Class Reaches Last Chapter : Immigrants: Students complete a tedious, six-month course they hope will open new doors of opportunity.

By the time the students of Room 508 held a party celebrating the end of their night school English course last month, Young Song, a 53-year-old Korean who had been unemployed for nine months, had found a job as a liquor store clerk.

That was just one of the chapters that closed or opened in the lives of a picturesque cast of characters during the six-month semester at Van Nuys High School:

Armando Gomez, a Mexican shoemaker and tailor who rode his bike from work to school and home again each night, decided to move to a safer neighborhood after thieves stole the bike from in front of his apartment.

A streetwise Salvadoran member of the class lost his job--a hard blow for an undocumented ex-convict trying to support his family and stay out of trouble.

Joaquin Ortiz of Mexico, who had been forced to live in a rented garage, moved into a decent apartment after landing a second job.

Miguel Godoy, a courtly car painter from El Salvador who entertained his fellow students by singing tango melodies in class, became a born-again Christian.

And Miriam Aguilar, 54, overcame a fear of speaking English that had dogged her through the years since she emigrated from Cuba in 1969, although she had raised English-speaking sons and had a steady job.

“It’s never too late to learn,” she said.

As the students of Room 508 opened up to one another and to a reporter over the course of the semester, they shared their dreams, victories, fears and failings; they made friends and enemies; they defied stereotypes.

Many of the students were undocumented, supported large families on low-paying jobs and would be considered “working poor” by government standards. They seemed too sharp, too energetic for that label; it was hard to believe that many had not completed high school.

About 30 members of the original group who finished the Level 3 English as a Second Language course have generally mastered simple verb tenses and developed a base in more complicated uses of the language such as hypothetical concepts and comparisons of past events--putting them in an elite group.

About 80% of 80,000 students in the city study in the first two levels of the six-level ESL program of the Los Angeles Unified School District, according to district officials. Most do not go much further; only about 10% of the total student population are in the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-level courses.

“A lot of people will not go beyond the third level,” said Domingo Rodriguez, director of the citywide ESL program. “They have other agendas, second jobs that they have to hold down, family, demands from employers.”

The semester’s end gave the students a chance to look at where they came from and where they are going. The contrasts were often stark. Except for a few students with university degrees from their home countries, the prospects were often depressing in a service-oriented economy that is harsh for someone who lacks language skills, education and legal residency.

“I may never become a citizen,” said one of the many undocumented students. Like the other Spanish-speakers in the class, he was interviewed in Spanish.

“I may never get a better job than I have now. That’s why we are here: to sacrifice our lives for the next generation. So they come out better. You’re living in a country where you don’t have a name, rights, legal work. If you don’t have dreams, what do you have?”

The difficulty facing such immigrants and their children is that the well-paying, blue-collar “good” jobs that helped bring past immigrant generations out of poverty into the middle class have largely disappeared.

Unless they continue studying for high school diplomas or college degrees, Rodriguez said, often the most realistic goal of students working in low-wage job sectors is to become a bilingual supervisor of Spanish-speaking workers.

With the contracting economy and the social destruction of dropout rates, gangs and drugs, there are social scientists who fear that uneducated immigrants may end up trapped in the multi-generational “underclass” of persistent poverty already present in American cities.

The students of Room 508 don’t discuss the future in sociological terms, but those who are parents worry about the palpable dangers to their children.

“I want to spend more time with my son now that he’s becoming a teen-ager,” said Gomez recently, as he sat behind the sewing machine at the clothing store where he works. Gomez wants his son to be well-prepared for the menace of street gangs.

“You see these parents who let their little kids dress like cholos , with the shaved heads and the clothes, it’s crazy. I want to establish a base to prevent any of that. I want him to get some kind of physical discipline, sports, maybe karate. I want him able to fight, and I want him to know when to run. I want him to be aware of reality. He’s going to have to live in it.”

Other students, and other scholars, believe that the heralded traits of immigrant sacrifice and initiative will overcome obstacles, as in the past.

In fact, Aguilar, the Cuban student, said she feels immigrants today have advantages she lacked.

“I think they have opportunities,” she said. “There are benefits, food stamps, possibilities to study. There are more organizations to help them.”

Although teacher Andrea Beard sees a tough future, she said: “I am not optimistic about the world or our own culture. I am more inspired by the people I see coming into my classroom because they still have a certain idealism I don’t see in my own culture and generation. They have faith that things will get better. That keeps them afloat in hard times.”

When Beard asked the students one evening to rank a dozen values in order on the blackboard, the great majority picked “faith in God” and “good health” as the most important. “Financial security” got the least votes, perhaps in part because it is a somewhat lofty, abstract term. Also, Beard said, the students live in a world where making money for immediate survival takes precedence over long-term planning.

“They need the money now ,” she said. “They need to send the money back to their families now . It’s not the long-range, career-oriented mentality.”

“Sense of humor” was not among the phrases Beard put on the board, but it was integral to the personality of Room 508. One exercise that displayed the class humor and its increasing confidence in the second half of the semester was based on improvisation and role-playing.

Beard posed the scenario: an INS interview. The students played the roles: a sick man, his wife and a lawyer trying to persuade two suspicious agents that the man should be allowed to stay in the United States to receive medical care for a heart ailment.

The setting inspired students such as Nicolas Guzman, who played the lawyer, and 18-year-old Jose Antonio Mendoza, who made an extremely stern INS agent.

“The law is the law,” Mendoza intoned repeatedly, shaking his head, as Guzman exclaimed, “What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you human? Maybe we want your supervisor if we cannot correct this situation.”

The exercise brought out the ham actor in Mario Tavollaci, 27, a gregarious, jaunty, self-described musician from Sicily who joined the class after the spring break. He was a man from a bygone immigrant era, a representative of the early 1900s in a Latino-Asian-East European classroom mix that was vintage 1990s.

“How come you don’t have no children?” Tavollaci, in the role of INS agent, demanded in his throaty accent of the two students playing the married couple.

“He is sick,” said Socorro Aguilera, the tall, pretty Mexican woman playing the wife.

There were gales of laughter from the class as Tavollaci made the most of the potential double entendre, grinning, raising an eyebrow.

“Sooo . . . nothing, huh?” he said mournfully to Aguilera, gesturing with disdain at the ‘husband.’

“I am sorry for you.”

Tavollaci was not a hit with everyone, however. A few male students in particular resented his nonstop chatter.

“Here comes the loudmouth,” a youth muttered in Spanish one night as Tavollaci bustled into the room late.

Such conflicts deepened in the second half of the semester. The atmosphere remained generally congenial, but the strain of long workdays and grueling evenings in the classroom was more evident than before. Some tension was ethnically rooted--whether between different Latino nationalities or between Latinos and non-Latinos.

But most of the problems surfaced between the less serious students--including a group of young men prone to jokes and distractions--and a core group of more serious, committed students.

“There was a little tension,” Beard said. “It happens. You have to rediscover the balance in the classroom each night.” Not all the serious students were older. Mendoza, the youngest at 18, was so troubled by a loud dispute one night over plans for the end-of-semester party that he called Beard at home after class and apologized in the name of the class.

Mendoza, a deep-voiced youth who works as a gardener, said he was disappointed because some students became increasingly disruptive in the last weeks.

“I didn’t want the teacher to think we were all like that,” he said. “She’s a great teacher. She loves all the students. She treats everyone the same. I haven’t gotten to know a lot of Americans. And maybe I’m completely mistaken, but when I’m around a group of Americans I feel that they are prejudiced against me. I am uncomfortable. Except for the teacher, she isn’t like that.”

Beard and older students such as Gomez and Zorel Fodoreanu, a Romanian political refugee and chemist, took Mendoza under their wing during the course of the semester. They encouraged him to get a high school diploma and go to college after studying English.

Mendoza, who is from a small town in the Mexican province of Michoacan, enjoyed the several occasions when Beard let him lead class exercises. He is intrigued by her suggestion that he should consider teaching, though he has not given much thought to a career.

“I think I would like to be a teacher,” he said. “I want to make an effort to be more than a gardener. I get bored at home. I like to be in class. I feel good in class.”

After Fodoreanu, Mendoza had the highest score in the class on the final exam, which did not generate much nervousness or anticipation. The atmosphere was decidedly non-competitive. Most of the students did well on the exam, which is only one of the factors that decides whether they will go on to Level 4.

Even most of the students who scored poorly will advance, Beard said. When she handed out the scores at the end of the semester, she generally let the students decide whether to repeat Level 3 or move up to the next level.

“They are adults,” she said. “For some of them, the pride that they are going to go to Level 4 is the important thing that night, even though they change their minds next semester.”

Like previous class parties, the final celebration featured a great deal of singing, dancing and eating. And the students showered Beard with gifts: necklaces, earrings, carefully prepared thank-you cards, songs.

One of the cards, from a 19-year-old student planning to return to Mexico, showed the students’ deep love and respect for the teacher--and their continuing difficulty with subtleties of the English language.

The cover of the card read “In Sympathy,” and the printed message inside expressed “sincere sympathy to you and your family for a loss that will be felt by many.” It was a condolence card of the type sent to relatives of someone who has died.

But the student, who wrote painstaking words of thanks and praise to Beard, did not realize that. The cognate of “sympathy” in Spanish refers to likability. He evidently thought it was an appropriate card for saying goodby to a friend.

“It was wonderful,” Beard said, laughing. “I love it.”

Beard also received a beautiful, homemade model of a cherry tree made by the wife of Young Song, the dignified Korean student, who came to the party in a suit and tie. He was beaming about his new job.

“I find job,” said Song, whose family in Korea owned a movie theater and newspaper before they ran into political troubles with the government. “I am very happy.”

Song, Fodoreanu, Mendoza and the other students have struggles ahead, but they have reasons for hope, too. Many of them seemed to gain energy with each day--Fodoreanu, who spoke enough English to describe the ravages of life in Romania with passion and poetic imagery, who is still fighting and scheming to get his wife and children out of Romania, whose handyman business keeps growing.

Or Zoraida Guerrero, the shy, divorced Nicaraguan mother of three and assistant supervisor at her factory, who sought out non-Spanish speakers in order to practice, who worried about her children’s education constantly, who regularly came up to Beard after class, dictionary in hand, saying, “Teacher, I have a question.”

But Room 508 was not a room full of saints. The students were not a monolithic success story waiting to happen. There are casualties, setbacks, human weaknesses that get in the way.

During the party in Room 508, a Salvadoran in his 20s leaned against a wall watching the festivities. Thin, wary, tough-looking, he had been quiet in class, but one of the best English-speakers. He had among the highest scores on the final exam.

Raul (not his real name) recently lost his factory job in North Hollywood. He is an ex-convict from a war-torn family. He came to the United States, alone, when he was 15. His girlfriend joined him; they found jobs and got married.

But Raul got involved in a ring of car thieves. He ended up spending time in jail for auto theft; he talks about the police arresting him at gunpoint, about surviving racial brawls in jail.

Raul was deported after his release, but promptly recrossed the border and returned to his wife.

Raul says he has reformed. He dutifully attended the class, scribbling notes, looking up words, whispering questions to fellow students.

He was asked if he still feels the temptation to steal.

“Sure,” Raul said in Spanish. “Sometimes. But that would be crazy. I would go to prison for years for what? What can I steal, a bicycle? A car? It’s not worth it. I’d rather be poor and free.”

Raul’s criminal record makes him ineligible for the government’s new Temporary Protected Status Program, which offers many undocumented Salvadorans an opportunity to become legal. He has condemned himself to life in limbo, and he knows it.

“I need another chance, man,” he said, his English heavy with the rhythms of the street and of jail. “I never give up.”

Faces in the Class

JOSE ANTONIO MENDOZA, 18, Mexico

He works as a gardener.

Although he did not graduate from high school, he got the second-highest score in the class on the final examination in Room 508.

“People sometimes ask me what is my way to relax.

“My way to relax is going to English class. I get bored at home.

“I don’t like to stay home. I enjoyed the class.

“I liked being with people in the class.”

MIRIAM AGUILAR, 54, Cuba

She is a supervisor at a company that makes computer cabinets.

“We came to Miami from Cuba on the 27th of January, 1969.

“We came to Los Angeles several days later. The only thing anyone ever gave us was that the Catholic Bureau in Miami gave us $100. “I was scared to speak English for more than 20 years. I didn’t have time to study. I had work, a family.

“And now I feel that I have improved a lot.”

ZOREL FODOREANU, 42, Romania

A political refugee, he works as a handyman.

“In other classes there were bad jokes, bad habits. Other classes were not like this. The teacher is very important for the spirit in this class.

“I am making progress. But I work many days in a Spanish area with Spanish people. I cannot understand their English, they cannot understand my English. I am laughing because they think I have good English.”

ZORAIDA GUERRERO, 33, Nicaragua

She is a garment worker. She became disillusioned with Catholicism years ago and joined an evangelical church. But now she has doubts.

“I have been going to church less. I don’t like the attitude they have toward music. They want to impose things that are not right. They want to make you think everything is sin. I like music, I like dancing, I like salsa. They say the message of music is sinful. That makes it difficult for me.”