Moonlighting : For Sanity and Extra Cash, Schoolteachers Take on Variety of Outside Work

Maddie Hayes and David Addison aren’t the only ones who moonlight. An estimated 40% to 50% of Los Angeles teachers make money in a variety of ways beyond their regular teaching jobs.

Although they offer a variety of reasons, ranging from creative satisfaction to stress reduction, San Fernando Valley teachers admit the main reason they moonlight is the money.

The average salary earned by a teacher in the Los Angeles school district is $28,000 a year, not including benefits. A recently approved salary increase will raise that by 10% next year.

There have been no official surveys, but Catherine Carey, director of communications for the United Teachers of Los Angeles, a union that represents 32,000 L.A. teachers, estimates that 40% to 50% of them work second jobs. These include teaching summer school, adult school, tutoring, owning their own businesses, investing in real estate or checking groceries at the local supermarket.

On weekends, evenings and school vacations, the five Valley teachers described below supplement their income by working part-time as a cantor, a shoemaker, a tour guide, a tree trimmer and a trumpet player.

Dominic Bonelli spends three evenings a week and all day Saturday in his late father’s shoe-repair shop in Canoga Park. During the day, Bonelli, 34, teaches math at Roosevelt Junior High School in Glendale. His teaching salary is $31,000.

“I can make a better living at my shoe making than at school teaching,” he said.

“But I must still get something out of teaching. Sometimes I wonder what. Kids don’t appreciate teachers enough.”

Bonelli’s father was apprenticed to a shoemaker during the Depression in Ohio. When the family came to California, Bonelli’s father tried selling everything from insurance to bread. But when times were hard, he returned to the craft of shoe repair.

“My dad pulled my toe every Saturday morning from grade 5 on,” Bonelli recalled. “Off I went, reluctantly, to shine and repair. In high school, I had to work until 8 or 9 at night. My dad was sick.”

Bonelli’s father wanted all his children to go to college. “I was sure I’d never return to shoe repair again once I became a teacher,” Bonelli said. Then he laughed, pointing to the row of boots in various stages of repair.

‘A Tie to Past’

“My dad died in this shop this past summer, and maybe my being here is a tie to my past,” he said.

Bonelli, who wears a shoemaker’s blue smock and a baseball cap when he works, said he gets to see a finished product when he completes a repair on a boot. He pointed to a pair of riding boots he widened by adding a gusset. “Some of my boots have been on the feet of Olympic contenders.

“But when I teach, I’m never sure what I produce.”

Bonelli never teaches during the summer. “I need my craft,” he said. “Sometimes I neglect things at home to come here in the name of extra money. I think my wife sees right through me.”

Akiva Harris talks to trees. Before he trims them, the 56-year-old math teacher from Westlake Village explains to them that although the process may be painful, they will be healthier.

At Cleveland High School in Reseda, Harris gives the school district’s tree trimmers unsolicited advice and evaluations.

“I’m not a butcher with a chain saw who removes foliage,” he said. “Remember, I trim trees. I’ve read a lot of books about my job and even took an intensive tree-trimming seminar at UCLA.”

Harris, who wears a salt-and-pepper beard and mustache that make him look like a gentle woodsman, has taught school for 28 years. He said tree trimming, which he does on weekends and during the summer, is physically exhausting, but not stressful.

“In teaching I expend psychological and emotional energy--even with the best kid. I see 140 distinct personalities every day,” he said.

Two Motivations

“Many of today’s kids are indifferent, immature and poorly motivated. I tell the kids, ‘You may be here because of your parents or your friends. I’m here because I want to get the teaching done.’ ”

Some Mondays, Harris said, “I must force myself to return to the classroom. But once I’m there, I lose my resistance. I enjoy the kids. When one comes back and tells me I’m the best teacher he ever had, I know I’m in the right profession.”

Harris earns $36,500 as a teacher. Last year he made $2,157 trimming trees.

“The toughest part of tree trimming is giving a good estimate,” said Harris. I lose 10% of my bids. But that’s not important. When you don’t reach a kid, that’s an important loss.”

Gerald Gediman earns $37,000 a year teaching fifth grade at Justice Street Elementary School in Canoga Park. During school vacations and summer recesses, Gediman is a Permanent Intermittent Historical Tour Guide at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

Gediman describes Hearst Castle with a gleam in his eye and the practiced cadence of a seasoned tour guide: “It’s perched 1,600 feet above sea level, and you can see 20 miles of sea coast with no structures in sight.”

He got the job through a classified ad.

“I love working with people from all over the world,” he said. “They pay their admission after planning the trip for months, or even years. Ninety percent of the tourists come in a good mood. At the end of the hour-and-15-minute tour, I get instant feedback. It’s usually good.

No Feedback Sometimes

“Some of the kids I teach never respond.”

Gediman, who lives in Woodland Hills with his wife, who is a teacher, and daughter, a law student, has bought a home in Cambria Pines near Hearst Castle. He plans to work at the castle when he retires. At 50, that seems a long way off to him.

“As a teacher, I’m with kids all day. As a guide, I spend some of my time with the public, but the rest of my time is private. The stress in the job at Hearst Castle is almost zero,” he said.

But teaching has its advantages, he said. “There’s so little to be bored about. For better or worse, I’m constantly thinking. I have to make innumerable decisions on a moment’s notice.

“Teaching is stressful, but never dull.”

Lawrence Ellis is a cantor because he loves to sing. Ellis is a teacher because he married young and wanted a secure job with time off to pursue his goal of becoming an opera singer.

“No one warned me,” Ellis said, “that if I didn’t work nights and summers, my family would starve.”

Ellis’ opera teacher encouraged her student to be a cantor. As a tenor, his operatic potential could not be measured until he was in his mid-30s. Ellis had a growing family to support, and was weary of selling Fuller brushes and waiting to be assigned to an after-school playground job.

He auditioned at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and was accepted into the cantorial program. For five years, Ellis attended school one night a week to learn the vast volume of Hebrew music and chants required for his second career.

Ellis has been at Temple Emet in Woodland Hills for 18 years. He declined to say how much he earns as a cantor, but his teaching salary is $37,000.

Center of Social Life

“On the pulpit, I am Cantor Ellis. When I step down, my wife and I are Gloria and Larry. The congregants are our family and our life.”

Ellis, who teaches math at Mulholland Junior High School in Van Nuys, sings the praises of his students, as well. “There’s nothing wrong with the junior high kid. How many adults could behave better in such close conditions?” he asked. “There are 18 languages in one of my classes. They’re a great bunch--a regular U.N.”

He is not, however, as sanguine about other aspects of teaching. “I’m frustrated with the administration, my salary, the lack of materials, and the negative attitude toward teachers fostered by the board. But I’ll never give up being a cantor.”

Dick Goldsmith earns $37,000 a year teaching French and Spanish at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills. In his other life he is Dick Allen, trumpet player, who earns about $4,000 a year playing at local bar mitzvahs, weddings and big-band performances.

Goldsmith, 51, began playing in the ‘50s. “I was ready to go on the road and join Kerouac,” said Goldsmith. For two years after high school graduation, he traveled with groups of musicians playing one-night stands across the country. Goldsmith wanted a more permanent job when the addition of a wife and baby made a steady income important.

“In teaching, I rely on my spontaneity. In music, I improvise. My approach to both is the same, and it’s the only thing that has kept me from burning out after 27 years in the classroom,” he said.

There are stresses, he says, in music and teaching. “In music, I set too high a standard for myself on my trumpet. It’s rarely obtainable. In teaching, I set high goals, and sometimes there’s no doubt I succeed.”

No Regrets

Goldsmith said he doesn’t leap out of bed on Monday mornings to race to El Camino. But if he had the choice to make again, he would still be a teacher-musician. He regrets that after five years of undergraduate studies and many other required courses, he has to moonlight to survive.

“There are some wonderful people in our profession,” he said. “But they work against overwhelming odds with 180 kids a day demanding attention.”

Playing the trumpet is a refreshing antidote to that stress. “Musicians retain a certain youthful exuberance all of their lives. It’s fun to be part of that,” said Goldsmith.