DAY OF THE TEACHER : ...

Classrooms can be plush or barren. Students can be highly gifted or dim-witted. Instructors can have state-of-the - art teaching materials or dog-earred textbooks. None of these things matter. If the teacher is good, students will learn.

In the past few months, the education spotlight has turned to teachers. Last fall the California Commission on the Teaching Profession issued a report that called for giving teachers more control over their profession. It also advocated career ladders to make it possible for veteran teachers to earn up to $57,000 a year.

Next Friday, the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy is scheduled to release the results of a yearlong study on teachers and teaching. The authors hope that the report will have as much impact as the landmark 1983 report “A Nation at Risk,” the study many educators credit for launching the most recent wave of education reform measures.

Maxine Stanoff Lewis’ second-period 10th-grade English class at Granada Hills High School was a tough group to interest, but she kept plugging away.

After reading school announcements, Lewis told the students they had 10 minutes to write in the daily journal she had asked them to keep.

“A journal gets them to write every single day. They learn a lot about themselves by writing, and I learn a lot about them when I read the journals,” said Lewis, who has been teaching for 26 years.

“And while they’re writing, I get a a chance to catch up with the tons of paper work that teachers have to complete,” she added.

Later, when Lewis began her lecture, many of the students were only half listening. But within minutes, she had hooked the students’ attention by bringing the theater into the lesson. Lewis is primarily a drama teacher, so she finds it particularly effective to use that background for her English classes.

Lewis’ ability to blend theater into mainstream English curriculum is one reason why the Los Angeles Music Center’s education division gave Lewis its BRAVO Award this year, which honors outstanding arts teachers.

For the last two years, Lewis has served as the president of the Drama Teachers’ Assn. of Southern California. She and her drama students have won many awards, including the Ahmanson Performance Award, a much-sought-after high school theater honor. This summer, with the aid of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Lewis will travel to Britain to study the works of William Shakespeare.

Lewis teaches beginning drama, an advanced drama course called play production and regular English classes. She calls her play production work the day’s “dessert.” But motivating some students in required courses such as 10th-grade English can be difficult for even the best teacher. Lewis’ answer is reading, writing and theater.

Lewis got her 10th graders’ attention by telling them that during the next two weeks each member of the class would be responsible for seeing and analyzing two plays.

One of the plays assigned was the school play that Lewis was directing, a turn-of-the-century melodrama called “He Ain’t Done Right by Nell.”

For the other play, students could see any live performance. Lewis suggested William Inge’s “Picnic” at the Music Center’s Ahmanson Theater.

“It’s really sensual and very romantic. I think you would like it,” she told the students. She also recommended plays at other San Fernando Valley high schools and named a few community theater productions she had recently seen.

As she talked, the class came alive. One student said live productions were more fun than TV or movies because the audience develops a personal relationship with the actors.

Another chimed in that she enjoyed watching a play more than reading a play. The group agreed, and several began talking about “A Raisin in the Sun,” a play they had read and seen in movie form.