten. But I do make sure to check in and you know, see, ‘Hey, how’s it going in first grade? What’s going on, do you need anything, is there anything I can figure out in terms of support?’ And then we go from there. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’m in first grade and I’ll do the same thing with kindergarten.

Nodal: Also our co-teaching relationship is shared with the families. So when we communicate with families and with the students, there are two names on the door, we email together with both of our names at the signature of the emails. So it’s a community of… where people know that we’re both the teachers of the classroom, the students know we’re both the teachers of the classroom. Even though she (LaFirenza) is not there all day long, they know when she’s (going to be) here, she’s their teacher.

Because there’s another teacher in the classroom you need to coordinate with at all times, is it ever somehow difficult to try new teaching techniques or innovative things to the classroom? 

Nodal: I think obviously there are some people that just don’t work well with others, but fortunately, we work well with each other in our school’s community. All the teachers seem to work really well together. Our model is such that we don’t just co-teach together. We also plan together, we assess kids together, but when we plan the curriculum, it’s not just the two of us. All of the first-grade teachers and all of the special ed teachers for first grade. So there’s four general ed teachers, two special ed teachers, and two special ed assistants and we all core plan together. I think that those many brains really make the curriculum better because when one person thinks of something, someone else might think of something better or how to improve on it. And we really give each other feedback and bounce ideas off of each other. So I think it’s definitely a great way to collaborate and to create a really rich curriculum.

LaFirenza: Yeah and in thinking about innovation and trying new things in the classroom, I actually think it’s kind of helpful because when we were trying to start the whole teaching thing — so we started a new strategy where we model something and the students repeat it multiple times. They use their bodies, everything so that they can retain information a little bit better. And that was new to us. I think in the beginning we kind of felt more comfortable doing it when we were together because it’s like, ‘OK, let’s talk this out really quick to figure out how we’re going to do this, how we’re going to talk about it.’ And it kind of eases your mind a little knowing that there’s someone else that’s doing something for the first time also. Or ‘Hey, you’ve seen this or you’ve done this. I feel more comfortable trying it because you can help guide me, right?’ So, I actually think that the model does lend itself to innovation and to trying new things and feeling more comfortable because there’s someone else along for the ride with you.

Nodal: Also, today we were talking about we have a student who’s on an alternative curriculum and we were talking about like, ‘Oh, it’s going to start to look really different in math because it’s getting harder,’ and we had to brainstorm together a new way to like represent his work so parents can see what work he’s doing. But we do collaborate a lot and we do kind of bounce ideas off of each other a lot. This model kind of, you really need to rely on other people and help each other and collaborate.

How do you think CHIME is providing the right support for teachers? 

Nodal: Well, right now we’re, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Support) and restorative justice, that’s the route the school is taking. We’re trying to really implement best practices and moving forward to making sure that we’re meeting all the kids’ needs in the classroom. I think the school’s getting really strong in that area.

So I’m meeting with a lot of schools that are not charters or that are charters and aren’t inclusive, so I do have a lot of knowledge of schools that are not charters or schools that are not inclusive. I meet with a lot of teachers about that (inclusion). So I really think that we’re moving in the right step towards restorative justice, social-emotional learning, making sure we’re including students to the best of our ability and making sure we’re doing that universal design of learning to make sure we’re meeting everybody’s needs. So the school’s really pushing forward and going in that direction.

LaFirenza: And they’re signing us up for whole school trainings. Before school started, we did a universal design for learning training because you know, we pride ourselves on being able to design lessons that all students can access. I think we all as a school felt like, ‘Hey, we can learn more, we can do better.’ So I think always striving to do better is the thing that CHIME is really good at. I think, as Esther said, we’re moving in the right direction in all of those areas by taking those trainings and then taking the time to really show ourselves that we can learn more and we can do more as professionals.

What is your community, the families, parents doing to support you or what can they do better in supporting you?

Nodal: We have a lot of families involved in our school day. We have a lot of parents that volunteer in classrooms. They help run really big fundraising events like our school carnival and we have a committee that’s really involved at our school that helps us. If we see, for instance, we need something for our classroom, we can go to the CCA (CHIME charter community parent association)and the parents will pull together and find ways to help us get the things that we need in the classroom. We also have a lot of parents that like to volunteer in the classrooms and we make sure that they can, that they know that the class is supported in the best way possible.

So this morning we had a parent volunteer leading another one of the math centers that we were in and then on top of that, students who might need more support academically. We have a lot of parents that are along for the ride and they value our input and I think that that is really important because we are able to say, ‘Hey, let’s try this at home, see if you can support a little bit more and do this at home. We’ll give you some materials.’ I think that that is really helpful here too. And of course, if we have families that are not as supportive, our administration has always helped us in those situations. I would say there are — most families are, the majority of families are — here. They’re supportive, they communicate well, we communicate with them a lot through email and then school emails. We have a tight community.

As educators, is there anything that you would like to change in California’s public education system? 

LaFirenza: Personally, I feel that I would like to see inclusion in more schools across the state, across the nation because seeing this model and seeing the student’s success is the success of an educator. I feel like inclusion is the way to go in education and I think that more schools should explore that route. So I think that that definitely is a wish of mine.

Nodal: I’ve done lots of presentations on co-teaching to a lot of public schools. I think the thing I hear the most is, ‘CHIME is special. We can’t do what CHIME does.’ That’s kind of like the attitude I would like to get rid of. It might be more work. It’s definitely worth it. I think that that perception of inclusion is too hard, we can’t do it, I hear that from a lot of people, teacher friends that aren’t at a charter school or just at a school with inclusion. I think that is the perception I would like to get rid of … Inclusion can be done. It’s a lot of work. It’s worth it. It takes dedication and time, which hopefully a lot of teachers are dedicated to what they do.

LaFirenza: Right. I think I also hear people say, ‘Well, we don’t have enough support to do inclusion.’ You know, yes, you do need support to do inclusion, but I think with the support you have, you just need to design the support in a different way, right? You need to figure out what ways you can use those supports to create this new environment. We do it in baby steps. I think baby steps need to happen with any new endeavor that you take on. Baby steps, a little bit at a time, just do this little part and that’s kind of (how) you can do it.

What are your goals, separately or together, for this school year?

Nodal: I think just as much co-teaching and the whole brain teaching, that’s something that we really want to get better at and implement more. I don’t feel like I’m implementing it enough at this point. I really enjoy it. So I think that was a big goal for us this year. And more co-teaching, always. That’s always something that we strive for.

LaFirenza: Definitely. So Esther and I have co-taught .. I would say this is maybe our second or third year co-teaching together. And with that, I think in the past, I believe the first year that I was with her, I was a brand new teacher, you know, and I was really getting my feet on the ground at that point and didn’t do a whole lot of fundamental co-teaching. It’s hard. So this year, we really talked at the beginning of the year and I said, ‘I want to co-teach more in here. I want to get up with the students and help you co-teach more.’ So that definitely was a goal of mine, just to be more of a support in different ways because I think we fell into a routine of, you know, I was in the classroom and just supporting and not necessarily up in front of the classroom. So this year I wanted, my goal is to come in here and to try a lot of different co-teaching strategies.

What’s your biggest motivation to continue teaching?

LaFirenza: I would say for me seeing the little successes. You see small growth every single day with these students and you see that light bulb click with some students. Just seeing how dedicated and motivated the students are to better themselves motivates me to better myself and justify new ways to support them and to become a better educator every day. I think that’s really my motivator.

Nodal: I think teaching so long, people always ask me, ‘Do you want to go into administration? Do you want to go into other fields?’ And those things are not things that interest me. I’m really interested in teaching the kids to read. Reading is a big thing in first grade. And seeing them read and make those big growths and milestones is really empowering for me. But also teaching so long, I also just strive to change because then it can get really boring and monotonous. So we like to change it up and we try new things and kind of change our teaching style as new best practices come out. I think that’s what’s exciting for me is all this new stuff that’s happening in education and also just teaching kids to read is pretty awesome.

The results released by the California Department of Education show that, across all grades statewide, 9.94 percent of disadvantaged black students and 15.64 percent of disadvantaged Latino students met or exceeded the science standards on the inaugural test known as CAST, compared to 44 percent of non-disadvantaged white students and nearly 60 percent of Asian students.

The results for those student subgroups in Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in California and the second largest in the country, closely mirrored the state’s, with 10 percent of low-income black students and 16 percent of low-income Latino students meeting or exceeding the science standards. Only 5 percent of LAUSD’s English learners met or exceeded them, lower than special education students at 8 percent.

LAUSD’s Science Academy STEM Magnet, a middle and high school for gifted and highly gifted students whose enrollment is more than 80 percent white and Asian, had the highest score in the state, with 98.5 percent of its students meeting or exceeding standards.

The new science test, aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, was taken for the first time last spring by students in grades 5 and 8 and 10 through 12.

“The results confirm the trends we continue to see in other assessment data — that our education systems are failing to support African American, Latinx, English learners, and low-income students to meet California’s Science standards,” Christopher J. Nellum, deputy director of Education Trust–West, said in an email statement Feb. 6, the day the scores were released. “These CAST results do not reflect the promise we must uphold to accelerate academic progress for all students, especially students of color and low-income students.”

Statewide, the 2019 CAST scores showed that nearly 30 percent of students who took the test met or exceeded standards. In Los Angeles Unified, 23 percent of them met or exceeded standards.

Nellum also noted the results for English learners statewide are alarmingly low, with only 3 percent meeting the standards. The numbers are even worse for the individual grades with 8th-grade ELLs at 2.3 percent; 10th-graders at 1.1 percent, 11th-graders at 2.2 percent and 12th-graders at 1.38 percent.

“We know these results are not a reflection of student ability; rather, they are a reflection of systems and practices that continue to fail students,” Nellum said.

• Read more: Teacher spotlight: KIPP’s Nicole Tavera on making testing less stressful and science more fun to learn 

The CAST scores add another dimension to the dismal results and deep achievement gap seen in the state’s reading and math test scores. The results for the 2018-19 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, known as CAASPP, showed 16 percent of disadvantaged black students and 24 percent of disadvantaged Latino students met or exceeded math standards while 27 percent for disadvantaged black students and 36 percent of disadvantaged Latinos met or exceeded the standard in reading.

LAUSD’s secondary science coordinator Ayham Dahi said the science test results are “very concerning” but that there was little expectation for stronger outcomes given that the new science standards were a major overhaul. He thinks the scores may represent a baseline.

“This is the first time we get to see these results. It was quite a shift from our old ways of instruction and learning,” Dahi said.“We really didn’t know what to expect this year.”

• Read more: Pilot programs are preparing district for new state science tests

“Our number one goal is to address the needs of all students, that all subgroups, have quality support systems in place in schools and provide targeted intervention for our students to address their needs and to bridge the opportunity gap for our students. That’s the main focus of LAUSD,” he added.

Dahi highlighted that the achievement demands are different now, with students needing to to apply learning skills, like argumentation from evidence, investigation and planning, and to use models rather than memorization from the old standards.

The new science test measures the Next Generation Science Standards adopted in 2013 to replace the old standards from 1998. In 2016, the State Board of Education released not a formal curriculum but a framework to help guide teachers with implementation.

Dahi noted that next year will be the first in which science teachers will have curriculum and materials available under the new standards.

“We are going to have for the first time brand-new curriculum, special materials including science kits in our schools that are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. Up to this date and for the last four to five years we didn’t have that. Our teachers had to supplement the (Next Generation Science Standards) with other materials. Next year we don’t have to do that.”

Dahi said they didn’t even know what the CAST was going to look like going into the first exam and that it may be different next year. Despite that, he said the district is very optimistic about students getting better scores next year.

Chelsea Culbert is a high school science teacher at Alliance Susan and Eric Smidt Technology High School in Lincoln Heights in northeast Los Angeles. The school serves more than 90 percent low-income Latino students. Culbert says she has been teaching under the Next Generation Science Standards for the last six years and slightly over 23 percent of her high school students met or exceeded the standards on the new test, above LAUSD’s average of nearly 11 percent of high schoolers meeting or exceeding standards.

Culbert believes that the CAST does not necessarily test student’s knowledge, but rather measures more how they apply it. Once students can learn the new science standards in the elementary grades, she said, they will have the skills needed to get better test scores in the secondary grades.

She also noted that the high school grades currently lack an effective science curriculum, which may have contributed to the low scores statewide.

“There is not much curriculum available at all using the new standards,” Culbert said. She had to create her own by using different resources to develop her lessons. “Even what we got this year is not great. At the high school level, there’s nothing awesome that I can say everyone is using because it doesn’t exist.”

Even though Culbert did not experience a major shift herself, she thinks that for teachers who have been teaching under the old science standards for a long time adopting the new ones can be a significant struggle.

“If teachers are very used to the old way of teaching and they are not willing or don’t have the resources to change, that’s probably another very big barrier,” she said.

• Read more: 61 Scientists Protest Changes to New Mexico Science Standards on Climate Change, Evolution

Nellum laid out some recommendations issued by Education Trust–West to close the achievement gap evident in the CAST results, including using the nearly $1 billion dollars in funding allocated by Gov. Gavin Newsom for teacher training to ensure “effective and equitable science standards implementation in high-need school communities.”

“California needs a plan to prepare, recruit, and retain many more STEM teachers — especially women and teachers of color” “Nellum said. “School and district leaders should commit to providing robust professional learning opportunities to current and future educators and ensure effective and equitable standards implementation.”

Last year, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond launched a new initiative to close the achievement gap statewide. He created a working group to look closely at schools throughout the state that have shown success in improving outcomes for African-Americans, Latinos and other students of color, while also addressing the recruitment and retention of teachers of color.

Thurmond appointed three co-chairs to lead the Closing the Achievement Gap task force including Ryan Smith, who recently joined the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit established in 2007 to manage what were then the district’s lowest-performing schools.

Smith, who serves as chief external officer, told LA School Report in an interview last summer that the answer is not just providing more money to schools.

“It’s how we spend it. As we fight to increase school funding, we need to ensure that funds are used in support of the highest-need schools across our state. We also must also ensure that every student — no matter his or her ZIP code — is receiving the same type of rigorous and culturally relevant curriculum in class and early and expanded learning opportunities.”

Suzanne Nagata teaches kindergarten, first and second grade at Citizens of the World Charter School Mar Vista. (CWC)

Suzanne Nagata was not aware of the kind of a unique educational upbringing she had until after she graduated from UC Berkeley and went to Japan to teach English as a second language for three years.

“That’s when I really realized, ‘Oh wow, my cultural upbringing was not the same as most people know,’’’ she said, referring to the progressive school she attended as a child. So when Nagata discovered Citizens of the World Charter SchoolMar Vista, in West Los Angeles, she quickly decided that she wanted to be part of its similarly progressive education model, where the students’ social-emotional learning and diverse cultural immersion form the foundation of the school’s mission.

“When I found CWC, … they’re doing everything that is just so fully aligned with my educational philosophy, in terms of SEL and academics and the ability to have arts integration,” she said. “And the social justice piece also was really important to me.”

After getting her teaching credential at California State University Northridge, she became a founding teacher at an Aspire charter school in South LA nine years ago. She was also a founding lead teacher at Los Angeles Unified School District’s Spanish Immersion Program at Broadway Elementary, before joining CWC, where she has been teaching kindergarten, first and second grade for the past three years.

• Read more: Intentionally Diverse Charter Schools: At Citizens of the World, Community Engagement and Students’ Own Backgrounds Are the Foundation for Academic Success

Nagata says that the social-emotional learning part is what she really appreciates the most. Before teaching she had training as a massage therapist and she is bringing that “mind-body awareness” to her young students in the classroom.

“Our school does a lot of meditation. I do yoga with my kids and really try to get them aware of what’s happening. Especially in the younger grades, I think it really helps them to get a sense of who they are.”

LA School Report asked Nagata about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

When did you realize you wanted to be a teacher?

Well, my second grade teacher told me and my parents, ‘Suzanne’s going to be a teacher.’ But I’ve always had a very rebellious spirit and I was like, ‘No, no.’ So I was kind of always trying to figure out what else I could do. Ever since I was in fourth grade, I started as a TA in summer school classes and I was always teaching something. So, you know I taught puppetry and I did SAT prep. When I was in high school, I was a mentor for little kids and I was a camp counselor. I was always doing teaching, even when I was in college. When I went to Berkeley, I volunteered in elementary school classes and I did SAT prep in low-income schools and in Oakland.

What do you like the most about teaching at Citizens of the World? 

There’s so many reasons. Well first, you know, the educational philosophy here. The fact that it’s progressive, everything’s hands on. I love our inquiry-based approach. So, the way that we do our social studies curriculum is through something called inquiry where it’s really focused on social justice in terms of bringing in current events. We really tie everything to student interest. So we’ll introduce ideas and then based on what they are really interested in, what peaks their interest in that, we do projects. So we’re also project-based here. Instead of just learning content, students are really making it meaningful and real world. So for example, one year we were talking about communities and in first grade … the idea of homelessness became really of interest to them.

And so at a first grade level we were able to build a project around writing a song about homelessness after we learned about it. And that was awesome because we got some recognition from the mayor’s office and so they came out and that was really exciting for the kids to see that their interests and their work could then move out into the world and have an effect to the level of the mayor’s office coming out. At the higher grades, last year, I think it was fourth grade, they realized that we have the crosswalk in front of our school and they felt like that wasn’t safe enough. So they contacted Mike Bonin, who’s our City Council member, and then they worked with him. I don’t know the details, but I do know that now we have a crosswalk light and they redid some of the crosswalks so that it’s accessible. So it was really exciting for those kids to see that the concerns that they had actually had an effect on the world around them.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Excelencia’s Amber Lewis on getting 81% of her students proficient in math, why teaching is harder than it looks and making sure her kids never feel failed by the system

How does the social-emotional curriculum model work in your classroom?

So the social-emotional part I feel is kind of the foundation of our school. Everything we do, everyone who works here understands that. Those social-emotional skills of being able to find how we interact with people and understanding ourselves and understanding the cultural context of each other. I think that’s something that everyone’s always thinking about in terms of even how we teach math. But we also have very specific things that we do in class. So we have a curriculum that explicitly teaches how to notice somebody who’s having different feelings and how to communicate those feelings. Because in younger grades, they still need to learn how to express themselves. We also use restorative justice and circle ways. So restorative justice is kind of a whole program and something called responsive classroom, but it’s all about how to bring in social-emotional learning and awareness into the classroom through different activities. So for example, we start the day with the kids just talking about things that they’re interested in. And so, the other kids really are able to make connections and they know how to listen to each other. We also do counsel, which is kind of a sacred time where you’re speaking from the heart and you’re talking about issues and sometimes that’s how we solve issues.

You mentioned also diversity as one of the foundations in your school, how is that an important part of students’ learning?

Yeah, I love that our school is diverse by design because I think it just really opens up their mind when they understand. I mean empathy and inclusion is the direction for society to really reach understanding, about all the issues that are happening in the world. Empathy and inclusion are really kind of the big overarching of ideas that we need our kids to have, so that when they move out into the world, they see things through those lenses. If they’re not exposed to differences, they don’t understand other cultures. A big part of the social- emotional piece is that we’re a part of society and we want to be changemakers. We want to be effective members. It affects the citizens or members (of that society). And a big part of that is having respect for others, being able to communicate in a way that other people will understand you and understanding each other culturally, I think is kind of the base of all that.

What are you currently doing in the classroom that you think is kind of unique or innovative?

It’s the school model. I think it isn’t unique to me because I went to a progressive school, so sometimes I forget that it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, they don’t do this in other classrooms.’ But I think I have to kind of jump into the mind of a person who had traditional schooling. So I guess there’s a few things I would say. Maybe I will tell you what I thought was something that I haven’t heard of. When you talk about the mindfulness of that student being aware of themselves, I think that’s something unique that I haven’t heard from other educators.

So we practice that through just learning how to check in with yourself, which is like we practice breathing, we introduce all different kinds of mindfulness practices. We have a whole curriculum that we use, but on top of that it’s called mind app and that just introduces students to the idea that there are different ways to pay attention to things. So it helps them learn how to quiet their body and quiet their mind so that you just notice what’s happening because sometimes we are just reacting to things and we’re not even really aware of what’s happening. So just taking breaths, which is kind of what we say is like when you take a breath, that’s something that is always happening inside your body and it’s something that is you. It’s not something else, right? It’s your breath. It’s different than other people’s. So the breathing practices are really important.

Like for example, this morning the students came in and they were really wild and which is fine. That’s how it is. You know, there was just a lot of energy. I said, ‘Oh, let’s start with the mindful moment’ and my students know as soon as I say that, it’s OK, I don’t have to pay attention to anything else but my breath and they can close their eyes, which is also something I think is not happening a lot in school. It’s amazing when the students can see just from two minutes of just checking in with yourself and being with your breath, for them it’s profound. They get to have their own experience of how they can affect the whole classroom just by being responsible for themselves. It is beautiful. Students love it.

• Read more: What’s an emotion scientist? Inside the new concept shaping social-emotional learning

What do you think are some of the issues that need to be addressed in the public education system in California?

Mental health… because our school was so focused on SEL, the social-emotional learning, and a big part of that is understanding your own feelings. I just think that’s still related to mental health. That a lot of the mental health issues are happening because we’re not aware of what’s really happening. You know, I think it’s as easy as doing a little more mindfulness in class. I think something that is so great for our kids also is using something called the peace path, which comes from restorative justice.

I think a lot of mental health is, ‘I don’t understand myself. I don’t understand what’s happening in the world,’ and that disconnect between who you authentically are and what’s happening around you and the lack of control. I think that’s what mental health is all about.

How do you think parents and the community in general can better support teachers?

I feel like on an individual level communication is really the most important thing. I wish I had some kind of big political thing to say. I think no one knows their child better than a parent and I think just being willing to communicate with the teachers about what’s happening and what you know about your child can really make the biggest difference because we spend half of their life with them in the classroom. You know, it’s like you get them half time, we get them half time or maybe we even spend more time with your child, but (they) spend their whole life with them. So for me, I just feel really knowing that teachers want that communication.

What’s your main goal for this school year? 

I have some big goals. One of my main goals is to increase, do more arts integration in the classroom because it’s just through the arts that I think children feel confident, can explore creativity and I think it brings out a whole different side of kids and I think it’s such a great way to access the curriculum. It’s a great way to access information and learning.

Personally, I just want to do more arts integration because I’ve seen how it can engage kids who aren’t engaged, like if it’s just straight academics, which you don’t really do in a progressive model in general. I just think it brings in so many great things, for example, such as problem solving, in a meaningful and real way, that I think is kind of the basis of what we want to be teaching kids is problem-solving skills. I also always want to be supporting more teachers. I’m really big on communication, teachers working with other teachers, because I think teachers have so much knowledge and they do such amazing things in their classrooms, that if teachers can have the time to share those things that they’re doing, I think it helps the kid so much.

Long Beach Unified School District Superintendent Chris Steinhauser and Khan Academy founder Sal Khan discuss their then-budding partnership in 2018. That relationship would serve as a model for the partnerships Khan has now established with 11 districts across the country. (Credit: Esmeralda Fabián Romero)

How has California’s third-largest school district, serving mostly low-income Latinos and blacks, been propelling its students to college by raising their SAT scores and boosting their state test scores?

Chris Steinhauser, superintendent of Long Beach Unified School District for the last 18 years, will tell you that forging the first formal partnership with Khan Academy — a leading provider of free online instructional videos — has been key.

In 2016, Long Beach USD first offered Khan’s SAT preparation to over 300 seniors with low scores — students whose families couldn’t afford the expensive college-test preparation offered by private tutoring companies. After using Khan’s interactive online tool, nearly 40 percent of them — mostly students of color — reached the minimum score that made them eligible to apply for state colleges and four-year universities. Between the 2014-15 and 2018-19 school years, the number of Long Beach USD students graduating with a college-eligible index increased 20 percentage points, according to data the district reported in May of last year.

“It is truly a game-changer for kids and families in closing the achievement gap,” Steinhauser said in an interview back in 2018 when he sat down with Khan Academy founder, Sal Khan, to talk about their budding partnership.

Beyond the early SAT prep for all seniors, the wider pilot program that launched in 2017-18 incorporated Khan Academy’s videos into math and other subject instruction for younger students. About 90 teachers volunteered to integrate Khan videos, practice problems and quizzes into their lessons for at least 30 minutes per week. More than half of them were math teachers in 20 of the district’s middle schools, who together taught more than 5,300 students. By the end of the 2017-18 school year, one-third of the district’s over 70,000 students were using the videos.

Hughes Middle School’s math teacher Mary Hoang with a student of her eighth grade class.(Credit: Esmeralda Fabián Romero)

A research analysis of the pilot program released by Khan in September in collaboration with the district, revealed that Long Beach teachers using their videos and interactive tools for one class period per week for at least 30 minutes was associated with students gaining a 22-point increase on the state math test — the 2018 Smarter Balanced Assessment (CAASPP) — compared to the previous year.

The analysis, for which the district provided non-identifying student-level data, does not conclude that the use of the program alone caused the gains in math, acknowledging other factors may have also contributed. In fact, a Chalkbeat article points out that previous studies on Khan have not been able to prove a direct correlation between student gains and the use of Khan Academy tools.

Steinhauser said that students whose teachers are using Khan as a regular resource in their classrooms are outscoring their counterparts who are not. “In the same school, in the same subject, same kind of kids, teachers using it get much higher scores.”

Steinhauser said in the 2018 interview that while the use of Khan online videos was free, teacher training was paid for out of the district’s professional development budget. “We spent a lot of money on buying devices and in professional development. That was intentional, but the payoff is our kids are getting into college.”

In a video released in 2019 along with the research analysis, Steinhauser says that 93 percent of the district’s sixth- to 12th-graders were using Khan Academy last year and Assistant Superintendent Christopher Lund said at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year, that the partnership had expanded to at least five Long Beach USD elementary schools.

The district is now paying Khan for some services, while the use of instructional online videos, such as the ones for Advanced Placement courses, and the use of data dashboards for teachers are free.

Using Long Beach Unified as point of reference, Khan launched a broad initiative in the fall, Khan Academy Districts, hoping to reach more classrooms with its services and supports on a paying basis. It followed that up with a personalized learning tool that a handful of other districts are now paying to use. Together, the two new Khan programs are in 11 school districts, stretching from California to Florida, including two of the nation’s largest, Houston and Clark County, Nevada, according to the company.

One of those new partnership districts, California’s Compton Unified, embarked on a relationship with Khan after watching what was happening in Long Beach.

“It was definitely a little neighborly competition to say ‘Hey, if Long Beach is doing this, why isn’t Khan over here working with us, too?’” Greg Puccia, a Compton school official who oversees curriculum, told Chalkbeat in September.

Compton Unified is paying Khan Academy $44,000 this school year to institute a program modeled after the one in Long Beach, the news site reported.

The Long Beach experiment

Long Beach Unified, south of Los Angeles, serves 72,000 students in its 85 schools. Nearly 60 percent of them are Latino, 65 percent are from low-income families and 15 percent are English learners.

Steinhauser, who was both a student and parent in the district, personally called 340 seniors from low- income families with the lowest SAT scores in 2016 and encouraged them to use the free Khan videos to prepare for the test and improve their scores the next time around.

After using the video tutoring, 130 of those students — 96 percent of whom were students of color — were able to qualify for the California State University system in the 2016-17 school year. Overall, the district saw a jump from 38 to 58 percent in the number of Cal State-eligible seniors from the 2014-15 school year to its 2018-19 senior class.

The 23 CSU campuses use an eligibility Index for admissions, which calculates high school GPA and SAT or ACT test scores.

“It’s a really great equity issue,” Steinhauser said. “We saw the power of it, so the next step was to put it in every classroom so we could accelerate the work and the outcomes.”

During the pilot program, teachers were not required to use the videos, but he said that they were encouraged to formally incorporate them into their lessons. Teachers — along with district staff who are responsible for curriculum, technology and instruction — received formal training in the fall of 2018 by Khan that included on-site sessions, webinars and support materials. Khan offered teachers professional development with ongoing virtual support throughout the year.

Khan also created the learning dashboard, an analytic tool that keeps track of students’ progress through an individual online account provided by Khan for each student so the teacher can identify where a particular student is failing to grasp concepts and recommend specific practice assignments to reinforce skills.

During the 2017-18 school year, the number of teachers actively using the videos in regular classroom instruction grew exponentially, from 120 to almost 500 — nearly 16 percent of the district’s 3,200 teachers.

In addition, about 7,000 students in the district’s K-8 afterschool program used Khan videos when getting homework assistance or tutoring on a wide variety of subjects during the 2017-18 pilot year.

In the summer of 2018, the videos were added to the summer school program and in the fall of that year, the pilot expanded to include all fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms. Even parents have gotten training so they can use the videos to help their children at home.

For Khan’s founder, the Long Beach partnership provided a chance to show how fast students could increase learning when teachers used the videos as part of their regular classroom instruction. Sal Khan described Long Beach USD as being unique in implementing the program “with high fidelity and in a rigorous way.”

During the 2018 interview, he praised Steinhauser, who announced in December that he would retire at the end of this school year after leading the district that has become nationally recognized as exemplary and innovative. EdSource noted that Steinhauser is one of the nation’s longest-serving urban superintendents, having spent nearly two decades in a job whose average length of tenure is about six years.

“Here’s a really innovative superintendent and exactly the type of district that if things can work really well here — it’s large, it’s diverse — it can work anywhere else in the country,” Khan said.

‘Virtual is nice’ — but real classrooms even more powerful

Khan announced its new paid initiative Khan Academy Districts, which in addition to Long Beach and Compton, includes Madera Unified School District in California, Seminole County Public Schools in Florida, Houston Independent School District and Detroit Public Schools for the 2019-20 school year.

Later in 2019, it launched MAP Accelerator, a new personalized learning tool that integrates MAP Growth assessments that help teachers identify student learning needs and deliver differentiated instruction. According to Khan, five districts launched MAP Accelerator pilots that are now reaching 180,000 students.

They are Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jefferson County School District in Louisville, Kentucky; and three others in California, Glendale Unified School District in Glendale, Pajaro Valley Unified School District in Watsonville and Madera, which is using both offerings from Khan.

As for the free online tutorials covering a range of K-12 subjects that first defined the Mountain View, California-based nonprofit, Khan says they are used by more than 18 million learners every month, in more than 190 countries and have been translated into 18 languages. Just last week, Khan reported that its free SAT preparation hit a milestone of 10 million registered users.

It’s a long way from the virtual tutoring sessions that founder Sal Khan created in his closet in 2008 to help out his cousin.

• Read more: 74 Interview: Sal Khan on Personalized Learning, a Global Diploma, and How He’d Spend $100 million

In July 2018, Khan launched a free educational app for toddlers ages 2 to 5 with reading, counting and storytelling activities. The same year, Puerto Rico’s College Board began working with Khan on Spanish practice for the Puerto Rico College Admission Test.

“Virtual is nice,” Khan said, “but when it’s coupled with incredible teachers and administrators and done in the right way, that is when you really get the power.”

Khan in the classroom

Long Beach teachers in grades 6 and 7 used the videos in their math instruction. In high school, the videos were used in Algebra 1 and three AP courses — U.S. History, World History and Statistics — subjects where students needed to improve their passing rate.

Mary Hoang, a math teacher at Charles Evans Hughes Middle School, used Khan videos throughout most of the 2017-18 school year.

Hoang taught her lesson, gave a quiz and then students, who all have their own Chromebooks, could watch a Khan video on the lesson, which could take about 20 minutes out of the 50-minute class. Then students who scored low on the first quiz would take it again, repeating the process until their scores improved, she explained.

“Some of my students are already recognizing they are getting better at math,” Hoang said during a class demo in 2018. “Other students are already going beyond it, coming to me and saying they found algebra and geometry videos they are watching. I see they’re exploring on their own videos of subjects they will be taking in high school.”

Seventh-grade students Preston Curtis, left, and Brando Armenta are using Khan in their math and history classes at Hughes Middle School. (Credit: Esmeralda Fabián Romero)

Preston Curtis, one of Hoang’s students, said, “Before using Khan, I used other websites where I got stuck and confused. With Khan, it makes sense to me. It makes it easier for our teacher and for us.”

His classmate, Brandon Armenta said, “I used to get a lot of Bs. By using Khan, I get many As in math and history.”

Hoang also assigned the videos as homework and to prepare students for the state tests given in May. She said teachers get extra support online or by email anytime they need it. Steinhauser said Khan has never turned down any district request: “I can’t say that’s true with all our partners.”

Hoang said she started using Khan a few years earlier at home for her own personal use and “loved it.”

“When the district said we were going to be trained to use it (in the classroom), I thought for sure I’m signing up for that training,” said Hoang, who had been teaching math for over 13 years, nine of them at Long Beach Unified. “As an educator, I think it is amazing.”

The technological part of the pilot was “a very easy roll-out,” Steinhauser said.

“Almost all schools have one device per student, and we are also working with nonprofit organizations in the city to make sure all students can have access to a device and internet at public spaces,” he said.

Steinhauser said the district also promoted internal competition among students and schools using Khan to see who could get higher scores in math assessments, for example.

“We get monthly reports, we hold everyone accountable in a healthy way, telling schools, ‘Why are other schools getting such and such results?’ So we encourage them to have a healthy competition,” Steinhauser said. “There’s even a competition among students, they love it.”

Hoang said she encourages parents to use Khan at home as a resource to help support their children, and she has received positive parent input. “They know there’s a link between them (their kids) using Khan and their improvement with their test scores,” she said.

“Their feedback has been 100 percent positive,” Steinhauser said. “They see it as a very powerful tool.”

• Read more: Long Beach schools chief: Want to get to know our schools better? Academic growth data is a very good place to start

Daniel Lieu

Daniel Lieu is just 22 years old but he’s already certain that he chose the right profession as a STEAM teacher, serving mainly low-income minority students in South Los Angeles. He believes race or ethnicity should not be a determinant for whether students become engineers or scientists. Lieu thinks what they need is to be exposed to STEAM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics —experiences early on in life and in school.

Lieu is in his second year teaching at Math and Science College Preparatory, a charter high school that is part of the STEM Prep Schools, where he teaches engineering to juniors and seniors using project-based learning..

“I think project-based, is really where you learn more because it’s challenging to a different level. You have to problem-solve, you have to be creative, you have to work around solutions and that’s what is important in the real world. So it’s super important.”

• Read more: Do Standards and Project-Based Learning Go Hand in Hand? Prof. Nell Duke Says Yes, & Looks at the Best & Worst of PBL

Lieu learned to love the teaching profession from his mom, who was a public school teacher in Lawndale, where he also attended charters schools. He said that he grew up watching his mom enjoying her job. While in college he initially planned to go to medical school, but decided instead to pursue teaching and ended up graduating from UC Irvine with a bachelor’s degree in biology and his teaching credential.

“Because of the STEM teachers shortage, there’s a lot of programs where you can actually do a bachelor’s and a teaching credential so I was in a program called the Cal Teach,” he said. “I began to realize that this is actually what I wanted to do because I saw how happy my mom was as a teacher, just coming home and I was like, ‘I want a job that is satisfying in the sense that I get to help people and I also enjoy what I do.’”

At STEM Prep, over 80 percent of the student population is Latino.

A recent study found that though black and Latino students show a strong interest in pursuing a STEM degree, they drop out of college programs at a higher rate than their white peers. One reason highlighted by the researchers is that low-income families have less access to STEM academic resources.

Lieu thinks that’s very much what happens in communities like those where his students are growing up. But he also strongly believes those statistics can change.

“I think it really depends on how much exposure they have because growing up they may not have exposure to professionals or family members who are in STEM,” he said. “I do definitely see that they want to be the future STEM professionals and they have to know that they can be … telling them that they can is the first step.”

LA School Report asked Lieu about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for the 2019-20 school year. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you choose to teach in this community?

The purpose of why I wanted to be a teacher was to really, whatever job I went to, I just wanted to make a difference in somebody else’s life because I know personally, that’s what brings me joy. If I could have that satisfaction, then I know that whatever job I’m in, I’d be happy. I grew up with a lot of friends who are from low-income environments and I saw what they had to overcome and how the teachers helped them overcome it, and I wanted to be a part of that motivation and that change for other people. So I chose a community where it was close to home and also in a population that I felt would bring me that satisfaction of knowing that I am making a change in the world.

How important is innovation in your teaching in order to have positive student outcomes?

I think the school highlights innovation in the sense that they want this school to be training the future STEM professionals. So my lessons are very engaging in that they’re hands-on, so how much … if they’re doing circuits, so it’s very hands-on in the things that prepare them and show them that they can be an engineer. I think innovation is important in the classroom to show students that they can do things of the future and that require creativity. You have to bring creativity into your lessons. … I always ask myself the question, ‘How can I show them that they can be engineers and scientists?” A lot of that requires innovation through my lessons.

Teaching overwhelmingly Latino students at your school, how do you support their interest in STEM careers?

To be honest, I think anybody can be into STEM regardless of what race, what ethnicity they are. I think it really depends on how much exposure they have because growing up they may not have exposure to professionals or family members who are in STEM. I’m going back to those statistics. They may not see these and because of that, they may not see themselves as STEM thinkers. They may not see that they can be engineers and scientists, so I think that in education, there’s huge importance in showing them that they can. In my lessons, I incorporate a lot of that, and if you look at my classroom, they’re really engaged.

So they’re all very into the circuits, into building it, and at this school, I think that the push of ‘you can be a scientist, you can be an engineer’ is hopefully encouraging that idea in these students.

What do you think your school’s leadership is doing right in setting up teachers for success?

I think the support because we’re a small school and because we’re a small school, I think that we have access to a lot of people and resources. There’s a lot of coaching, so observations happen very often. We’re constantly observed or we’re constantly evaluated in the sense that we’re not judged, but we know that they want to make us better educators. So it just doesn’t feel like judging. It feels like the school wants to push us to be better teachers for our students. I think that’s the greatest strength. The coaching model at this school and the supports that you get. I think I’ve grown a lot because of that. They record you and it’s not like, ‘Look at what you did.’ It’s a, ‘OK, so how can we grow from this?’

What do you think the school district or the state can do differently to bring more teachers into the profession and particularly into STEM?

I think one thing that I’ve noticed is that STEM can be inclusive, but I think that STEM extends beyond just the science, technology, engineering, math. I think all the other subjects are important because a part of STEM is knowing how to understand texts. Part of STEM is knowing how to write, how to read, how to be creative, and that’s in the arts. So I think that bringing other subjects and highlighting them as important aspects of STEM too can help.

I think at a district level and even a state level, they’re pushing STEM a lot and that’s important. STEM is extremely important for the future and I think that’s also important to highlight the arts and the humanities because that is a critical support to STEM.

• Read more: The Great STEM Debate: States Can’t Agree on What Those Four Letters Mean, and That’s a Problem

What do you think parents can do to help STEM teachers better?

I think to support their student because part of the student’s growth is from the teachers, from the school and the parents, so it’s teamwork. It’s a team effort between the parents, us and the student, so we have to work well together. I think understanding the student, working with them to improve, so that could be through asking them how their school day was. I think that plays a big role in the student’s interest in school, too. The participation of the parents for us — the more that we communicate with the parent, the more that we can understand the student. The more that the student communicates with their parent about school, the more they may be pushed toward talking about, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ It’s like, have you tried going to, let’s say, the California Science Center right down the street (to find) resources and support.

What’s been one of your greatest accomplishments so far?

I think that they all fall under the theme of … character development, like TV shows, The Office, Friends, all of these sitcoms have good character development. So, I like to see when my students go from either really shy or reserved and eventually they start opening up inside the classroom and that’s when I know that I’ve created an environment that’s open. I feel like this year I’ve created that more, created that space where I’ve seen students go from quiet to participating and talking to other people. I think just seeing the character development in the classroom of my kids. I’m glad that there’s a space for them to feel like they can be confident in themselves.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Excelencia’s Amber Lewis on getting 81% of her students proficient in math, why teaching is harder than it looks and making sure her kids never feel failed by the system

What’s one of your main goals for this school year?

This year my goal is to learn how to balance teaching with also spending enough time to care for my students because I think sometimes you can teach, but you forget to care for the students. I have this power struggle where sometimes I’ve cared a lot for my teaching — wondering, I am pushing enough content or pushing enough rigor — but sometimes I feel like I can be too rigorous and then forget to care as much for my students. So I want to balance that. How can I care for them a lot and also push them with a lot of rigor, how can I be both? We just had professional development on how to love your students and that was super applicable to my goal this year.

What did you learn from it?

That students have different love languages just like how we have different love languages, understanding each of my student’s love language. So for example, something that was brought up by the person leading the development was, if they offer you a snack that might be their way of opening up to you. I’m used to just saying no, it’s OK just all the time, but I’m realizing that’s their way of showing love to me. So, I’ve started taking it and I’ve seen their face light up because now they feel love because I took their gift. And the same way, if I know that they like snacks, I can offer them back as well.

I think that there’s a shift and like they’re more likely to participate in class and try to put a lot of effort into an assignment when they know that I care about them because they know that I’m not out to get them, or I’m out to get them to fail. I want them to do better and they know that. I think because of that, I’ve seen results in that they’re coming to my office hours to get tutored, more open to seeking help. I allow them to retake assessments mainly because I don’t believe the first one should dictate where you are. So if they understand the content a month later, it took them an extra month, but they understand the content. I’ve seen them take tests that are a month out, so a month later they’re still trying to learn stuff that they didn’t do well on the first time and their test scores improved a lot because of that. A lot of them went from a 1out of 4 — t’s a 1 through 4 grading system — in a matter of months just coming, seeking more tutoring help and things like that. When you give them the opportunity to try and improve, they definitely improve.

As a former charter student and now as a charter school teacher, from your own experience, what would you like people to know about charters schools?

I think one big thing for me is knowing that the goal of every teacher — public, charter, private — is that we all want to see students improve. … I feel like sometimes with the political climate and just the thoughts that revolve around the word charter, we forget that teachers want to see students improve and students want to improve. Yes, there’s a whole political argument over it and it’s important to discuss, but it’s also important to know that we are here for our students.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Napa Street’s Polly Buller-Ulm on encouraging parents of special-needs students to ‘dream big’ for them

The report, “State of Immigrants in LA County” and the challenges faced by immigrant students and the children of immigrants across L.A. schools were among the main topics of discussion at the first “The Future of Immigrants in Los Angeles” summit in downtown L.A. on Jan. 9.

The USC report was released at the summit where more than 300 community leaders representing dozens of local and nationwide organizations, as well as elected officials, educators and pro-immigrant advocates gathered at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to discuss why immigrant parents’ civic engagement and empowerment are crucial for these students to succeed.

Efrain Escobedo, vice president of education and immigration for the California Community Foundation, said that policymakers and school districts need to understand the disparities and how anti-immigrant policies around deportation impact learning for those children.

Efraín Escobedo moderating a panel of immigration and education experts during the The Future of Immigrants in Los Angeles summit on January 9 in downtown Los Angeles. (Courtesy of California Community Foundation)

“What this report does is to have schools recognize that we have to look at families and we have to look at communities. These students are bringing needs that are impacted by the economic inequalities that exist in the county, that are impacted by the anti-immigrant policies around deportation,” Escobedo said. “All of these things affect the learning process for these immigrant children. What this report does is provide that bigger picture for school districts to understand what might be the other contributing factors that we need to think about and will force districts, I think, to say we need to partner with not just families, but with organizations.”

• Read more: Back to school but nothing’s normal. Schools mobilize to help children of immigrants after traumatic summer

Manuel Pastor, director of the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, said that while the findings are not surprising, they make it clear that school funding and greater parent involvement are critical in helping close the achievement gap for children of immigrants.

“One of the things you notice, particularly in smaller suburban districts, is that parents are as engaged as they might be, and we know that when parents are engaged, their children do better. Parents are also demanding better systems for their children, etc.,” Pastor said.

He noted that language limitations continue to be one of the main obstacles for immigrant parents to be involved in their children’s education and that schools need to do a better job of introducing themto the idea of being partof the PTA or school site councils.

“I think we face a number of different challenges. People who are immigrants, people who are undocumented, can sometimes be afraid of participating in a public sphere,” Pastor said. “Schools aren’t always welcoming to them either in terms of having meetings and the languages they’re most comfortable with or even really welcoming parents to be fully engaged.”

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: KIPP Iluminar Academy’s Mercedes Jimenez on preparing her 3rd-graders for college, why Latino parents are sometimes scared to ask questions and the goal charter and district schools share

Escobedo also highlighted parent engagement and representation as a key to the educational success of children of immigrants.

“I think it is critically important that, just as with students, for parents to feel like they can engage and feel connected to the school, which in some way, is influenced by who represents the leadership in the school, what the teachers look like, what the cultural competencies of the administrators are to understand the culture they serve in their local communities,” Escobedo said. “Very specifically, do you have administrators of color? Do you have administrators that represent the immigrant communities that they’re serving? People need to feel comfortable and trusting in wanting to collaborate and feel welcomed at schools.”

“That’s really critical,” Pastor said. “I think that is as important as being able to vote in school board elections, the signal it sends that you’re welcome, that you’re a full participant in determining the education of your children.”

Giving non-citizen families a voice

The report found that 20 percent of L.A. County’s population are either undocumented themselves or live with someone who is and that 1 in 3 Angelenos is foreign-born.

It also shows how that status is a major determinant in attaining higher education, with 33 percent of naturalized citizens in L.A. holding a bachelor’s degree compared to the 23 percent of immigrants who are permanent residents and have graduated from college. Only 9 percent of undocumented immigrants hold a college degree or higher and 60 percent don’t have a high school diploma.

Last year, Los Angeles Unified School District passed a resolution proposed by Board Member Kelly Gonez to explore a city ballot initiative giving all non-citizen parents within LAUSD’s boundaries the right to vote in school board elections. One board member, George McKenna, abstained from voting either for or against the resolution, citing concern around voter confidentiality and fears that non-citizens’ personal information would be breached and used to harm immigrant families.

L.A. Unified Board member Kelly Gonez, right, speaking at the The Future of Immigrants summit in Los Angeles on January 9 in downtown Los Angeles. (Courtesy of California Community Foundation)

Gonez, who participated in last week’s summit and has an immigrant parent, emphasized that her resolution takes into account the protection of voter confidentiality. Multiple immigrant rights groups support it, including several of those at the summit.

“Having an opportunity to have a voice about who represents the interest of your child on a school board is fundamental, so we should get that done right away,” Escobedo said. “It’s not about straight legal status, citizenship. It’s about am I a stakeholder as a parent in this district and if so, then I should have the right to choose who makes decisions for my child.”

“Even in Los Angeles, there is more work to be done to create an inclusive city where our immigrants can lead and thrive,” Gonez said in a statement on Jan. 14. “I plan to bring the energy and urgency that fueled our conversation to LA Unified as we begin the study group to pursue this change. It’s one concrete way to ensure our families have a voice and that our representatives better reflect their communities.”

At the board meeting that same day, Gonez also introduced a resolution that would demonstrate the district’s opposition to the proposed opening of a migrant youth detention center by a private company in the district she represents or anywhere within LAUSD’s boundaries.

“A youth migrant detention center has absolutely no place in the East San Fernando Valley or anywhere in Los Angeles Unified,” Gonez said during the meeting. “It is antithetical to our community’s values and our mission to create safe supportive spaces for young people. We are calling on the Los Angeles City Council to do everything in its power to stop the detention center from opening.”

The resolution that was approved unanimously by the board on Tuesday, states that the district served about 13,000 newcomer students (newly arrived immigrants) in the 2018-19 school year and expects to serve 17,000 this school year.

Reimagining education for English learners

English-speaking proficiency was named as a challenge in the report for L.A. County, where nearly 37,000 immigrant children have limited English-speaking ability as do 125,000 children who are U.S. born.

More than 305,000 of the county’s 1.5 million K-12 students were classified as English learners in the 2018-19 school year, according to the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which offered an education session at the summit.

In L.A. Unified and at the state level, English learners have ranked at the bottom of all student subgroups in the state proficiency test, known as CAASPP, for the last three years.

“When it comes specifically to English learner students or bilingual education, I would say, first and foremost, we need to radically reimagine our classrooms and the cultures in our schools,” Escobedo said, adding that 2016’s voter repeal of Prop. 227, which had mandated English-only instruction in California since 1998, gave advocates and educators the ability to do that.

“I think what we need in our schools is not just, how do we improve the outcomes of English learners under our current assessment, but how do we reimagine education and our culture to be a truly global multilingual education system, which we’re not,” Escobedo said. “So we could tinker around, but until we say we need to dismantle the English-only system we used to have and reinvent one that prizes multilingualism and multiculturalism, then I mean we’re not going to get transformation. We’re just going to get shifts.”

Daisy Lazaro, left. (Courtesy City Year Los Angeles)

Bullying, suicide, and other mental health crises are among the issues psychiatric social workers deal with daily as part of their job in schools. Their presence is needed now more than ever with rates of suicide and depression skyrocketing among young people and students across the nation experiencing trauma in the aftermath of a string of school shootings.

Only 35 percent of students with mental health concerns receive the care they need, according to the 2018 California Children’s Report Card, and school counselors face caseloads of 750 students to 1.

In her role as a psychiatric social worker at L.A. Unified’s Berendo Middle School, Daisy Lazaro helps students develop coping skills to deal with adverse situations. Beyond immediately serving young people, Lazaro says her larger goal is to destigmatize mental health issues in her central Los Angeles school community by informing and educating parents to understand them.

“In our communities, it is very much still a stigma and a lot of them are unwilling to engage their children in counseling at times,” she said.

Roughly 96 percent of Berendo’s 800 students are Latino, 26 percent are English learners and 95 percent qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

While the need is great, Lazaro said, unfortunately, the psychiatric social worker position is not guaranteed at every school, every year.

“It all depends on school budgeting,” she said. “It depends on how many days of our position they can afford.”

Providing social-emotional support and giving back to the community has always been part of Lazaro’s life. She began working with students after she graduated from college, mentoring teens at Mendez High School in East L.A. through City Year Los Angeles, an education nonprofit that partners with public schools to help keep students in school and on track to graduate.

● Read more: Partnership Between Inglewood Unified and City Year L.A. Helping to Build Social-Emotional Learning, Student Success

Her two sisters, Jessica and Jennifer, also served as City Year corps members. Jennifer also became a psychiatric social worker and now works for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.

“At City Year, I was able to kind of understand the whole school, whole child lens,” Lazaro said. “I was able to really connect one-on-one with students on the campus and work through a different perspective without actually teaching students in the classroom, but being able to build a lot of relationships and provide academic support.”

As a product of LAUSD, Lazaro, who holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and sociology from the University of Southern California, says she knew about the common challenges she would face working for the district but she has learned to look at the school system in a different manner.

“Schools deserve a psychiatric social worker at every campus to foster the whole child. I know in school the main component is academics, but a student cannot fully achieve academic success if other support systems are not in place.”

LA School Report asked Lazaro about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow innovative approaches take place in schools. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Can you share some of the struggles that students you work with have to face? 

I think just in general overall, we’re seeing an influx of our newcomers. So at the school, a lot of students are learning to adjust to new systems whether that’s educational, social and things of that sort. So it’s always helping them understand, aside from the language obviously, but it’s understanding different social norms in the United States. Aside from that, other things that we do see, unfortunately, it’s a lot of suicidal (thoughts), self-injury and things of that sort where students, unfortunately, don’t have the best positive coping skills to deal with a lot of the situations, whether they are going on at school or at home.

What’s something specific you’re doing to address trauma and how are you getting everyone in the school involved?

So sometimes during professional development, we will have a presentation about trauma-informed practices. So kind of best approaches with our students and I do want to say that, being here at Berendo, I do feel that a lot of our staff is very much trauma-informed and they’re very much aware of the different support systems here at school. So whenever they notice a behavioral issue or a student is crying or they notice a change in behavior, they know that we have two psychiatric social workers, so myself and my colleague, which actually she’s also a City Year alum as well, but we both provide the other appropriate support systems and provide referrals as needed based on the different experiences that students face.

Because we’ve seen many more tragedies such as school shootings, hostility against immigrant families, bullying, do you think schools are valuing more having mental health professionals on campus?

Definitely, I think I agree with that. It’s a little bit of a change in terms of accepting the role of us as psychiatric social workers on campus and a lot of the work that we do and the importance of the work that we do and just seeing how much more schools are willing to purchase our position. So all of that has to be taken in place. So our position is not a set staff position on every campus and there are some campuses that don’t have psychiatric social workers. So again, really with a lot of (students, it’s) not just even behavioral issues, but even death, grief and loss, things of that nature. (Schools) don’t have sometimes the full support system that, for example, (we do) here. We have two psychiatric social workers, there are academic counselors, we have a restorative justice coordinator and things of that sort. There’s an appropriate support system in place for different behaviors that the student is presenting and/or the student is facing as well of in terms of life events.

So, I do agree that a lot more school administrators are realizing about the importance that we have on campuses and how much more informed, not just our staff members can be, but also our students, bringing awareness to different mental health issues. For example, October is anti-bullying month. The previous month was suicide awareness. So bringing awareness to these different things and letting the students know that it’s OK to talk about these things and bringing awareness to them because it’s something that you would want them to understand.

● Read more: Third-grade special ed teacher Maria Duarte seeks to educate her Camino Nuevo school community about LGBTQ inclusion, encouraging students to become change agents

What do you think the school district, or even the state. could do better policywise to ensure students’ success? 

Touching a little bit on politics, we were also included in the whole (teacher) strike that happened in January. We were part of it. We strongly believe, and by we, I mean the union psychiatric social workers, believe that schools deserve a psychiatric social worker at every campus to foster the whole child. We need to have different support systems for students to be able to thrive, not just in school, but also be able to learn again. For example, coping skills for dealing with situations that are happening to them with their peers, with their classmates, at home or things of that sort, or just being able to openly talk about difficult topics with people that they can trust on campus.

● Read more: 200 Students, Parents & Educators Spent Two Years Thinking About How to Support the Whole Child. Here Are 6 Things They Found

How can parents support teachers and other school staff like you better? 

I think overall our parents, just being informed about our roles on campus and just being informed about the type of services that we can provide because a lot of times we’re confused with the school psychologist or we’re confused with the academic counselors. So again, it’s just defining that role and being able to help parents understand what type of roles we have here on campus. For the most part, our parents show us support by engaging with us, like if we’re trying to provide a referral or do a referral, showing up to our appointments, coming in, understanding the needs of the child … I think that’s the best way to support their child.

And again, a lot of our families are coming from different cultures where mental health is not discussed or talked about. So to them, it’s something completely new. I think just coming in with an open mind with us, coming in with an open mind to talk to us is always such a crucial component for us to do the work that we do. Sometimes we can get a resistant parent or a parent who doesn’t want any sort of type of services and it creates more barriers for us to support the student in that sense.

What do you think is the most rewarding about your job?

I think it’s just being able to see our students progress over the past couple of years. I’ve been, so again, this is my third year here, so I’ve met sixth-graders and they are now eighth-graders. So just seeing their progression. A lot of them don’t make (all) the progression that we would expect or that we would want, but they don’t get there, but it’s just really nice seeing the growth that they have (made). They’re more understanding of their behaviors or they’ve learned to manage (with) some of the negative coping skills. They’re able to openly talk to you and come to you like, “Miss, I have a problem” versus lashing out. They take preventative steps before doing anything or just even, when there are incidents, for example, bullying, we have a culture where our students will speak up. When anybody is, unfortunately, partaking in self-injury, students speak up and it creates this culture of everybody’s kind of looking out for each other, even though they might not know each other too well or (whether) they’re friends. A lot of times they are sworn into secrecy and they will still find it in themselves to be like, ‘No I care about this person. So I’m going to tell that this person is doing something that they probably shouldn’t do.’

What kind of goals do you have for this school year?

Well, definitely the nice thing is that we planned out for our monthly campaigns. So we have different campaigns coming up for each month. So the goal for me would be that we complete all of these campaigns because it’s a little bit cut off for Thanksgiving break and then December is only half (the month), we combine it as a grateful appreciation month. So just kind of providing that aspect of being inclusive because I know a lot of our families don’t celebrate whether that’s Thanksgiving or Christmas or things of that sort, but still learning to have gratitude towards certain situations or people in our lives. We’re looking into organizing whether that is some sort of gratitude or kindness events with the students, which we sort of did during suicide awareness (month). Just a lot of the students really appreciate it, drawing out hearts and writing positive comments or affirmations and giving them to other students or staff members on campus and things of that sort.

Kyle Perez-Robinson with the students she mentors

Having the privilege of receiving abundant support from teachers and family throughout her life, Kyle Perez-Robinson thought it was her duty to choose a profession in which she could give back to society. She decided to become a doctor and enrolled in pre-med in college, but one day she realized teaching was the way she could really have a bigger impact.

“If I think of the people who really helped shape me to be the person that I am today, I always think back to my teachers,” said Perez-Robinson, who is in her second year teaching at Ednovate East College Prep in downtown Los Angeles. “And so it kind of hit me that if I wanted to be someone who can have an impact on young people and help them gain access to the things that they deserved, then teaching was probably the place for me.”

Perez-Robinson graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human biology and a minor in education from Stanford University and got her master’s degree from Loyola Marymount University. She is teaching ninth-grade biology at Ednovate East, where she was placed through Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to teach for two years in low-income schools across the country.

She says the part of her job that makes her particularly excited is working closely with 19 female students as their advisor, a role she’ll have throughout their four years of high school.

It’s a distinct opportunity, Perez-Robinson said, for both her and her students, as she works to become the adult figure the girls feel close enough to to help them through challenging situations while also making sure they’re ready for college — that they’re tracking their grades, monitoring their own behaviors and learning how to advocate for themselves.

“I think that space is really unique and I know I certainly didn’t have that in high school,” she said. “I love how we do advisories because I know I’m very close with all of my girls … I think that’s something that really sets our students up for success because they have somebody who is there just for that. While at bigger schools you can sometimes get lost, and we make sure that doesn’t happen here.”

Most importantly, Perez-Robinson said, she is passionate about helping her students get enough confidence that they can pursue STEM programs in college and become future scientists.

LA School Report asked Perez-Robinson about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You are two years into your teaching career, how is your experience been so far?

I love teaching so much. I definitely think I am teaching the correct age group. I think ninth- graders are the coolest kids ever. They’re right at that age where they’re still OK being wacky and goofy with you, but they also can have elevated conversations just about how the world works and things that they think need to change, which is really amazing. So I absolutely love teaching ninth-graders as a whole.

Even more so, I’m really passionate about teaching science. The persistence rates for Latinx students in college in STEM programs are really low when you compare them to their white peers and there’s a lot of research on it. It’s not entirely known why that’s happening. But as I’m teaching science to all of my students, I know that they’re so capable of being scientists in the future, of having careers in STEM and I really want to be the type of person who can share that with them, and make them feel encouraged, and give them the self-esteem in science that they need in order to pursue those things.

So I get really excited when students get excited about science and it happens a lot so I get to nerd out with them, and it makes me so happy. But I do feel so privileged and grateful that I look forward to my job every day. Breaks are really hard for me, summer breaks, because I just really miss the kids. They have so much life and so much potential that it’s amazing to be able to have a part or play a role in all of the developing that they’re doing, because I know they’re going to be so successful. So I’m just honored that I’m able to be part of that journey with them.

Can you share more about your students, their demographics, their challenges and their strengths?

So most of our students identified as Latino students. A lot of them are native Spanish speakers. We also have some students who identify as black. We have very, very, very few students who identify as white. So something that’s been super amazing is as an advisor, I’m responsible for doing all the parent conferences with my advisees. So I know their parents really well now, and I think that’s an incredible thing that Ednovate does because we’re building that (school) community. A lot of students are coming from low-income households, which is we can see that through our free and reduced lunch data. I don’t know the exact number, but I do know it’s a really high proportion of our students. Some of our students live in the projects. I know a lot of our kids, I’m thinking of one advisee in particular, she isn’t really allowed to do extracurricular activities because her mom is nervous about her being outside when it’s not light anymore. So a lot of them are facing a lot of unique challenges, which, to be frank, I came from a really privileged background comparatively and so they’re things that I’ve never had to go through before. A lot of my advisees’ parents are undocumented, and they’re dealing with very specific issues. One of them has health issues, and I’m trying to support them through that, but it’s really difficult.

So I think ultimately our students are students who have a lot of grit, and perseverance, and so much resilience, and also a lot of pride. So I moved here from Northern California, and I went to a predominantly Latinx school as well and I identify as Latina. But I think there’s something about our school or maybe something about L.A., where our students are really proud of their heritage. They’re happy to use Spanish in class. It’s really amazing to see how happy they are to integrate their culture into their every day, and also how our school supports them in that and encourages it.

● Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Excelencia’s Amber Lewis on getting 81% of her students proficient in math, why teaching is harder than it looks and making sure her kids never feel failed by the system

What kind of unique or innovative things is your school doing in serving these students?

I think the primary thing is that we’re providing them with the same opportunities that a lot of students in more affluent areas are getting that sometimes this demographic isn’t given. For example, all of our students have computers that they use in class. I think when I think back on my experience in college, I definitely experienced a lot of imposter syndrome. I think having some technological literacy would’ve been helpful and I think that’s something we help them with.

Another really amazing thing about our school is the idea of PMC. We call it positive multi-generational change and that’s our goal for all of our students: that they’re able to contribute to their community in a positive way and not just for this generation, but for the generations ahead of them and also for the people who are supporting them. They’re contributing positively to their parents, who are providing so much for them to be able to go to school. The way that we break that down is freshman year, focusing on knowing yourself. Sophomore year, the focus is on knowing your community. Junior year is on knowing your nation, and senior year is on knowing your world. We culminate their PMC with a year-long project as seniors where they have to figure out some sort of issue that they’re passionate about and sort of contribute positively to whatever that issue may be.

We focus on that a lot with our advisory. So like I mentioned, my girls are sophomores right now and we spent freshman year with them figuring out how to be high schoolers. Now we’re looking at, ‘OK, what are you passionate about? What do you want to do?’ And so with our advisory, we have 35 minutes every morning and five minutes in the afternoon where we can develop projects about things that they might be interested in or careers that they want to pursue that are also related to supporting their community. So one of my advisees, for example, really wants to be a scientist and so she and I are working on developing some sort of project where she’s able to engage with either science students in college or with scientists who work at universities and interview them so she can figure out what that career path actually looks like and what type of work it entails.

Have you seen that tied to academic achievement?

Yes, completely. I think if I think of my advisory as a case story, I’m able to see what girls’ GPAs are, if they’re passing all classes at all times. Then they always show me their grades. Then we have different rewards, and parties, and stuff when everyone’s doing well. I think I’ve seen it happen in a couple of ways. One, if I can see that somebody is starting to fail a class, there is a set of people who are kind of roadblocks to keep that from happening.

I can also help them communicate with their teachers and learn the avenues to communicate these issues.

I’ve also seen, especially since last year, my girls … they’re always really eager to help those students who are falling behind. So if someone’s struggling with chemistry, another one is always so happy to, ‘Oh, I’ll help you. I’ll show you how to do this.’ And I think that because we have that designated space for that type of collaboration to happen with both teachers and other students, that they’re able to get the support they need before it becomes too late. I think we have a pretty low rate of students who are failing and I think that’s one of the reasons why.

How do you think the state or school districts could do better to support teachers for success? 

Oh my gosh, it is so expensive to become a teacher. So I went to a private university. I was used to it being expensive. So I went to Stanford, and they have a really amazing teacher education program, but the reason why I opted to do Teach For America was because I knew I would be able to get scholarships and subsidies from AmeriCorps when doing my teacher education program and that’s what I ended up having to do just because it made more sense financially. But even so, it’s really expensive. There are a lot of hidden fees. There are a lot of really pricey exams that I’m not sure are really assessing if I’m a quality educator or not as compared to they’re assessing how much busy work am I willing to do. And I think that that is kind of ironic, given that my classes are really amazing, and they’re telling me what quality assessments look like and then I feel like that’s not necessarily persisting for the teachers themselves. So I think that’s one thing. I do appreciate that it is very important to go into higher education or into graduate studies in order to do a specialized profession. I think that it’s necessary, but I think that given the costs of becoming a teacher, that I think — and I’m sure you hear this all the time — I think that compensation for teachers should be equivalent.

What do you think parents can do better to support teachers? 

It’s definitely a team. Again, I’m so privileged to have really great relationships with the parents, especially my advisees, and I’ve noticed the most success when parents and teachers are able to have those difficult conversations because we know that at the center of everything we’re doing, we want the kid to be successful. Maybe we have different ideas of how we’re going to achieve that, but ultimately we want to make sure that the student can fulfill all of their potential.

So I think that the first step to that is giving a platform for those conversations to take place in the first place. Our parent-teacher conferences are really valued and are super important and because of that, we have almost all of our parents attend. Our goal is always 95 percent attendance. I think that if there isn’t that face-to-face contact, it’s really difficult to feel accountable to one another; like if you’ve never met somebody, why are you going to do things for them? So I think that it’s really important for schools to set up that system where parents and teachers can meet each other and then they can come up with solutions for how to support students and follow through on them.

So I think with parents, it’s ultimately like, ‘Please don’t feel concerned about communicating because teachers really do appreciate that communication.’ And the responsibility, I think, is twofold. Parents, please communicate with teachers. Teachers, please communicate with parents.

● Read more: Teacher Spotlight: KIPP Iluminar Academy’s Mercedes Jimenez on preparing her 3rd-graders for college, why Latino parents are sometimes scared to ask questions and the goal charter and district schools share

What has been one of your biggest accomplishments as a teacher so far?

This is really hard because I think being in the classroom every day and just seeing, learning, and watching students from the beginning of the school year all the way to the end, and see how much they’ve grown is so incredibly rewarding.

I think watching my advisee students develop into mature young women has been amazing because there I started out with them as young freshmen and now they’re all turning 16, and they’re acting a lot older. That’s been really cool.

I’m also really proud because I am a member of some of our leadership teams. Specifically, I’m on an innovation team where we can figure out how to make our advisory program better, and it’s something that I’m so passionate about. I am really honored that I’m able to be a part of a group that is actively trying to improve one of my favorite parts of the school day.

What’s your main goal this school year?

That’s a fun question. I think my goal is that my students feel confident as scientists and feel capable as scientists and I don’t want there to be anything holding the student back from pursuing science unless they actually really don’t like it. I don’t want them to think that they can’t pursue science because they’re not smart enough, or because they can’t do the math, or because they are brown, or because they’re a woman. I want them to feel as if those barriers don’t exist for them so that they can achieve whatever they want to. If they don’t like it, that’s fine, but I don’t want them to think they can’t be scientists because of some sort of institutionalized barrier. So it really is just a privilege for me to be able to work with our students and I’ve learned so much from them. I know I teach them, but they also teach me so much every day about myself and about their community. It’s been really amazing.

Letting her students guide their own instruction and learning from each other has been one of the keys to success for novice teacher Amber Lewis, who is in her second year teaching at Excelencia Charter Academy and is already meeting her students’ growth goals.

Lewis is a founding teacher at Excelencia, an independent charter elementary school that shares a campus with a traditional L.A. Unified school in East Los Angeles. She said that being part of a starting charter school in an underserved neighborhood was what really attracted her to work for the school. She also thought in a school like that her ideas could be heard.

“So, it was just all of these different factors, like wanting to be able to bring ideas to a school that was brand new that I felt would listen to me. Wanting to see how the charter schools actually work. Doing my own type of research like: Are they even better? And obviously, going to a community that really needs higher education. So I was all for it at the time.”

She was also interested in the school’s two-teacher model. Though that has changed for the second school year, she believes the school’s model is innovative at the elementary level because it allows teachers to provide a tailored education and accelerate their learning growth.

“When students came into our school 20 percent of them were considered proficient in math based on a computer differentiated math test. Meaning they can count, they can add. And then, by the end of the year, 81 percent were proficient,” Lewis said. “Students just grew so much. Sure I worked really hard, but I also think we had a lot of the tools that we needed.”

She said she let her students guide their own instruction through hands-on learning and by fixing their own mistakes right away. “But I think the best way is for them to learn is from each other.”

Prior to Excelencia, Lewis was a substitute teacher and teacher assistant at a dual language immersion school in Alhambra. She graduated from California State University Fullerton where she earned a bachelor’s degree in child and adolescent studies and obtained her master’s degree in education from Azusa Pacific University.

LA School Report asked Lewis about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for 2019-20. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell me a little bit about your students and the community you serve at Excelencia, what are some challenges they face?

Our community at Excelencia is almost 98 percent Latino or Hispanic, maybe even 100 percent. And with a high population of Hispanic or Latino (students), a lot of them came in as English language learners. So for me, I think that was one of the major concerns I had was the language barrier because I don’t speak Spanish. I am Hispanic, but unfortunately, I never learned Spanish. So that’s always been one of my biggest flaws. So that was one of my main concerns and that’s pretty much our demographics. And then the other one was, I don’t know if the percentage of how many students got preschool education beforehand. And if they did, what was the quality of the education, because when our students came in — so I’m basically teaching the same students I taught last year because last year I taught TK (transitional kindergarten that is meant to be a bridge between preschool and kindergarten) and K (kindergarten) and now, this year, I started teaching first grade. But last year when I had my students, I know about 75 percent of them were not able to count up to 10 at the very beginning of the school year. Some didn’t even recognize any alphabet letters. So it was very challenging. I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, how are we going to reach these massive goals that we set for ourselves to help the students?’

And did they meet their growth goals? 

Oh, absolutely. I think that was part of my selfish reasons to move up with the first-graders because I taught them these math skills. I want to see if I left any gaps in between kindergarten to first grade, or are they going to just keep thriving? Did I do my job? Did I prepare them for first grade? So, now as their first-grade teacher they have just blown my mind. It’s really amazing to see how much they’ve grown. In all aspects, not just reading and writing. It’s phenomenal!

I understand Excelencia has a two-teacher model, how’s your experience been so far working under this model?

Well, the first year was completely different. The model itself and how our school operated is completely different from this year. So last year, we had two kindergarten and transitional kindergarten combo classes, and there were two literacy teachers at all times that taught literacy. And then it was me by myself, and I taught math, science, and social studies. So I went from one class in the morning and taught them math, science, social studies. And then after lunch, I would swap with the literacy teachers, and I would teach the second class math, science and social studies as they were teaching the first literacy. So it was just, a swap after lunch. So I had about 40 to 48 students that I was teaching the first year. And then this year, we are now your more traditional self-contained classroom. So now I have my own classroom all day instead of just in the morning and then swapping to a second class in the afternoon. So now I’m in my own class all day. I’m teaching them all subjects. So now I’m also teaching reading, writing, along with math, science, social studies. I do like it a lot. I think it gives me more autonomy in my classroom and definitely fewer students to manage and teach. Now, I have a class of 20 where last year, as I said, I had about 48 students. So it’s a little bit more manageable, or actually a lot more manageable to give these students all of me instead of just being exhausted by the end of the day because I’m now working with a whole new set of students with so many other different personalities.

So would you say that Excelencia is still offering an innovative school setting in comparison to other traditional elementary schools in the neighborhood? 

Well, so far our literacy portion … So even though we have our own classrooms, we’re still kind of doing the two-teacher model. I have one first-grade classroom that’s all mine. And then I have another co-teacher who came back from last year. She was also a founding teacher last year and she was one of the reading teachers. She’s also teaching the second first-grade classroom. So between us, we both have about, I think she has 19 students and I have 20 students. And so, based on our students’ scores and needs, we kind of have them do the shifting around this time. So last year for reading, the teachers were the ones that moved classrooms. This year, we’re having our students go to specific classrooms. So each team of reading teachers teach within specific levels so that each kid is having, basically a tailored education.

What’s the main reason why you wanted to become a teacher?

Well, I think it was back in 2010. I’ve always loved kids first of all, and I would always pretend I was the teacher or the (school) principal. So I declared my major as an undergrad in child development, and with that, I had to start taking classes and doing observations in the classrooms. So, just being in the classroom, I just started feeling like, ‘Oh, this is me. I like this, it’s fun, it’s cute. The kids are so cute.’ I had been more in day cares and kindergarten classrooms. And then, afterward, I was, ‘OK, this is not challenging enough.” Just basically watching them, taking care of them. Because I worked at a day care for a while and I just felt like I wasn’t making a difference with these particular kids out of day care and I felt like I wasn’t challenging myself enough. So I was talking to my fiancé at the time and he was just like, ‘Why don’t you try going back to school and getting your master’s?’ And so I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know if I could do it. What if it’s not right for me? What if it’s going to be too hard?’ And I was like, ‘You know what, I’m just going to do it. If I get accepted into this program, I’ll go for it.’

And I did, and along the way, again doing more student teaching and observations, I just realized, OK, this is for me. There is a reason why I decided to apply for grad school, and I got in. And then, I started to get more into the classroom, helping develop lesson plans, and actually executing them and just working with kids, in general, is always so fun. It’s tiring, it’s exhausting, but at the end of the day, I love how they’re so excited to learn. And just how much they want to please you as a teacher, and prove to you that they can do it. And you believe in them. It’s just a great feeling overall.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: KIPP Corazon’s Michelle Torres on preparing students to navigate the system better than she did, championing restorative justice and appreciating her trusting parents

What do you think is a major difference between preparing to become a teacher and actually being in the classroom?

So, when I was doing my observations, obviously I wasn’t the main teacher, so all the responsibility wasn’t on me. It was just kind of, more fun and a little bit of a playful type of experience. And then once becoming the actual main teacher it was like, ‘OK, it’s still fun, but it’s a lot harder than it looks.’ It’s not all fun. There’s definitely a lot riding on your shoulders and you’re just constantly putting a lot of pressure on yourself to make sure you’re covering all the basics with these kids and you’re giving them all you can so that they can keep growing and not just stay stagnant. It’s much harder. Just what everyone else says, too, like, ‘Oh, you’re off at 2:30. You get your summers off, vacation this and that.’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, no, that’s not how it works.’ You’re still working on the weekends doing lesson plans or just making sure you have all your materials, that you’re mentally prepared, physically prepared. You’re staying later than what you’re contracted to stay. Over the weekend, or over the breaks, I find myself still like going on Pinterest and finding more ideas to like, ‘How can I help these students?’ So it’s a lot more than just a fun, playful job. It’s a lot of hard work. So I would say that’s a major difference.

What do you think the state or school districts should do better to support teachers for success?

So for our school (specifically), I’m not exactly sure how our funding works, but I know in the beginning stage for our startup, we were told, ‘OK make a list of materials that you guys need to help kids learn,’ like curriculum-related materials. So, it almost seemed like our budget was infinite. So at the time, we were able to order a lot of what we needed. I’m going to call it a need because I don’t think I would have been able to get my students where they were without them. So these cubic sticks, specifically for math, these cubic sticks, they’re put in groups of 10 and it just builds that base 10 knowledge. And I just don’t feel like other schools where I’ve worked at use this stuff, these types of manipulatives. And it could be like I said, a budget issue where they just don’t have the means to buy manipulatives.

But I just feel like if public schools had more funding or, these little things, it (would) make the biggest difference.

And I also think definitely staff training in specific subjects. I went to a specific training for two days and then we had a follow-up with the trainer to make sure we were implementing it the right way. And we got feedback if we were a little bit off and just how can we make it better. So all these follow-up trainings and coaching, I just feel is something that schools should definitely invest in.

What do you think is the best way parents can help teachers?

So right now I started implementing the ClassDojo app at or our school.

Because I used it before when I was a TA. For one, it translates. So parents will feel more confident because a lot of our parents aren’t English speakers so they’re able to communicate with me and it’ll translate what they’re saying to me, and vice versa. So for getting parents involved, lately we’ve just kind of been posting what we’re learning in the classroom and then giving them specific things they could work on with their child. So for example, for writing, we’re working on creating a full paragraph with a topic sentence, a body and then a closing sentence. So I posted a picture of the students doing that and then a brief caption saying, “We are working on writing full paragraphs. Please include: topic, body, closing sentence.” And so from there they kind of already see like, ‘Oh, this is what my child is learning. This is how I could support them.’

• Read more: ClassDojo Announces the Launch of Student Stories: A New Way for Students to Share Their Classwork

How does it make you feel when you hear attacks against charter schools given the fact that you teach at a charter school, and what would you like the public to know about your job at a charter school?

Well, when I got hired, I wasn’t aware of any sort of animosity with charter and district (schools). And then, toward our first day of school, the whole school opening, Mr. Alonzo (Ruben Alonzo, Excelencia Charter Academy’s founder and head of school) was informing us like, ‘Hey, by the way, we might have some protestors outside.’ And it was very frightening. I thought, ‘What do you mean? What? Why?’ They (protestors) think that charters, it’s privatization, and that we’re stealing their money. Just a lot of misinformed individuals. And so we were just like, ‘OK, well, what do we do?’ And (Alonzo) was like, ‘Just be friendly. Go on with your day. Don’t bother them and hopefully they won’t bother you.’

There’s still a lot of animosity with some of the teachers at the school where we’re co-located, but I think overall this year it’s gotten better. What I would want the public to know is really, educate yourself more. When they say, ‘There’s a lot of charter schools in LA, and to me, I don’t think there should be that many. It’s like, it kind of seems like one keeps popping open every year.’ But I think you just have to put the kids first and think: If the school is giving my child a better education, or children in general, a better education, why are we fighting them? Why do we want them to close? It’s free for the children to go there. So why do we keep fighting that?

That, to me, you just gotta put the kids first and just think: OK if this school is really doing better than the public school where this child would potentially have to attend, then why can’t I have an option to put my child in a better school?

What is one of your goals for this school year? Or your main goal for this school year?

So since I taught math mainly, along with science, and social studies, I feel more confident in my math teaching ability. So I guess my goal for myself, personally, would be to feel just as comfortable doing all of the other subjects — reading, writing, and just continue to keep these high statistics for our school. Like I said, I had 81 percent of my students be proficient in math and 90 percent of them met a growth goal that was projected for them. And so almost a 100 percent of my students met their growth goal and 80 percent are at proficiency. So just to keep these stats as high. I feel like that’s my goal. It’s just continue this growth and just keep giving the kids my all so that way they can have a great education and not feel like, ‘Oh, the education system failed me.’

Paulina Morales

For a history teacher like Paulina Morales, there has not been a better time than now to engage students in learning world history. The current political and social climate make the subject particularly relevant for her high school students in a heavily Latino community in South L.A., where many are the children of immigrant families and some are newly arrived to this country.

Her lessons this school year, for example, range from gun control legislation to the Me Too movement and immigration.

Morales teaches 10th-grade world history at Synergy Quantum Academy, a charter high school co-located at L.A. Unified’s Maya Angelou Community High School campus. Her nearly 20 years of teaching experience has been in charter schools, but she was a product of LAUSD. She also spent time studying in Mexico, the country where her parents emigrated from. She graduated from California State University Fullerton with a degree in anthropology.

While in middle school, Morales got her first glance at seeing herself as a history teacher, thanks to the influence of her own history teacher. It’s an effect she hopes to have on her own students, particularly her female students. She believes they live in a time with so many more choices and opportunities than she had growing up, thanks to the pride of being Latina women, which she didn’t experience openly when she was a student.

“I think that’s a big thing right now, as the girls in my classroom, or the women in my classroom, it’s important that they can definitely do it and things are changing for the better,” Morales said. “I love that my students are proud of who they are and they’re proud of their background, where they come from, and so it’s not something that, I guess when I was in school, maybe some people tried to hide who they were. Now, people are very proud of their culture, where they’re from.”

Morales credits that sense of pride to students’ access to ethnic studies and the culturally relevant books they’re reading now in class, but also to a spirit of resistance.

“Like I said, the president (Trump) right now is very, sometimes very anti-Latino in some of the comments he’s made, and that just makes them want to seek more knowledge, so that they can be prepared for those conversations,” she said. “They want that information, I think they want to be able to defend themselves and who they are.”

LA School Report asked Morales about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Are your classroom lessons currently covering more social events than before?

Definitely, the new curriculum is engaging students more. I feel that during the first years of my teaching, it was more about world history with more European history, and now it’s actual world history, where we’re learning about ourselves. It’s more promoting the history of African cultures, Latino cultures, and we’re exploring more the women’s issues. In our history books, it’s very difficult to find women heroes, I would say. And now, it’s definitely in the newer books, there are even sections in every chapter about women heroes. So, it’s definitely changing a lot in the past couple of years. Now I have to teach history but through current events, and they have to really (think about) what’s going on today. So why is this happening today? What events happened in the past that are causing this to happen today? And they can relate a lot better to historical events in that way.

• Read more: 50 years after the Chicano Blowouts, still waiting for justice and the need to reject more police in our schools

Do you think you have less pressure than math teachers or ELA teachers to get results?

I feel like we have the same pressure, especially in my AP World History. It’s there’s always, or any AP teacher feels that pressure that you have to have a certain number of students pass (the AP test) or — not all of them — but it’s really difficult to pass those tests. And even, we also have to show that we’re teaching them certain standards, ELA standards, so we have to be supportive of, or teach them writing skills and things like that. So, I sometimes feel I’m their English teacher as well because we’re supporting one another in that aspect.

Is there anything in the public education system that you think should be addressed with urgency?

I think just the very anti-charter conversation is a very head-downer for us. We’re really trying to make a difference. I’m supportive of all LAUSD teachers because we share a campus with LAUSD schools, and we work together. So, I think we’re probably one of the only (colocated charter) schools that has an LAUSD school sharing the same campus that, for the most part, the majority of the teachers work well together. There are times where we’ve come together to meet common goals. I think their current principal, he’s doing a really good job at meeting with our principal, or our founder, and trying to get us to have more meetings that are combined because it’s the same community of students. Even that program, the Teen Court, we’re working together with them, and so they bring their students, we bring our students, and that’s a place where they get to meet one another. I think it’s a unique situation, so I feel we’re doing a good job at it, but it’s kind of difficult too. It must be difficult for other charters schools to have these negative conversations about them when all they’re trying to do is just, we’re all just trying to help students.

Tell me about the Teen Court program. What is it and what’s the purpose?

It’s new to our school. We have been doing it just for the past two years, both our school and Maya Angelou (LAUSD school). So, we started the program, the founder kind of connected us to this program and in order to get students to participate (they have to stay), for a month after school. We created a class called Trials That Made History, and the students there learn about the law, like how to become a lawyer, how to become a judge and things like that, and then other related (legal) fields that I had no idea of. I learned a lot by teaching a class and then participating in Teen Court, where students actually visit a real courtroom in downtown L.A. then they come and perform Teen Court in school. They recreate what they learned. It’s just exposing them to other careers and a lot of the students are really looking into becoming immigration lawyers. I have three seniors who have been part of the program since the beginning and now that’s one of the career ideas that they think they’re going to go into. So, that’s kind of cool.

What do you think is the most challenging about being a teacher? 

For me, what maybe I complain a little bit about, is sometimes you do have to take work with you home on the weekends. It’s not just you get out at 3 p.m. and then you’re home. No, because sometimes you have to stay, you definitely have to show students that you care and sometimes you do have to stay to gain or, for me, participate in Teen Court, and sometimes you have to be there until 7 p.m. Sometimes you have to go on your vacation to three-day trips with students so they can participate in a conference. So, you do give up a lot of your time too. And … just sometimes, the situations that students get into. They’re teenagers and they can make really huge mistakes that are life-changing, but we have to understand they’re teenagers, and they don’t really understand the severity of it until they’re there. So, (as a teacher) you have to be very forgiving.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Daniel Helena brings his own experiences in helping retain more teachers of color in L.A. classrooms

What’s the best part of being a teacher?

Oh my God, my favorite day is always graduation day. It’s just watching them finally, they made it. To me, that’s my favorite day out of the year. It’s just showing up to graduation, seeing them at their best. Seeing them at those proud moments. Sometimes I have dinner dates with ex-students, they want to see you and tell you about what’s going on in their life. I guess those are my perks.

What do you think parents can do better in helping you to be a successful teacher?

As teenagers, sometimes they look like adults, they look like big kids, but they also need a lot of guidance, and parents still need to be on them to complete their homework or check on them. Are they doing their work? Even now, I would say take away the cell phone if they haven’t done the work, or they don’t have the grades. That’s a big distraction recently and there is a lot of, I don’t know, statistics out there, that say that their electronics are a big distraction. Even if they say, ‘I’m just listening to music, it helps me to concentrate,’ the studies are not showing that it’s helping them in class. But there also are a lot of things out there that are helping teachers stay connected with parents and I think we need to make more use of them. But if I send messages constantly to parents, they need to, hopefully, reply back, and show a little bit more involvement because I’m not sure if they’re getting the messages.

What’s your main goal for the current school year?

Well, as I said, I really love the Teen Court thing. Once I started that two years ago, my first day going to the first (one), I was, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ I am so glad that I decided, that I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take on this extra class, Trials That Made History, and now it’s like my favorite thing. It’s my last class of the day, so it’s the one thing that I have to look forward to at the end because it’s kind of new and innovative. I think teachers always need new things, or else it gets kind of, it drags on if you’re teaching the same thing over and over. So the Teen Court, that’s my new thing right now.

Michelle Torres

Michelle Torres never planned to become a teacher but her own struggles as a college student made her realize that through teaching, she could help young students to advocate for themselves early on and that convinced her to be in the classroom.

“I want to see these kids become successful, and get the resources, and be able to navigate the system better than I did,” said Torres.

As a founding teacher at KIPP Corazón Academy, an elementary and middle charter school in Southeast Los Angeles, Torres lead the creation of the school’s restorative justice advisory class in the school to help her students navigate a system she believes often plays against them.

“I find this class to be of great value because it allows my students to hear about counterstories that are not shared in our history books and allows them to feel that their voices matter and their stories do too,” Torres said.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Rosalie Reyes celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month by creating Central American curriculum to bring that rich culture, history to the classroom

The majority of her students are Latino and live in low-income households like she did growing up. Her father was deported to Mexico when she was in fifth grade. Then her mother, who was also undocumented, became the family’s sole breadwinner and while they struggled financially, Torres and her three siblings focused on their education. But she, the youngest of the four, was the only one who made it to college.

“When I was offered the chance to go to UC, I knew I had to take it,” she said. “One, for myself and for my family, but two, for my brother, who didn’t have access to it because he had to help support our family.”

As a Latina college student, Torres said she had to face many challenges she wasn’t ready for. After switching her major, she graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Chicano studies and a minor in applied psychology. Now as a teacher, Torres says she feels a responsibility to help her students and their families be ready for some of those challenges, like overcoming stereotypes.

“I loved the experience of working with families and students who are of similar background as me. I felt like I was able to build really strong relationships with the students and families,” said Torres, who began teaching at a KIPP school in San Diego in 2014 through Teach for America. “One, because not only do I look like them and I speak their language, but culturally we were just very similar.”

LA School Report asked Torres about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why is it so important for you to teach your students to advocate for themselves?

Advocacy is one of our biggest values. So we (at KIPP Corazon) have four values. That’s advocacy, curiosity, purpose and pride. Those are the things we focus on here, like advocating for the community and stuff like that. We work around ethnic studies and about integration.

As we add more grade levels, we want to work more on restorative justice, have that space for teachers to teach social-emotional lessons as well as cultural lessons. We have circles, it happens every day. We start off with a game and then we start with a question … and so getting in that circle, we’re able to address (questions) and have conversations. A lot of times, kids come into education with a mindset like, ‘Oh, I’m a bad kid,’ and there’s no such thing as a bad kid. There are bad actions that people decide to make, right. Now with these circles and community circles, it’s our responsibility to figure out why did this action happen in the first place. Because at the end, people are out here … they want to try their best and be good for everyone else and themselves. So we have to figure out, why are you starting actions and behaviors happening because there might be something behind the action that’s really going on. And you need to figure out the community. How could we support each other?

Why did you start a restorative justice advisory class in your school?

I knew that our principal was very passionate about restorative justice. So this is a restorative justice block (of classes), it’s pretty much an advisory class on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays of about 60 minutes and we do a lot of social-emotional learning lessons. So students can learn how to talk about their emotions in a more productive way. And we also had different lessons where we talked about the different identities and nationalities we come from. We talk about their culture, about other cultures and communities and we celebrate that.

• Read more: Analysis: What Two New Studies Reveal About Restorative Justice in Middle School — and How It Can Be Done Better

What keeps you motivated to keep teaching?

After being in this role for five years, you become a cheerleader for your students because they come with so many social-emotional needs, so many traumatic experiences that sometimes they don’t want to do their part. So you as an educator don’t have to take it personal, it’s not that they hate you, it’s more like there’s something else going on.

I think as educators it’s our responsibility to figure out what is it that the student needs and meet them there. Because I feel like that was the biggest mistake I made my first year. I was like ‘All these kids are against me. They don’t want to do the work. They think my class is boring. They hate it.’ I took a lot of things personal, but in reality, all these kids had so many things that they were coming in with every single day. I just needed to figure out how can we socially emotionally support these students and make them feel safer at school so that they can excel.

I really appreciate that in the community that I serve parents really trust teachers. They have so much faith in education. I know a lot of parents really rely on the teacher. So, I feel a lot of pressure, but it’s good pressure to make sure that I need to do whatever the parents need because at the end of the day, we have to share the work together to make sure that we support that student. So I think that’s something that I really value and I appreciate, that demographic in the community I’m serving right now.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job? 

A lot of times when I think of other people who are not in the education system, they right away think about, ‘Oh my gosh, you have so much grading to do. How do you have time to grade? Oh my gosh, do you have to do lesson planning? How do you know what you’re going to teach?’ It’s more of like (people being focused on) the actual concept and academics of teaching, but it’s way more than that.

What makes you feel accomplished as a teacher? 

To be honest, I think every year there’s always something different, but I can share something that recently happened to me that just kind of re-energized me and refueled me. I went to San Diego two weeks ago and I got to see my fifth-grade class graduate from eighth grade and then moving onto high school. I didn’t tell them I was going to go. So when I showed up and after they were promoted, they just saw me there in the hallway. I congratulated them and many of them cried and hugged me and they were just so happy to see me and being there and supporting their next move and their next change because they’re all going to high school now. That made me realize, this is why I’m here because I want to see these kids become successful and get the resources and be able to navigate the system better than I did. Because they need as much support as possible to continue moving forward.

What can the school districts, the state, do better to support teachers in being successful?

I can’t speak on the school district because I’ve never worked at a district school. The past five years I’ve only worked for charter schools. Something that I feel like this organization, and why I continue to stay in this organization for now, is because they have teacher coaches that will observe you once a week. And they give you feedback on your teaching practices. And as teachers, there’s always new things going on in the world and there are new students every year, so I really appreciate that because it allows me to get better at my practice and the pedagogy behind teaching.

Also, something I really appreciate about this network is that they have these teaching coaching cycles where, not only do you get feedback once a week on your lesson plan, but you also get one-on-one meetings where your manager or coach provides feedback on things that you can improve on as an educator. And for me, I feel like that’s the reason why I continue to stay in this network, because it allows me to grow. At the end of the day, it’s not only about me growing as an educator. The reason I take all of this is because I want my kids to grow. I want them to feel like they’re excelling.

What can parents do better to support teachers?

Sometimes parents might feel a little uncomfortable telling us what really is going on at home or sharing what is really going on with the child. I think the more transparent family members are able to be with their teachers the better, but you can’t expect parents to be as transparent as possible to the teacher if they don’t feel like they have that kind of relationship with you.

So something that I feel like I found is really valuable in my teaching experience is when parents come up to me, call me or text me and say, ‘Hey, like my child had a nightmare. They’ve been having an anxiety attack. That’s why they’re coming in this way.’ That helps me to better support that child when they’re in my classroom. So I think as long as family members and parents are more transparent about situations that might be going on at home with a student, it will allow us to feel more equipped to support that student.

How have the recent attacks toward charter schools made you feel? What would you like the public to know about how it is to be a charter school teacher these days? 

I mean, we’re all educators working hard. I think educators are in this work because they genuinely care about students’ growth and students’ learning and making sure that we support the students to become successful. We’re here to serve the students. I don’t believe in this charter versus district school tension. I personally feel like we’re all working really hard to make sure that our community and our future leaders get the education they deserve in order to navigate the systems that are sometimes against them.

And so for me, I just want the public to know that as an educator, it doesn’t matter if I’m a charter school teacher or a traditional public school teacher. I’m here to serve my students so that they can have the required resources and are able to be really navigate the system in order to get to where they want to be.

• Read more: In New York City, A District-Charter Collaboration That Puts Kids First and Offers a Fresh Perspective on the Political Divide

What’s your main goal for the new school year?

I’m going to continue working on this restorative justice stuff and I’m going to have it for the fourth- and fifth-graders. So I just want to make sure that I’ve provided students with the proper tools to be able to talk about their emotions and address situations in a way where they’re able to share in a space where they feel safe.

The second goal that I have for myself, talking about academics, last year I had a lot of students who came into the school who hated reading and ELA was their least favorite class. And as an ELA teacher, my goal is to continue to make sure that the love for literacy was happening and that students love reading, but that they can actually continue reading and building their reading foundational skills. So I want more kids to love reading.

I’m really excited this year because we’re going to do a writing block and I’ll be the writing teacher as well. So I want to make sure that I can build that love for reading that I did last year with my fifth-grade students who are going to be sixth-graders now. Continue doing that with my incoming fifth-graders, but also build the love for writing as well. Because when students share their stories and their narrative — and writing is such an important tool for them to be able to share the experiences — that I want students to feel like this is just as valuable as reading.

That’s pretty awesome. It’s perfect, getting kids to love reading. It’s needed. We all struggle with that, but we all want that for kids, right?

Teaching low-income Latino students in East Los Angeles didn’t happen by chance for Mercedes Jimenez, a third-grade teacher at KIPP Iluminar Academy. She grew up in the same neighborhood as her students. She wanted to be that person in the classroom who could “fight for equity,” helping students to be as competitive as possible when they go to college.

Jimenez said she was a straight ‘A’ student because her immigrant mother set on her the idea that in America she “could be whatever she wanted to be.”

“I think her as a Latina mom and getting used to this country, she had this idea of, in America, you could be whatever you want to be. I think she really believed that,” she said. “At the same time, I feel like she didn’t really know what it meant or what I had to do. The resources that I needed, the connections that I needed. It’s a lot more than just the work.”

Jimenez, who graduated from UCLA and obtained her teaching credentials from Loyola Marymount University, believes that representation in the classroom matters and that’s why she thinks her job is to show her students what their future success will require.

“You can be anything you want to be, but I really want to mean it and I want to set them up for that. I don’t want it to just be words. I actually want them to feel prepared,” she said. “When I became a teacher, I just wanted to make sure that when I say that or when people say it to my students, they really have a chance. They’ll go to UCLA and be competitive up there with the rest of the students, not below them.”

LA School Report asked Jimenez about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why does representation matter? How does that help students?

To me, representation is big. I think that comes a lot from my own experiences and my own background just being Latina going through life. Whether we accept it or not, there’s going to be discrimination out there. They’re going to have to see certain things at some point.

For me, it’s just important that I make my students culturally aware of that and prepare them for that. Teaching them about different cultures and diversity, so they know that exists also in education. I feel like I grew up in a bubble in a sense where all I knew was my culture and my family. When I went to UCLA, it hit me. I was like, ‘Whoa, I’m different.’ It shocked me that it took me 19 years to realize not everyone’s the same, not everyone’s going to look at me the same. That’s something that’s super important for me and something that I definitely focus on in my classroom to teach, create a community, understanding, and acceptance.

Specifically, how do you talk to your students about these things?

It comes in different ways. For example, when real-life events happen, they see something on the news, the elections, the Trump election. That was a moment where we do a circle. I open it up and we talk about it. They’re only in third grade, but they’re very self-aware. I think a lot of it comes from their household. A lot of students show up upset and they have these ideas about what’s about to happen with our country. I take those as opportunities to create a circle, just open it up, and talk about it. My favorite thing to do is just hear them and listen to what they have to say. Then, them having a discussion and bouncing ideas. Then, me stepping in to clarify things for them. That’s one way. Another way is to read aloud. I feel like choosing the right book that will teach about different cultures is also super important and in opening up discussions. I think the discussion part is the most important.

• Read more: Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears to back Trump plan to end DACA, potentially putting thousands of students and teachers at risk of deportation

What kind of social challenges are your students currently facing? 

There’s a variety. I feel like we have a good mixture of different kinds of students. We serve a low-income area. There are some who need a lot more help emotionally than academically. I think our school is really good at prioritizing that. If we see someone who has struggles, someone who has lived through experiences that have really impacted them, we focus on them first as a person before we teach. I think that’s very important. I’ve had a mixture of students throughout the years. I’ve had some, who I know their families work and they struggle to keep up with their children. What I mean by that is, I can just tell they don’t really do their homework at home or they’re struggling to do their homework at home. (They need to) get that extra help.

How do you think teachers can bring more innovation to the classroom?

Honestly, you have to be open to new ideas. I think that’s the most important. For me, I always make my decisions based on what my students need. Every year, you’re going to get a different cohort of students. They’re not all going to be the same, so you’re going to have to try different things. What might have worked for me one year is not going to work again for the next group of students. The most important part — and what teachers need to look at first — is that. Get to know your students, build relationships with them. Create a sense of community because if you don’t have that, it’s going to be very difficult to teach. That’s something that I definitely do in my classroom.

As every year goes by, I’m going into my fifth year of teaching, I think that’s something that’s at the heart of my teaching. If my students are not happy, if they’re not making connections, if they don’t have relationships, especially with me, the rest of the school year is going to be really difficult. I do think it starts there and just being open to trying new things. Especially when you work in the public school system, they tell you to do it one way. Just being open to … trying it in different ways that the students will get it.

Can you give me an example of something innovative that you have tried recently in the classroom?

Let me say this as an example. With math, last year, I had a cohort of students who could just visualize everything really easily in their minds. I could just teach. I could teach the concepts, I could have conversations. We could have discussions. This year, my cohort changed a little bit. I could tell they weren’t really good at creating pictures in their mind. I have to create visuals for them. I think one of the things that I used this year that I didn’t use the year before was the use of manipulatives. Those are different objects that they can use. Little blocks, sticks, or anything they can use to actually create the problems on the floor or at their desk. That would be an example.

What do you think, either your school, the school district, or even the state could do differently to better support teachers?

Just in general, I would say giving teachers more support. I can only speak for my school. I know in my school, they prioritize the teachers. If they need materials, whatever they need for the classroom before the school year starts, they make sure that we have everything we need to teach. If we don’t have those tools, it’s really difficult throughout the year. That’s, in my opinion, one of the first things that schools can do, just making sure that they support the teachers in anything that they need.

What could parents do better to support you in your job?

We always say we love parent support. Honestly, we have an open-door policy. We welcome parents to come into our school, come into our classrooms. Parents being involved asking questions. Even if they don’t understand something, coming into our school or reaching out to teachers. That communication is key. I know some parents are scared sometimes to talk to their teachers or they don’t want to approach them because they’re too nervous. I think parents just have to be more proactive in reaching out to their teachers. If there’s something they don’t understand, something comes up, something’s going on with their child, just reaching out and talking to them about it.

Do you think parents can do better in preparing their children for the different challenges they may have to face in the education system, particularly for Latino students or other students of color? 

I think about myself as a mom eventually at some point and being a Latina. I know I’m different than my parents because I’ve got an education. I look back to it, and it’s true. I do think about what my parents could have done differently. I think for them, it’s more just being able to ask questions. I think it’s important or to do research because, yes, my school was good, at the same time, I know my parents just put me there because that’s where I belonged. That’s the neighborhood area. I think parents just not being so scared to look for resources, to do some research, to talk to their children about the things that they’re going to see. Being able to open up to them and talking about the issues that are going on around us. Most importantly, I think Latinos, in general, have this. I don’t know if we’re just scared of the world or scared of asking questions and getting shut down. I think we’ve just got to be more secure in ourselves. We have rights. I’m thinking of it in terms of schools. There are many school options out there. If you do the research and you figure out which is the best one, it could give you a better chance academically for your child.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Alliance’s Guillermo Lopez on setting higher expectations in math for low-performing students and convincing their teachers that excellence is possible

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job as a teacher?

I hear the same thing over and over, especially when I tell people I’m a teacher. They think, ‘Your job is easy. All you have to do is sit in the classroom and babysit for six, seven hours.’ I think that’s the most common thing that I get. As well as, ‘You’re lucky. You get two months off in the middle of the school year. You don’t have to work for two months.’ I think that’s a big misunderstanding because those two months are hard-earned. You’re in the classroom for a whole year with little kids. They’re little. It takes a lot. A lot of management, a lot of energy. By the time that the school year ends, it’s a well-deserved break. When it goes to the babysitting part, I think a lot of people have this misunderstanding of what teachers do and what they teach, especially at the lower level. They don’t understand that we’re teaching reading, we’re teaching math, grammar. It’s all these foundations that students need in order to go on and be successful in high school. It’s not just high school where the real teaching is happening. It starts at a very early age.

What has been one of your best moments of teaching? What has been one of your proudest accomplishments?

I would definitely say the most rewarding is just the bond that I create with my students. … I had a hard student. That’s what I like to call him. He needed extra attention. He was having a rough time. Just being able to impact someone like that, create a relationship with them, and for a whole entire year, work on their emotions and help them grow. At the end of the year, just seeing that change. I think with that student, that’s a memory that I have. Just seeing someone come in struggling so much and at the end of the year, having a smile on your face, having a different outlook on life, and just giving things a chance, it’s very rewarding. I think those are the memories that I live for.

Is there something that you would like the public to know about charters, or just in particular about your school?

The way I would respond to that, at the end of the day, I think we’re all fighting for the same thing. I think that’s our kids’ education. Whether it’s charter or traditional, I feel like it shouldn’t be a fight against both, or which one’s better, because we’re all on the same mission. We all want the same thing and that’s for a better education for our kids.

What’s your main goal or one of your goals for the new school year?

It’s an interesting question because I’m actually looping with my kids, which means that I’m going to get to keep them (for two consecutive school years). I think my biggest goal is that I’m going to focus more on my non-readers, my students who are struggling to read. For me, I think my goal is to get all of my students to become readers. I do think reading is very important. That’s a life skill that they need. I think that’s my goal. That’s one bigger goal.

Steven Rude, left, receiving a recognition by Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Blumenfield on September 5, 2019.

Steven Rude has spent nearly 30 years working as a school psychologist for Los Angeles Unified School District, supporting students experiencing severe emotional problems. With tragic events in schools becoming commonplace, he feels more than ever, school psychologists play a major role — one that should be more recognized.

“The sad reality is that you see all of these mass shootings, and districts like L.A. Unified are one day away from something like that happening again, so the district needs to realize what a viable part we are of the school district,” he said.

After two decades of serving high school students, Rude decided to change focus. A few years ago, he transferred to the Lokrantz Special Education Center and Head Start preschool, a non-traditional LAUSD school in Reseda. There he assesses and diagnoses children from ages 2 to 4, who may be autistic or have intellectual disabilities.

Rude was raised in the Southbay area of Los Angeles attending private schools. He says he developed a real interest in working in public education to support kids facing problems or those challenged by disabilities. One of his two children has special needs.

With the support of private donations, Rude opened a community garden this year with the purpose of encouraging his young students to learn about science and healthy eating. He also sees it as a way to get their parents involved.

“Psychologists are a huge part of every school program. We don’t just do special education and IEPs (Individualized Education Plans). We’re there to support kids that might be depressed or suicidal. Kids that are struggling.”

LA School Report asked Rude about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for 2019-20. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What do you think is the biggest misconception from the public about what your role in school?

I think the biggest … is that people just don’t realize that we are even in the school, and they don’t realize that we have a huge impact on the children, a huge impact on the faculty, the staff, and we really have the ability to make a positive impact on school sites.

What do you think is one of the major challenges educators face in Los Angeles? 

Probably just the lack of support administratively at Beaudry (LAUSD’s central office). The pay cuts, how about 10 years ago, I made more money than I do now (because of fewer hours). It’s quite frustrating. As you know, you want to be treated as a professional, but when you’re getting your pay cut and your time cut, but the workload has increased dramatically, it’s a bit frustrating.

How does that directly affect your students? 

I think it affects the students because we have (fewer) psychologists on site. Psychologists have a workload that is pretty intense. I mean I think our numbers are about 600 kids per psychologist. I mean … it’s pretty crazy. So at many school sites you know our job is primarily to do evaluations for special ed kids, but at the same time on any given day, a kid is suicidal or if a kid has been abused and we are called in to be reporters for child abuse. You know, kids that have drug problems, I mean, we’re obviously expected to drop all those things and they forget exactly that we have a lot to do with regards to special education assessment and evaluations and IEP meetings and so forth.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Napa Street’s Polly Buller-Ulm on encouraging parents of special-needs students to ‘dream big’ for them

Are you represented by the teachers union (UTLA)? Is the new contract signed this year after the strike you mentioned helping you solve any of those issues?

In this past negotiation, we tried to get more leverage towards seniority, which we don’t have. So, we got nothing in this negotiation. So it’s quite frustrating. Many of my colleagues quit the union because we pay the dues, we’re out there on strike, and we benefit when there’s a raise, but you know beyond that (not a lot). As school psychologists, we don’t (feel) much respect towards the union.

What do you think should change in the education system, either at the district or the state level? 

I think I’ve been doing this for about 30 years now. I think the biggest frustration is that every five or six years, you know, the people in downtown (the central office) talk about district reorganization and it’s always so top-heavy and the amount of money that’s spent on developing bulletins and research when there’s so much work that needs to be done in the classroom every day that is ignored because they’re busy making all these bureaucratic changes. I mean, yesterday we had our first meeting at Beaudry and you see all these commissions for this and that and people that are there and you have no idea exactly what their value is to education. And they’re walking around and it’s a little backwards.

The superintendent has been saying he’s trying to bring decision-making closer to schools rather than in the central offices. Do you think this time the district can actually be decentralized?

No. I mean, that’s why I don’t. I’m pessimistic when it comes to higher administrators at the board, but I’m still an optimist when working with kids. I mean, the moment I become a pessimist in my job, I become ineffective. And I think that’s why, after so many years working with a really difficult population, now that I’m back working with kids just starting out in preschool, it’s kind of reignited the flame inside me.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Sylvan Park’s early ed teacher Diego López on exposing preschoolers to technology without limits

Why did you decide to create a community garden in your school?

So basically when I was assigned at this location, at this special education center, I was exploring the school and saw a little plot of land, which apparently used to be a garden and all there was was a dead apple tree. And around the same time, they opened up two Head Start classrooms at the school here. And initially my plan was to have the kids that attended school here (use the garden), but they have severe disabilities and they’re in wheelchairs so they could not access the garden. But since there was a Head Start program just established here, I decided to create a community garden there.

I decided to create a community garden to encourage kids in our programs to learn about science, to learn about healthy eating, to get their parents involved. We have parents that want to be involved at an early age. We’re really teaching and encouraging them to be involved all along the process with the kids’ education. So I began begging people, stores like Home Depot, Lowe’s hardware, going to social media (to ask for donations) and I just started digging dirt and it was a very rainy year this past winter, with a few setbacks. But finally Lowe’s and Home Depot stepped up, and we had many in the community step up, and now I have 16 garden beds, and a very flourishing garden. … The whole goal is to get parents and kids involved at an early age to teach kids about science and teach kids and parents about healthy eating.

What would you say is the best way that parents or the community can help you do a better job?

I think having confidence in the educators. I mean, too often we’re on one side of the news. We hear about how bad public schools are and too often in the schools, educators, psychologists, counselors, they don’t get … recognized for the fact that they’re doing so much for so little every day. And I mean if parents would just give us that recognition, that would then empower us to make a huge difference with our kids.

What has been the biggest satisfaction or reward of being a school psychologist?

Many times there are kids who kind of get lost in school. Like when I worked at the high school level, especially at Fremont High School, a school with a few thousand kids, I would always try to look at the kids that are by themselves or lonely or that are struggling. The ability to reach out to those kids, to hear about what’s going on. You know, over the years after talking to kids, I was able to find out that this one girl was being abused by her dad and she was sad and we were really able to solve that problem and make the dad accountable and have him go to jail. And you see kids that are able to recognize that people do care about them and are able to do better and move on to college. So every once in a while, you do get those success stories, which keeps me going.

In an attempt to find the answer to why teachers of color across the nation leave their classrooms at a higher rate, a report released last month by Teach Plus and Education Trust examined the problems these teachers face in navigating the profession.

As a teacher of color, Daniel Helena has experienced first hand the challenges chronicled in “If You Listen, We Will Stay: Why Teachers of Color Leave and How to Disrupt Teacher Turnover.” As a Teach Plus-California Policy Fellowship alumnus, he collaborated with the report’s authors for nearly a year by leading several focus groups with other educators in Los Angeles. Teach Plus is a national nonprofit with a mission to empower teachers to lead improvements in policy and practice during its nine-month fellowships.

Across the nation, 51 percent of students in U.S. public schools are students of color, but just 20 percent of teachers are teachers of color, according to the report, which also notes that in the 2000s, 15 percent of white teachers were leaving the profession compared to 19 percent of teachers of color.

Helena sees the negatives in too much teacher turnover in his own career and in meeting his goal to have schools better address the needs of the communities they serve.

“I’ve bounced around to different schools and I’m hoping to stay here for a while because I think that’s what it takes. You kind of get some agency in your classroom and then eventually the school, and then as you stay long enough, you get to know the community well.”

Helena is now in his third year at Kory Hunter Middle School, part of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools charter network, where he teaches sixth grade English. The school in Huntington Park in southeast Los Angeles is in a heavily Latino, low-income neighborhood. Many of Helena’s students are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves, and like him, have Spanish as their first language.

Helena was born in Venezuela. He was 6 when he and his mother emigrated to the United States and settled in Atlanta, where he attended public schools. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a master’s in early childhood education from Georgia State University.

He began his career in the metro Atlanta public school system, where he taught for five years before moving to Los Angeles to work for Ednovate charter schools, where he implemented positive behavioral interventions at a high school. He says the number of suspensions there was drastically reduced by creating a character-building curriculum and establishing systems that recognized student accomplishments.

Helena says he feels supported at Kory Hunter and trusted in the classroom decisions he makes, but acknowledges that many teachers of color do not.

The Teach Plus report proposes that schools provide pathways for leadership for teachers of color as one of its five recommendations. Others are to provide mentorship, improve compensation and reduce isolation as ways of addressing the five main challenges leading educators of color to leave the profession: feeling unwelcome, invisible, undervalued, deprived of autonomy and placed in unfavorable working conditions.

LA School Report asked Helena about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as his goals for the 2019-20 school year. His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What motivated you to want to become a teacher?

I moved to the United States when I was 6 years old. It was just me and my mom. I guess I started teaching because I really benefited from having good teachers as a kid. I didn’t know any English when I moved to the United States, neither did my mom and so I was at the whim of the public school that was in our neighborhood. My mom didn’t know anything about the public school system. I ended up getting really lucky because I went to a pretty good school. It was a public school.

And so I was able to learn English pretty quickly. I already had a pretty strong foundation in Spanish, but I appreciate the help that I got when I was young and I became a teacher because I feel some kind of responsibility, some kind of calling to help families and students in a similar situation as mine. I currently teach in an area where there are a lot of Spanish- speaking families, where I’ve taught in different types of communities as well. So that’s why I started teaching.

How did you get involved in the Teach Plus and The Education Trust report?

Well, I’m at the point in my career where I’m interested to see and learn about different policies that affect classrooms. And through becoming a fellow for Teach Plus, I was able to meet other teachers, who are in this, who have similar interests, and we kind of landed on how to better support teachers of color and how they can be in the classroom longer. Because of my personal experience, being in traditional public and also charter schools, I noticed that it’s not easy — it’s not easy to teach — but it’s also not easy to teach in schools with high needs. And if you’re a teacher of color you can face additional challenges and obstacles.

What did you find new or surprising from the focus groups?

One thing that really resonated with me was a comment that I heard in my first focus group from an educator. They said that they wanted more professional development around youth culture. And the reason that resonates with me is because a lot of the times teachers, who share racial or cultural identity markers with students, are thought of as having an advantage with their students. But one identity marker that is really not talked about is age and the differences in generations. So just because you share that racial or cultural or ethnic identity marker doesn’t mean that you’re just, it’s going to be so easy for you. And schools and school systems really do need to adapt to understanding the current generation of students, the challenges that they face and how teachers in schools can support them and meet them where they’re at. There is a disconnect, not only academically in terms of what we’re having our students learn and how we’re having them learn, but also the space or the lack of space that we allow for our students to develop socially and emotionally as well.

From the report’s recommendations, which one do you consider to be crucial?

I would really push for the more culturally relevant professional development one, the one where teachers are having more opportunities to learn about trauma-informed practices, implicit bias training, because I have worked exclusively in high-need communities, communities, where based on standardized testing, the students don’t really perform very well and I don’t think it’s a representation of just students’ abilities. I think it’s more of a lack of understanding of the school systems and how to support the students. And so I say that because there’s a big gap in terms of I already mentioned this, about what adults understand and what needs to be done for students. And so, if we were able to educate our teachers better in terms of how to teach students who bring a lot of trauma into the classroom and how to help them navigate the world of academics, because we still have to teach them, we still have to get them to achieve at a high level, but we have to do that with more obstacles that a lot of (more) affluent communities don’t have to face.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School’s Veronica Amis, 34 years of teaching in Watts with ‘unconditional love’

What have you done in the classroom that has been innovating or unique?

When I worked at Ednovate, I taught ninth-grade English. I created a curriculum with another teacher. And that curriculum allowed students to explore their identity markers. They would read with other students and they ended up writing about the identity markers that most resonated with them. The ones they struggled with. It was just a really good opportunity for students to learn more about themselves. We were still able to teach the skills and the strategies that the students were responsible for, but we did it in a way where it was a lot more culturally relevant for them. And I think students really took a lot out of it, but they also enjoyed it.

How do you think school administrations or school districts could better support teachers of color?

Well, just like a teacher that looks at their curriculum, I think administrators need to do the the same with the type of professional development that they’re prioritizing. One of the challenges is teacher turnover. If there’s constant teacher turnover, then a lot of the times the schools have to constantly retrain teachers and those retrainings, sometimes they’re veteran teachers, the teachers who have been there for a while. They have to attend those too. And so for them, it’s not as meaningful, because they’ve already learned a lot of the training. But what can end up happening is that as a school, the school gets stuck in terms of their development and their learning, because we’re not teaching, we’re not differentiating our teaching to our teachers. It’s just like a good teacher teaches students who have various abilities and who come in at various readiness levels. Schools need to do the same with their teachers.

It is encouraging that LAUSD is looking to make some changes to their Aspiring Principals program and their curriculum, which is one of our recommendations. I hope that continues to build the … I guess build the momentum that we need to focus on how we’re developing our teachers. Because if teachers of color were — and really all teachers, but really if teachers of color — were receiving this type of training, it would be communicated that the work that sometimes is taken for granted, in terms of getting to know our students and understanding their situations well, we’re going to prioritize it so much that we’re going to professionalize that knowledge. The teacher who can speak in the student’s home language or can speak in a way that students understand and are more receptive to them. The teacher who can adapt their curriculum in a way that makes it more engaging for the students. We’re going to make that important. It needs to be prioritized and standardized.

What can parents do to better support teachers?

That’s a great question. From my perspective, parents, I feel a lot of love and appreciation from parents, I do. I still kind of want to put it on the school though. I think schools need to continue to reach out to parents, to educate parents. I worked at schools where not to over… I guess not to stereotype, but I worked at a lot of schools where there’s just a big gap of knowledge for the parents, in terms of how does the American schooling system work, how does the L.A. charter school system work. I mean a lot of people don’t know that. ‘How can I support my student at home so that I’m working at home to support them and then I trust that their teachers at school are also supporting them?’ So then we’re working as a team, teachers at the school and parents at the home base.

Currently, at my school, we have parent workshops. We have several events at the school, hosts like coffee with the principal, content nights, back to school nights. So engaging with the parents. When the school engages with the community, then it’s the responsibility of the parents to participate. But a lot of the times the parents don’t know. They don’t know where they can have an entryway. I’ve made home visits in the past and I’ve done research on how do parents perceive the school if they’re coming from a different country? Sometimes, parents, they see themselves as respecting the school by not getting involved, because they trust the school so much. It’s kind of backward from the American thinking of you need to be as involved as possible.

I’ve talked about educating the teachers better, obviously educating students better, but also educating the parents better and getting to know what questions they have so they can feel comfortable, especially when there’s a language barrier and the school personality is not equipped to necessarily understand and communicate with parents. It’s really important that those barriers are addressed and parents are made to feel welcome in the school.

 What keeps you motivated to continue teaching?

The students give me so much life. They give me so much energy, as much as it, as much energy and effort as this job requires, particularly when students have several years of growth to make. I get just as much, if not more, appreciation from students. I feel supported at my current school because I’m trusted that the decisions I make are the right ones. It hasn’t always been the case for me but, and I know a lot of teachers, especially teachers of color, are sometimes questioned, ‘Hmm, is that the best thing? Is that the right thing?’ And that can be a difficult situation to be in, because if you feel like you’re being questioned and not supported, then all of the challenges grow and grow. You don’t see the silver lining. So I guess just to phrase it in another way. I am reminded of the growth that my students make and I see the success and I try to focus on that as much as possible. I try to celebrate that with my students and that’s what keeps me motivated.

What are your goals for the new school year and overall as an educator?

Well, we’ve been talking about … I want to do some work around changing schools and school systems to meet the current landscape of the students in the communities. Our schools need to work for families that are in the communities. But what I have seen a lot is the communities change, but the schools stay the same. Policies don’t adapt to meet the needs of our communities. And when that happens, the people who suffer the most are first and foremost the students, and then the families in those communities. And it might be linguistic changes, it might be socioeconomic changes, it might be cultural changes.

But I do want to do some work around how to make grassroots changes because the community should be the biggest source of information that drives a school’s vision. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, almost all of the time, the vision comes from the top, from whatever the district sees is best, whatever the network sees as best. But even within a network, there are so many differences. Even within one city, there are so many differences that aren’t taken into account when there’s a standardized goal, when there’s a standardized approach. And so I guess my goal is to continue to learn how to leverage student voice, parent voice, and the community voice to best meet the needs of those particular communities.

And I’ve bounced around to different schools and I’m hoping to stay here for a while because I think that’s what it takes. You kind of get some agency in your classroom and then eventually the school, and then as you stay long enough, you get to know the community well. And I know I’m going back and forth, but that’s a challenge when there’s a high teacher turnover rate and it just limits your impact when teachers bounce around from school to school for various reasons.

Carol Park doesn’t take lightly the responsibility of teaching what she calls the “underseen” middle school student. With most of the attention given to the early elementary grades and the high school level, she thinks of the middle school grades as a “foundational time” where teachers can begin developing a student’s path to college.

Park has only taught at the middle school level. Currently, she teaches seventh-grade math and leadership at Columbus Middle School in Canoga Park, northeast of Los Angeles.

“I never left middle school, because the thoughts, or the ideas that are formed in middle school, they carry with them to high school. And at our school with students, with their backgrounds, many of them drop out in high school … but it’s what’s formed in middle school, I believe that sticks with them,” Park said.

That she acknowledges that many of her students don’t come from “a perfect home,” has helped her, she said, to have a strong relationship with them, which then allows her to have conversations with them and their families about pursuing college.

“I think the more knowledgeable our parents are in doing this path, the more we’ll see more students following this path,” she said. “It’s just sharing information and communicating it regularly. Not just once a year, having a college fair, but it should be consistent.”

Park is excited about bringing new technology into her math class this year. She says her students will have an iPad, which they are going to be using to create videos of themselves explaining math problems. “It will bring more fun into the classroom, into the academic learning part, it will get students more engaged. I’m super excited about the technology piece.”

LA School Report asked Park about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why did you choose to teach at the middle school level?

I think middle school is a time when the children are — and I hate to use the word neglected — but maybe underseen, because in elementary school, the parents are very, they’re very involved, and in high school they’re getting ready for college, so they’re also very involved. But in middle school, they’re kind of lost. The children are on their own, and that is when I think they need the most support in middle school because they’re developing. It’s a foundational time, and I have a lot of influence. Teachers have a lot of influence and groundwork to put into these children to instill in these children when they’re in middle school. That’s why I never left middle school, because the thoughts, or the ideas that are formed in middle school they carry with them to high school.

And at our school with students, with their backgrounds, many of them drop out in high school. Some of them might drop out in 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade, but it’s what’s formed in middle school, I believe that sticks with them. Like, ‘Oh, I can make it through this. I’m not gonna give up.’ And I think that’s why I’ve always stuck with it. And I love the school that I’m at now because every day I feel like my work is meaningful.

What are the main social and academic challenges faced by your students in their community?

Our school is a Title I school where most (of our families) are low-income families. We have … our students, like 98% are Latino. A lot of the parents, don’t have college degrees, they don’t have higher education. The dialogue at home isn’t, ‘You’re going to go to college after high school.’ It’s more like, ‘When you’re 18, we need you to work.’ My day to day conversation with them is trying to change that mindset, it’s that, ‘Hey, if you apply yourself, you’re able to make it to college. And it’s life changing, what a college degree can do for you.’ That’s not just for a few of my students. I say that to every student I come across. And it’s not, ‘Oh, this one’s going to be great at sports, or that one.’ I don’t make that judgment because I, nor anyone else, knows what a student will grow up to be. I don’t want to limit that for them.

What do you think the school district, or the state could do better to meet your students’ needs?

I think the district can help in providing more professional development that was made mandatory, where it wasn’t an option, because I’ve grown a lot as a teacher because I volunteer, and go to professional development. There’s so much useful information that I wish all my colleagues would receive, but it’s on a voluntary basis. I wish it was more mandatory.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job? 

I would say what’s most misunderstood is the influence that teachers have on students every day. How much influence we have, our day-to-day language, how we talk to them. We’re like family to most of these students. We spend more time with these students than some of their families because they’re working longer than they’re at home. And how much we influence them. I have lunch clubs, and I have a Girl Empowerment Club. We’re spending class time, lunch and whatever break, or after school, or before school (time). And in that hour, that it’s consistently they’re doing hard work, and they’re performing and they’re open to learning. That’s a lot of time that we’re spending to get to know each other. Every year I’m saddened at the end of the year when they have to go. I’m always sad because it took a year or two to really get to know them, and then they move on.

When did you know that you wanted to be a teacher? 

When I was little, my third-grade teacher was great. She taught me how to multiply, and I just really embraced education at that age. She had a lot to do with it because she was so positive, and I just thought, ‘Oh, I want to be a teacher when I grow up.’ And as I got older, it was just something that I, you know, I evaluated. I watched how my teachers were and I just thought, This is a field I really do want to get into’ and I think I would be helpful because I wasn’t a strong student and it was hard for me to learn things. And I always thought, ‘Well, you know, I could show them a different way, or I can teach it’ … I just thought of different ways to teach things so that it’d be more interesting … I never wanted to do anything else.

What are you currently doing in the classroom that you think is unique or innovating?

For me, it’s building relationships with my students. It’s knowing when to push them or when to pull back, it’s having a sense of understanding each student that I come across. And I also approach each student as though I don’t know how much trauma they’ve had in their life. I, from day one, I don’t go in thinking, ‘Oh my students had breakfast this morning,’ or, ‘They came from a perfect home.’ I always think, ‘I don’t know what happened last night, how much trauma is in their mind already.’ When they come in, I’m very sensitive to them, them to me and we just feel each other out. In LAUSD, we push the six pillars of character traits, and I try to build those six traits all year long, and that it’s not just something that we say or that we demonstrate one day a year, but it’s every day. We try to be responsible, we try to care, we try to build citizenship. And it’s just having a constant dialogue. There’s a lot of communicating, and encouragement, and a lot of positivity. But at the same time, I will call them out when they’re wrong, knowing if that’s the right time. But I will say, ‘Hey, that’s not appropriate. You don’t curse in class. Don’t be mean to each other.’ Especially with girls, sometimes they’re in the age right now where if you look different, or you wear something different, they can be mean to you. And I try to talk to them about how to solve their problems with more positivity and being more open-minded.

How do you think your school or the district can help you be innovative in the classroom?

I think our principal (Debra McIntyre-Sciarrino) has been working a lot with that, and she’s really helped with us collaborating more. It’s not like we’re isolated in our own rooms, in our department meetings. We’re in a program called InnovatED, where we have to collaborate, where we have to communicate, and we have to share what we’re doing and if it’s working. We talk about why is it working and how are we going to continue it. Or if it’s not working, we discuss, ‘Well let’s discontinue that and try something new.’ There’s a lot of collaboration, which has helped tremendously with moving forward.

What would you say parents can help you do a good job in the classroom?

There are two parts to this. For me, I don’t call parents, I text them. That has helped a lot because sometimes they don’t answer the phone, but when I shoot them a text message they respond. Responding to the teacher has helped, as well as just reaching out if they have any concerns. It can be an academic concern or a personal concern. Having a strong relationship with the teacher. I’ve seen more successful students when the parents are very involved, just checking up on how their son or daughter is doing.

I think in the middle school level they want to kind of push off. I’ve heard parents say, ‘Oh, I want my child to be more independent,’ but being independent doesn’t mean leaving them alone. It’s still coming to school, checking up on the student, checking up on them, checking on their grades and seeing how they’re doing. And if there’s a parent conference needed, even for a positive chat conference, that’s fine, too. It doesn’t always have to wait to be a negative thing.

Is there anything you wish would change in the (public education) system, or that you think needs immediate attention?

I think the value of education. Right now I hear a lot, I see a lot of arguments about, ‘Oh, if you invest in an education like a higher degree, you’re wasting $200,000 for a $40,000 job,’ and I think that’s a huge misconception because I think if you can make money off of your college degree, that’s wonderful. But in higher education, college is to expand your mind, not only to just make money, but for the community to get better. And I think that’s a huge conversation that isn’t happening because the more education the community has, the better it becomes. For me, I strongly believe in college because it makes the environment and community better regardless of the income. It just makes the community better because people are more knowledgeable. And what you do with that knowledge, if you can make money off of that knowledge, that’s wonderful. Just being educated is valuable enough.

What would need to happen so all students could have the opportunity to access a college education? 

You know what, I just think having conversations is a great start. Having conversations, and then also showing them around. I have two children of my own, and I have been talking about college to them since kindergarten. And I’ve talked to my children about this is good for college, this is how we get in, this is what you have to do. It’s having those conversations. For me, I know how to get there. And I think a lot of these families don’t know how to get there, so there should be like a class or something that can be offered. Even, not even if a class, but seminars for parents so they can get information to, you know, before your child’s high school, download a college application, see what are the qualifications to get into college, get information about FAFSA. (Let them know) that there are things out there that will help them. And I think the more knowledgeable our parents are in doing this path, the more we’ll see more students following this path. Because if you don’t know it, how are you going to get there? It’s just sharing information and communicating it regularly. Not just once a year, having a college fair, but it should be consistent.

What would you say is one of your proudest accomplishments?

Not in my eyes, but other teachers had labeled (some students) as difficult boys, and they’re the type of … if they don’t like a teacher, they will curse out a teacher, very defiant, very rude, very disrespectful. And in my class, I was very proud when we had instructional rounds and there were (other) teachers and there was a director with us, and those students stepped up and articulated math arguments. And they were able to analyze the problem and explain why the problem was incorrect, or why they agreed, or disagreed. And they were very engaged. And it’s not just that one moment, but it’s that whole year, watching my students engaged in lessons where these are students that are getting F’s in their classes, but they’re able to articulate, they’re able to read, write, speak on math problems, grade-level math problems, Level Three math problems.

What kind of support were they given in your class?

I think it’s that in my classroom, I have mutual respect from day one. I don’t look at them differently. I don’t have any prejudgments about them. As I said, I don’t know what kind of trauma level they might have. I come in with an open heart, and I expressed that to them. I don’t have any information from their past, I haven’t spoken to any of their teachers. Even if their teachers say something to me, I won’t hold it against them. It’s in one ear, out the other, and that we start fresh.

It’s not always a good day. Sometimes they’re mad at me about something, and then as an adult, I need to know when I just need to back off, let it go, this student is having a bad day, and when I need to step in and say, ‘No, it’s not OK. You don’t get to speak to me that way.“ It’s having judgment and the right heart. My father told me — I had him make a speech one time. I said, ‘Dad, I don’t know what to say,’ and he said, ‘Tell them that you love (them).’ For me, I just go in there with a loving heart every morning.

What is your main goal for the new school year?

My main goal is to build on the relationships I have with the students, because some of them I have them for a second year, and to really … I’m really excited about my new students, the ones coming out of sixth grade coming into seventh grade because it’s a totally different experience than what they’ve had before. And I’m really excited to start the new year. Every year, I’m excited to start the new year. And I guess, mine it would be building relationships and then we can build from there the academic goals.

After more than 20 years working in the insurance industry, Polly Buller-Ulm thought it wasn’t too late to pursue what she always knew was her true calling in life — working with special-needs kids.

Buller-Ulm’s goal when she decided to go back to school and get her teaching credential was to be the type of educator she would want for her family members with special needs.

“I realized that what I really needed to do was become the kind of teacher that I expected for my loved ones,” she said. This year, marks her seventh teaching special education students at LAUSD’s Napa Street Elementary in Northridge, where 85 percent of children are Latino, 20 percent are special education, and 100 percent live in low-income households.

“I believe that this is my purpose. So as difficult as it was, I still feel 100 percent that it was worth all of the sacrifices, and time and effort because what we do in the special ed program and at school with these kids every day, it’s so fulfilling, so rewarding, and so meaningful… I can’t even put any sort of measurement on the value that brings.”

Buller-Ulm began teaching first grade and transitional kindergarten, but three years ago she decided to teach preschool instead so she could help families get early intervention for their kids with developmental challenges.

“I realized the value of being a part of that program and helping children and families early when their kids are as young as possible so that maybe we could put interventions in place and get more kids into the general ed classes as opposed to the special day classes,” she said.

Buller-Ulm believes her special ed students are capable of excelling when no learning limits are placed on them. She says what has worked for her is partnering with their families by encouraging them to have high expectations and to dream big for their kids.

LA School Report asked Buller-Ulm about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the 2019-20 school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why is it important to engage the families of special needs kids in the early grades?

It really makes a big difference to have a partnership with our families, to support our families. As a family member, when you have a family member diagnosed with a disability, it’s daunting, it can be terrifying. You’re wondering, What does this mean for their future? What is it they’re going to be able to do? How satisfying is their life going to be?’ There are so many things that come up, and as a family member of somebody with a disability, I can relate to it on that side, as well as on the teaching side. So I feel like it puts me in a unique position to be able to partner with parents and help them to understand that we don’t need to place limits on our kids. We can have dreams and goals and support them in getting there, and they might not get there on the same timeframe as maybe their typically developing peers are getting there, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to get there. I don’t see any reason to place any limits on our kids and what they’re capable of doing. In fact, I try to partner with parents and encourage them to have high expectations, and to dream big for their kids, and it’s amazing what we can see, and kids just rise to the occasion.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job, particularly working with special ed kids?

I think that there are some individuals who don’t understand what the kids are capable of, and so they look at it like it’s more of a glorified babysitting job as opposed to actually teaching. Every individual, regardless of whether they’re in special ed or general ed, everybody learns in their own unique way. Some of us maybe have a more unconventional path to learning, and maybe they need more movement in their days in order to be able to have their body be calm and regulated, to be able to learn things that are being taught in the general ed classroom. We just work with each individual to figure out what their needs are, what their unique needs are, and what their special learning pathway is. I think that I’ve heard individuals ask why resources are being wasted, don’t I get bored, and I’m never bored. In fact, the more challenging the situation is, to me, the more inspiring it is. I have a student who came into my classroom, and he was able to sit, but he wasn’t able to crawl. He wasn’t able to walk, he wasn’t talking, he wasn’t even engaging with toys, playing with objects. He was just sitting, and not really reacting to things, and today this child is walking independently on the playground.

Can you share more about your students and the community you serve?

So we’re a Title I school. One hundred percent of our students receive free breakfast and lunch. As far as the program itself, I teach a PALS program. It’s Preschool for All Learners. So we have children who have disabilities. I mean really it’s such a wide range of disabilities, children who have very mild disabilities to children who have very severe disabilities. Some of the kids might have more of a speech and language delay. Some of the kids may have some more very profound disabilities, so it’s really a wide variety. I think one of the things that makes our program so interesting and I love it, I love having such a diverse population of students. I feel like we all learn from each other. One of the things that I really love about our district is that we are really trying to move toward more inclusion, so we’re looking always for opportunities to have our students with special needs working with our students who are typically developing, because having those peer models is so motivating and helpful to our students.

Is there anything that you think your school, the district, or even the state could do differently to better support teachers?

Well, we hear it all the time, funding is always an issue. It’s always a challenge. I can only speak for myself and my classroom. I spend a very significant portion of my salary investing back in my classroom, they need so many different opportunities to be exposed to the different concepts that we’re teaching in multiple ways in order for them to acquire those skills. So I think that continuing to invest in these programs, in these materials, I mean, the materials don’t last forever. So as a teacher, I am constantly purchasing or making things to supplement the learning so that I can maximize these opportunities for our kids. So when it comes to state funding, I just would love to see more of that funding actually hit the classroom itself.

What do you think is the biggest way parents can help teachers?

I think partnering with teachers, but I think communication is huge, and that goes both ways. I think that it’s really important that we are open to our parents, and that we welcome them into our classrooms, and that we truly work as a community. I feel that our campus does a very nice job of really partnering with families. We have a very active parents center, and we have very active parents in our community who participate in all the activities that we have at our school. But just constantly keeping that line of communication open with parents, and making them feel welcome, and helping them to know the value that they bring.

I think that having a student population where we have students who are second language learners, I think sometimes if the teacher and the parents don’t always speak the same language, there can be times where maybe the parent is shying away from communicating as much with the teacher. I think that as a teacher, I have to look for people to help bridge that and communicate with the parents so that they know what’s going on with their child, so that they feel the sense of community that we’re building here on campus in our classroom and in our school as a whole. And just continuing to encourage them to be active on campus, to be a presence with their child.

The other thing is following through. If we tell parents that we’re going to do something that we follow through and we do the things that we say are going to do because that’s what builds trust and builds relationships.

What would you say is one of your proudest accomplishments as a teacher?

My proudest accomplishment so far really is that situation with the little boy that I was sharing with you. I mean practically seeing the light bulb turn on and watching the difference that it made in his life, once we were able to get him moving, everything changed for him. It was a painstaking process of investing every day additional time and trying to make sure that we’re building those muscles because if we don’t have strong muscles, we can’t support our body, and we can’t stand. … I mean, it is really difficult to function in this world when you don’t have mobility, and we knew how important that was for him. So to have invested all of that time and effort, and the trials and errors, and then to watch the child blossom and watch his reaction to his world, and to people, and his excitement to sing songs with friends and know all of the hand movements and clapping and celebrating together. It’s incredible.

What’s your main goal for the new school year?

Well, I have so many. I have a lot of students returning to my classroom. Almost all of my students that I had last year are returning to my classroom, so really getting my kids ready for kindergarten, and I want to see as many of them as possible go into general ed classrooms, and so that’s what I’m working towards. I’m always looking for opportunities to enhance their development, and get them into general ed.

Veronica Amis was born in St Louis, Missouri but she moved to Los Angeles with her family in 1963 when she was three years old, so she went to LAUSD schools until she graduated from Alain LeRoy Locke High School in Watts.

“So I’m definitely a product of LA Unified School District,” says the teacher who has spent the last 34 years teaching second- and third-graders in the same school in that same underserved South LA community.

“When I was young, I had three aunts who were teachers, two were teachers and one was an educational aide. In the summers when I was in junior high school, I would go with them to work because I was out of school and I would help them with their classes,” Amis said. “I fell in love with their classes. I fell in love with their room environment … So I said to my aunt, ‘I want to be a teacher just like you,’ and it did stuff in my head. Before I knew it, I was going to Cal State Long Beach. I wanted to be a teacher.”

After more than 30 years educating mostly black and Latino low-income students at Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School, one of 18 schools in the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a nonprofit established in 2007 to manage the district’s then- lowest-performing schools, Amis knows what keeps her coming back to the same place. It’s her belief that the community of Watts is very special and that its families trust their educators.

“I feel that we as educators have to do as much as is humanly possible to provide safe environments, to provide acceptance and just unconditional love for these kids,” she said.

• Read more: Commentary: School safety means physical, intellectual and emotional safety – How Jordan High School in Watts is transforming school culture

Amis has intentionally remained teaching second and third grades because she feels they are so important and that’s how she can best support her students’ learning moving forward.

“For me, second grade and third grade are so crucial to their foundation because after you go onto third grade, and even fourth grade, you are not learning to read, you’re reading to learn. But if you haven’t learned to read, if you don’t have foundational skills in decoding and understanding print, it is difficult for you to read for information,” she said.

LA School Report asked Amis about what could be done better or what needs to change in the education system to allow reforms and innovation to take place in the classroom, as well as her goals for the new school year. Her answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What is so special about Florence Griffith Joyner?

I think the community is so special. I feel that they trust educators with their students, with their children and they give us that responsibility to educate their kids and take care of their kids. And it’s such an honor, I definitely am humbled by that. I noticed that community works for their kids (and has) what everybody wants within a community — to have a rich education and to learn to love learning and to be successful.

What do you think are some challenges faced by your students in their community? 

The current climate right now is challenging for the community, with funding cuts, and the political climate, there are so many things that the families face now that are even harsher than it has been in the past. It’s more serious, it’s having such an emotional impact on the students. And I feel that we as educators have to do as much as is humanly possible to provide safe environments, to provide acceptance, and just unconditional love for the kids. That helps them to feel confident and to take some of that fear away from them. So that they can focus on learning. So as educators I believe we need to provide as much support for them emotionally just as we do for them academically.

What would you say is your best moment or day as a teacher? What is your proudest accomplishment?

I would have to say meeting the children’s needs. Making sure that no child leaves my room at the end of the year without having made progress, as much progress as they can make. Instilling in the kids a belief in their ability. I feel like as a human, as an educator, just as a mom, I feel so blessed that a child now has a grasp of their ability and they start to soar once their confidence is instilled, and they build your confidence. That makes me feel like I have done something. Just one part of this child’s life.

What do you think is most misunderstood about your job? 

I think that people don’t know that teachers do more than just teach the curriculum. One important thing that we do is to change life skills. And to help to build a foundation for students that are things that will change the rest of their lives. Like persistence. To be persistent, stay focused on the task and do the best that you can with each task. There’s even a value to being punctual, just be on time, be present. Those are things that are life skills that are things that you take with you for the rest of your life. And it’s a value that we promote as educators, the families support it. And I think that that’s something that people think, ‘Oh teachers, you just teach the curriculum. You’re teaching kids to read and write or whatever, complete math.’ But we do much more than that. Like I said, even just life skills, tenacity, persistence.

• Read more: Teacher Spotlight: Alliance’s Guillermo Lopez on setting higher expectations in math for low-performing students and convincing their teachers that excellence is possible

After over 30 years in the profession, what would be your advice for new teachers? 

I would say to meet your students where they are, whatever their gifts are, whatever they bring to the table, promote it, encourage it. Whatever it is, don’t be stuck in, ‘Oh, I have to teach this curriculum.’ Always make the curriculum relevant to the students, whatever it is. If you find that your male students may not be interested in that topic, find a topic that they are interested in and they want to learn about and try and meet the students where they are at. So try and make yourself accessible to the kids and help them to relate to you and you to relate to them, which is more important. We’re meeting the students where they are, what their concerns are. I find that little thing that motivates them, meet them at their level.

What do you think the state or the school district could do better to support teachers?

I definitely feel that the fate of the teacher, the community. All stakeholders can invest more in education, specifically nurses, counselors, intervention teachers. You know, we definitely have a need for more staff, more support to meet the needs of our students. That is definitely, to me, a very important way to act. The district, the local government, the state. Even on the federal level, even the private sector can help to support education by investing more in our staffing, in nurses. We need full-time nurses every day at every school, in my opinion. Intervention teachers to help those kids who have somehow not met their minimum competency for the grade levels to help (them). It gets them the foundation of support that they may need. And counselors. We have such a need for counselors where a kid may come to school with grief from the loss of a family member or something. Those supports are just invaluable.

What do you think needs immediate attention or probably needs to be changed in the system at a policy level, either at the state or district level?

Well, I definitely feel like social and emotional learning… I think the curriculum needs a boost. A curriculum that really meets the cultural and emotional needs of kids. Currently, we have a program called Second Step and it’s great in what it does, but there needs to be more. More techniques to meet the social-emotional needs of students.

What do you think needs to happen at the school level, or district level as well, to bring more innovation into the classroom?

I think the experiences from the community, within the community there are all kinds of resources, so it would be wonderful to get more scientists on campus. They have these science fairs, and things like that are neat. And enhanced field trips where the kids really get to broaden their experiences. Going out into the community, maybe a community garden, being more involved in things like that. Growing vegetables and things, or even other field trips to experience. Los Angeles is a big city. It’d be wonderful to really take advantage of all of our entities, to share everything and have that just as a part of the curriculum without having the extra fees and paying for buses and things like that. To just have all the resources available to you at a minimum cost.

What do you think is the biggest way parents could help teachers do their best?

I would love to see every child represented by a family member at different school events, parent conferences, Latin Heritage Dance Festival at our school, our concert night. I’m calling for it to be standing room only where there was just so many parents, we’re just swamped. Just inundated, I would love that. So every child could be represented by a family member at all of our school events. That would be fantastic.

What’s your main goal for the new school year?

It is, as always, to make sure to give my 100 percent effort. That every child that is enrolled in my class, and even in my grade level, that every child makes progress towards meeting their goals. That no child leaves my classroom or even my grade level at the end of the year without having met their academic goals, their learning goals. And that they know their progress, they know that they made progress and it’s evident in their work, in their product that they produce. That is my goal, to be able to have students know that they have made progress from the first day of school to the last day of school, that they have worked toward meeting their academic and social learning goals.