Remote Regimen : Most Learning at Independent Study School Takes Place Outside Classroom

At Monte Vista High School, there are no junior or senior proms, no pep rallies, no class clowns, no mass crowds in the hallway between classes, no social hierarchy. Teachers do not lecture in front of a roomful of students.

Instead, there is a quiet calm over the Costa Mesa campus, where just eight teachers toil away in one wing of what was once an elementary school. No more than two students sit in the hourlong classes at a time, except for math labs, where there are four.

Graduation for many students is a trip to the school’s office, where registrar Rose Smith plops a red mortarboard on their heads and finds them a matching gown, so she can shoot a couple of snapshots of the graduate standing in the middle of the school’s courtyard, a diploma in hand.

Teachers Follow Up With Call Home

On each teacher’s desk is a telephone so the instructor can call students to find out why they failed to make it to class or why school work was not turned in.

But for Monte Vista students, most of the learning takes place outside the classroom. The Costa Mesa high school is an independent study program that enables students to complete high school requirements at their own pace, while they concentrate on jobs or other projects.

One boy gets his assignments by facsimile machine in the South Pacific, where his family is on a 1-year vacation. Another girl with a modeling assignment in Barbados mails in her homework. Other students are from single-parent homes and have to work to contribute to the family income.

“There is no state rule (on who can go through independent study), but our rule is that a youngster must have a good reason why he can’t attend school on a regular daily basis,” Principal Carole Castaldo said. “We try to discourage a student who wants to go surfing or lay on the beach.”

Enrollment Doubles Each Year

Programs such as Castaldo’s have been around for 12 years, since the state Legislature allowed school districts to offer independent study. But lately, enrollment in such programs has been booming, even in places where enrollment overall is declining, such as the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, of which Monte Vista is a part.

Each year since Monte Vista was set up, Castaldo said, enrollment has doubled. There are now 350 students in the program; 134 were graduated last year.

Statewide, enrollment in independent study programs has increased almost 50% in the last 5 years, according to Lynn Hartzler of the state Department of Education’s alternative education unit.

Some of these students, Castaldo said, “are a result of a new generation of parents, parents that didn’t necessarily follow a straight and narrow path. And now they’re raising kids who are saying, ‘We don’t want a traditional program.’ . . . I think that’s why attendance is growing--and it sure is growing.”

With a statewide dropout rate of more than 30%, educators have been forced to develop alternative education programs, such as independent study, to reach students whom traditional schools do not seem to touch, said William Habermehl, assistant superintendent of the Orange County Department of Education.

For some students, they have found, learning is more successful if education is stripped down to its most basic components: a student, books and self-motivation to learn, with a little guidance from a teacher.

‘Beat of a Different Drummer’

“At many of the alternative education programs, you’ll find many very polite kids, kids with very high IQs who just kind of walk to the beat of a different drummer,” Habermehl said. “They don’t learn well in the confines of a 30-to-1-teaching-ratio classroom. They want a 1-on-1 or 3-on-1 situation. In these programs, they thrive.”

Castaldo was quick to point out that Monte Vista is not “an easy way out” or “a quick way to graduate.”

It is not a school for losers, she said: “It takes a lot of self-discipline and responsibility to be successful at this.”

Two prerequisites for Monte Vista are that students be at least 16 and demonstrate good reasons why they cannot attend a regular high school on a daily basis, either because of a job or other activity that will keep them busy.

Monte Vista, like many other state independent programs, allows students as old as 21 to attend. But Gov. George Deukmejian’s proposed budget for next year would eliminate money for students over 18 in any public school program except adult education.

Another requirement for independent study--the strictest one--is that students and their parents or guardians must sign a contract stating that the student will complete a certain amount of work during a set period. If that work is not submitted on time, the student is dropped from Monte Vista 3 weeks after the deadline.

There are almost as many reasons for students to enroll at Monte Vista as there are students.

Model Terri Raitt’s face has graced the cover of Teen Magazine four times, and she has been in several commercials lately. She was signed recently by the giant Wilhelmina modeling agency.

Raitt, 19, is from Florida and got her first modeling job during a vacation trip to California 4 years ago, when she entered the Face of the ‘80s contest and was signed by the Nina Blanchard agency. The next year, against her parents’ wishes, she left home to devote herself full time to modeling and acting in California--and also left education behind.

Raitt’s modeling career is skyrocketing, but she has decided she had better also get her high school diploma. Monte Vista seemed the best way to do that.

Modeling in Japan, Europe

“I was going to take the GED (equivalency diploma), but to me that’s not a real diploma,” said Raitt. Instead, she has been taking two courses at a time, between modeling assignments in Japan and Europe, and has gained enough credits to graduate.

“This school is really good for kids who are into acting or modeling,” she said. “This is perfect for me. When you’re a model or work in the business, you can’t make your own hours. When they call you for a shoot, you have to be able to go. They work with you here (at Monte Vista). They’re real versatile, because they want you to graduate.”

Raitt visited the school’s registration office last week to check on her credits. This week she will return with her parents and fiance to pick up her diploma.

She will pose for a snapshot, wearing the red cap and gown that school officials keep on hand for every student who completes the requirements.

“I am so excited to graduate,” Raitt said. “That’s why my face is flushed.”

Another Monte Vista student, Shannon Anderson, 16, said she used to “live for the weekends.”

As a student at Newport Harbor High School, Shannon said, she “ditched” school frequently, adding: “I used to get into trouble a lot.”

Shannon said she found schoolwork “not challenging enough.” Now she works full time at a Miller’s Outpost store, paying her parents for room and board and getting A’s in her classes at Monte Vista.

“I go visit my high school friends, and I just can’t handle it,” she said about conventional schools. “They say, ‘Let’s go toilet-paper (drape with streams of tissues) the girls’ restroom,’ and I think, what for?”

Procrastinating Doesn’t Work

The self-discipline was difficult at first, Shannon said. Like many new students at Monte Vista, in her first few weeks, she put off her schoolwork until the last minute, then panicked when it came time to turn in assignments. She soon found that procrastinating would not work.

“I don’t want to fall back anymore,” she said. “I want to graduate next year. I think to myself, ‘You’ve gotta grow up, you’ve gotta get a job and go to school. You can’t be a screaming little high school kid anymore.’ ”

But Shannon plans to spend her last semester at Harbor High School, because she does not want to miss out on the fun of a conventional senior year. She is excited because she has been asked by a boy to attend this year’s junior-senior prom at her old high school.

Onofrio D’Amato, 17, sometimes spends 17 hours a day helping with the family’s fishing business off Newport Beach. Born in Italy, Onofrio has become a dory fisherman like his father, who still fishes the old-fashioned way. They take turns going out on the boat every day and manually bring in 200 to 500 pounds of fish.

Most of the fish is sold in a stand at the beach. Even before the boat is ashore, it usually is met by a small crowd clamoring for the best of the day’s catch.

The operation is a family affair. The younger children spend hours attaching bait to each hook on the long lines. Family members take turns cleaning and cutting fish for customers. Now that Onofrio is older and strong enough, he too goes out alone on the boat, at 3 a.m. when the fishing is best.

Onofrio had attended a regular high school. But as he began taking over duties once exclusive to his father, it was becoming increasingly difficult to fit schooling into his work schedule. So he attends Monte Vista.

“My father needed me,” he said. “It’s hard work, and he just couldn’t do it alone anymore.”

Onofrio often brings fish for his teachers. Castaldo described him as one of the school’s more conscientious students.

Nicole Hill, 17, moved here from the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue an acting career. She has been in several commercials and several locally produced short films. To support herself, she also holds down two jobs, as a waitress in a Balboa Island restaurant and as a manager at another restaurant.

In between, she is taking a world history and a drama class at Monte Vista, working toward graduation.

Nicole said she sometimes gets comments from friends who think that because she is going to Monte Vista she is “getting off easy.”

“But I’m working just as hard,” she said. “Sometimes, the work is a little harder here (than in regular high school), sometimes a little easier.

“I like this a lot more, because I like being more independent,” Nicole said. “Sometimes I miss the school dances and all the school life. But I keep myself really busy.”

That students “get off easy” and slack off in schoolwork even more than in a traditional high school are criticisms that teachers often hear. But Monte Vista teachers said that does not happen for very long, if at all.

Work must be turned in every week to show that a student is keeping up with studies. If the student does not come in--or mail in the work, in some cases--the teacher calls. Teachers have time to do that because they have a smaller student load than teachers at other high schools.

If students fail to hand in assignments after 3 weeks, they are dropped from the program.

“They call us and say they couldn’t come because they had an emergency, and I ask, ‘Well, what emergency?’ ” said Beverly Smith, a math and algebra teacher.

Courses of 4 to 5 Weeks

Each course lasts about 4 to 5 weeks and is the equivalent of a semester. Digesting so much material in that short a time might be difficult, especially because it is done almost entirely independent of teachers, Smith said. But that is no excuse for failure.

“Eventually, they should start reaching stumbling blocks,” she said about students’ lessons. “But I am here every day. It is up to them to find a friend or a relative or an enemy, or us, and ask us for help.

“I tell my students I’m here to walk the path with them. But if they’re not here when they should be, I will call boyfriends, girlfriends, mothers or fathers about why they are not here,” Smith said.

The school offers almost every course found in traditional high schools: English, algebra, economics, psychology, French, German, history, geography, physical science--the list goes on.

That is because the philosophy at Monte Vista is that if a student is interested in a particular subject, and the course is not offered, the school will try to provide that course.

Teacher: ‘We’re Misfits’

It helps to have a teaching staff with a wide background and interests. The eight teachers at Monte Vista say they are as untraditional as their students.

“We’re misfits,” Smith said, describing her colleagues.

Jo Black, an English and drama teacher, for example, frequently appears in local theater productions and has performed on the New York stage.

Fred Grade, a languages teacher, played in a chamber orchestra in Europe. The others have also done interesting things with their own lives that students can use for models.

Teachers said this system is not a guaranteed success for students, but failure seldom happens here because individualized attention is available. Also, the pace for courses is, for the most part, the student’s option.

“We have the distinct advantage of putting the game ball where it belongs: with the student,” history teacher Marc Katz said. “To us, it’s not the teacher who teaches. We’re more the learning facilitators.

“We tell the students: ‘The job of educating you is now your job.’ ”