For 2 New Teachers, It’s Like Coming Home Again as They Take Inner City Posts

Recent college graduates Ray Owens and Ileetha Brooks will start their teaching careers in familiar surroundings when school opens next month and they welcome youngsters to elementary school classes in the inner city.

Owens and Brooks are among 500 participants in the Teach for America project, aimed at alleviating teacher shortages in cities and rural areas. The project, begun by a 1989 Princeton graduate, Wendy Kopp, is modeled after the Peace Corps.

For Owens and Brooks, it will be like going home again. “I was born in Compton but moved to Austin as an 8-year-old,” said Owens, 29. “I used to swim in Lynwood.”

Brooks grew up in the Watts-Compton area. “I am simply going to the community I grew up in to teach the people there,” Brooks said. “My mother is there. She will always be there.”

Brooks, a graduate of UC Berkeley, is one of about 35 recruits expected to join the Compton Unified School District. Owens, a University of Texas graduate, is one of 39 recruits scheduled to teach in the Lynwood Unified School District. About 225 of the 500 participants will work in the Los Angeles, Compton, Lynwood, Inglewood and Pasadena school districts.

Owens and Brooks completed eight weeks of intensive teacher training at USC and taught this summer in the Los Angeles district. They and other recruits are committed to teach at least two years.

Brooks, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology, said she plans to get a doctorate in educational psychology, with an emphasis on the black family. Her goal is to become a professor and do research in educational psychology.

Owens majored in economics and government and originally envisioned a business career. He left college to work as an enforcement officer in the state controller’s office in Texas, but returned to school to get a bachelor’s degree in English after deciding that he did not like the job.

“I realized I always wanted to be a teacher,” he said.

He said he might someday be interested in switching from teaching to writing curricula.

Owens gave the commencement speech during graduation ceremonies for recruits Wednesday at USC. He urged his colleagues to be sensitive to the needs of students and to help them succeed.

“I challenge you to care,” he said. “There is a little girl in Baton Rouge who needs to know you care. There is a little boy in Compton that needs to know that you believe in him.”

Debra Harrison was addicted to drugs and alcohol when she decided to mend her life several years ago.

After undergoing treatment for her addiction, the mother of two teen-age children went to night school to get her high school diploma. She graduated from Dominguez High School along with her daughter, Meeka. They enrolled together at Compton College. Meeka Harrison took time off to care for her infant son; Debra Harrison graduated in June.

Harrison, 38, will continue to take early-childhood courses at the college and plans to open a day-care center in the future.

Around the campus, Harrison is well known for her boosterism. She has organized pep rallies, raised funds for student events and been on the student council. Harrison, who rarely misses an athletic event, is commissioner of athletics on the student council.

“She’s everyone’s mom,” said Mark Haynes, student body president. “She loves to have someone to take care of.”

Haynes created a special award--Associated Student Body President’s Award--for Harrison.

Maria Flores has been appointed as the new program director of the Flossie Lewis Center, a Long Beach recovery home for women troubled by alcoholism and drug dependence.

Flores, a recovering alcoholic, has helped start a couple of homes for recovering women, including establishing a sober-living housing project in San Pedro. The Flossie Lewis Center also includes a program for homeless women recovering from drug dependence.

* Several ABC Unified School District campuses will have new principals in September because of retirements and resignations. Decla Johnson will be principal at Stowers Elementary School. Cerritos Elementary School Assistant Principal Carol Trujillo will take over the top job at that school. Veteran teacher Wade Austin will be principal at Wittmann Elementary. Nancy Maynez will be principal at Hawaiian Elementary. Maynez was an assistant principal in the Riverside district. Yvonne Contreras is the new principal at Killingsworth Junior High School. Contreras was an assistant principal at Gahr High School in the district.

* Compton High School students Lincoln Johnson and Tamika McClelland won gold medals at the Afro-Academic Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics. Johnson won for film video and McClelland for drama. The national contest was sponsored by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

* Norman L. Cook has been given the Distinguished Toastmaster Award by Toastmasters International, the educational organization devoted to speech communication and leadership development. Cook is a member of the Downey Space Toastmasters and the Downey Happy Hour Toastmasters.

* Los Angeles County Fire Department Assistant Chief Jimmie L. Ryland has been named assistant fire chief in Commerce.

* Ronald J. Piazza is the new president of the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce. Piazza, 38, owns all five McDonald’s franchises in the city. And at one, the Woodruff Avenue McDonald’s, he established the Lakewood Youth Sports Hall of Fame to pay tribute to the community’s young athletes.