Those Teachers Who Create a Lasting Impact

A heart condition and severe arthritis have kept Luciana Damiani Serantoni, a retired Garden Grove artist, homebound for 10 years, but she doesn’t speak of her life with any sense of self-pity or regret.

The person who made that possible, she says, is a teacher who guided her through three years of elementary school--a woman who “gave me books to read and told me I was special.”

“She made my life beautiful,” says Serantoni, who grew up in Florence, Italy. “I’m 63 and homebound, but I’m never bored because I read literature from all over the world. That teacher instilled in me a fire for learning, and learning is still the greatest pleasure of my life.”

Evelyn Gibson, a 50-year-old Anaheim resident, also remembers a special elementary school teacher who had a profound impact on her life. Her third-grade teacher in Hazel Park, Mich., read children’s classics aloud to her classes, and when the students failed to ask questions, she told them, “You need to express some curiosity!”

“She taught us how exciting discovery can be,” says Gibson, who works for an advertising agency. “Today, my favorite pastime is reading and writing. My profession depends on an ability to read, to comprehend, to ask questions, to write. Phyllis Lennington gave me a beautiful gift.”

Beautiful--and rare.

Most of us can name only a few teachers who have made a lasting imprint on our lives. Others may have helped us grow and learn, but we remember those who gave something extra--perhaps a piece of themselves that helped us find ourselves.

Bob Brush, executive producer of “The Wonder Years,” was paying tribute to a special 10th-grade teacher in his life when he wrote an episode about Kevin Arnold’s relationship with a demanding--but giving--math teacher.

Reflecting on the episode just after his screenplay was nominated for an Emmy Award, Brush told The Times: “On the show, we often present teachers as just fractured images of human beings because that’s all the students ever see. Teachers are kept at a distance. They get nicknames and reputations and that’s the only view most students have of them. They can’t see through to the human qualities, and that’s why we generally have just one or two teachers who stand out, who got beyond those barriers and touched us in a way that was more human, that helped us learn in a way that was more than just by rote.”

Judy Abeita, a marriage, family and child counselor in Tustin, says a teacher can make a tremendous difference in a student’s life, particularly if the child isn’t getting enough nurturing at home.

“All of us have a real need to see someone’s eyes sparkle when we walk into a room. Even if children come from a terrific home and feel good about themselves, it reassures them,” she suggests.

When the school year is over or it’s time to graduate, it’s hard for some students to let go of teachers who’ve touched them deeply. Some never do.

One of Paula Tomei’s best friends is her high school drama and English teacher, Barbara Van Holt, who still inspires a sense of awe in Tomei even though they are now “soul mates.”

Tomei, 33, graduated from Estancia High School in Costa Mesa in 1975 after spending three years in Van Holt’s drama program and a year in her honors English class. Today, Tomei is general manager of South Coast Repertory, where she essentially performs the same duties she learned under Van Holt’s wing as the student business manager of Estancia’s drama department. And Van Holt still teaches at Estancia, where the former actress brings a stage presence to the classroom that makes her seem larger than life to the young people who look up to her.

Tomei’s high school memories of Van Holt reflect the way that some teachers inadvertently carve a special place for themselves in the hearts of their students by challenging them to learn in unconventional ways.

For example, reminiscing with Van Holt during a recent lunch, Tomei recalled the ladder exercise that Van Holt uses to build trust among the diverse students in her drama classes.

Each student climbs to the top of a ladder, then falls backward into the arms of his or her classmates, who have formed a line across the stage. The student is then passed in a prone position to the end of the line.

“When you’re in high school and you’re overweight, you don’t believe they’ll catch you,” Tomei recalls.

Van Holt shares that fear and lets her students know it.

Taking her turn at the top of the ladder is “the scariest moment of my year,” she says. “It’s easier to open a show in front of 700 people than to let go of that ladder. Each year, I say I’m not going to scream, but I always do. The kids know how scared I am. They say, ‘It’s OK, we’re here for you.’ And I hope what it tells them is that I depend on them, too.”

They get the message, Tomei declares.

“In drama,” she says, “we learned not to let others down. Barbara taught me trust on a level I never thought possible. I basically believe in people. I don’t go out in the world thinking they’re out to get me.”

Tomei says she was constantly being pushed to think in Van Holt’s classes. “We were asked to come to our own conclusions and justify them. When you find out something for yourself instead of having someone tell you, there’s a sense of discovery and you grow.”

Although Van Holt has a reputation for making academic lessons compelling--students listen raptly to her lectures on the symbolism in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” Tomei says--she admits that her curriculum is primarily a vehicle for imparting values.

She sees her drama classes as a kind of United Nations. “If people in high school who wouldn’t normally get together can learn to get along at this age, maybe we can all get along better later on,” she explains. “I want them to be a little more willing to cooperate, negotiate and listen to someone else’s viewpoint.”

Just before her drama students graduate, they are asked to stand up in front of the class and talk about a quality they like in themselves. Then they tell their classmates what they like most about them. And Van Holt urges them to “take this applause with you.”

“I want them to take away a sense of their own talents and their loveliness as human beings,” she says. “I want them to leave knowing they can do a lot more than they thought they could when they came here.”

Tomei left high school with that knowledge, which helped her rise to a management position at South Coast Repertory, where she has worked since graduating from UC Irvine 11 years ago.

Van Holt, who talks of her former student’s accomplishments with great pride, once had a rare opportunity to find out how much Tomei had learned in her English class. She misplaced her lecture notes but soon learned that Tomei, a copious note-taker who had graduated from college by this time, had saved her notes from Van Holt’s class. Tomei loaned them to Van Holt, who was amazed by their clarity and depth.

“What an incredible kid she was,” Van Holt says. “She had organized my thoughts. Her notes were better than mine. I still use them today.”

Tomei, who found it “really weird” to call Van Holt by her first name after they became friends, says the fact that Van Holt was her teacher adds a deeper dimension to their friendship. “She saw me grow up. She knows fundamentally who I am.”

Seeing Tomei and her other students grow up is one of the greatest joys of teaching for Van Holt. “There’s nothing I could imagine I’d want to do more than watch someone grow from 14 to 18. I get to witness that and be a force in it,” she says. “When I was an actress and people would applaud at the end of a performance, I would think, ‘This isn’t it.’ There’s nothing compared to the feeling that you are of value in someone else’s life.”

The high cost of housing in Orange County has made it necessary for many people to take in roommates to help make ends meet. But it’s tough to find someone with whom you are compatible. If you’ve been successful, tell us how you and your roommate have managed to work out a living arrangement that works well for both of you. Send your comments to “Relationships,” Orange County View, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Please include a phone number.