Job Skills Therapy Helps Troubled Youth : Rehabilitation: Boys with criminal records gain self-control and sometimes find an occupation. Lawndale program has won honors.
The troubled boys at Masada Placement School in Lawndale are working on wood projects when an outburst from one side of the room threatens chaos.
Kristoffel H., a tough, but baby-faced 17-year-old who spent 3 1/2 years in county probation camps for theft and other crimes, is having a problem with the electric router.
“What’s wrong with this (expletive) wood?” he shouts, flinging his goggles on the table. “Where’s James? He (clamped) it on wrong!”
Steven Nakamoto, who teaches one of two occupational therapy classes at the county-run school for juvenile offenders, quickly steps in to diffuse the tension. He tells Kristoffel that cursing won’t fix the problem and offers to help him cut a new edge. He compliments Kristoffel on his straight line, and within moments the youth appears to have gained a new sense of mastery over the wood and his own emotions.
The woodworking section of the occupational therapy class at Masada Placement is designed partly to evaluate whether boys like Kristoffel possess the skills to become carpenters, and partly to teach them self-control. It is also a component of a wide-ranging, award-winning curriculum that aims to teach juvenile offenders how to lead productive, successful lives.
By the time Kristoffel and seven others complete the 10-week course, they will have learned something about cooking, writing checks, filing income tax returns and reading bus schedules and maps. They also will have explored their own talents, identified possible careers and discussed how to get and keep jobs.
“We don’t just play hit-and-miss,” Nakamoto said. “It’s much more focused. . . . We guide the students in career choices and the courses they will need to take to get there.”
Occupational therapy is most commonly offered to stroke victims and psychiatric patients, but in 1975 an experimental program was established for juvenile offenders at Masada Placement. Three years ago, the program moved its headquarters onto the Masada campus, which serves about 80 boys at the high school level. Since then, the program has expanded its services to other juvenile court schools countywide.
County officials have not measured how many of the program’s graduates find jobs. But studies by officials who run the program show that 80% of those who take the class go on to complete some kind of vocational training, which usually dramatically improves their chances of employment. Before the class was offered, the vast majority of Masada students who enrolled in vocational training dropped out within a couple of weeks.
The program, which last year trained about 180 adolescents throughout the county, was honored in June as “exemplary” by the Juvenile Court and the Community Schools Division of the Los Angeles County Office of Education. The course at Masada Placement was among 10 school-based programs to receive the honor.
Other school programs for juvenile offenders that won recognition include a psychological treatment center that offers dance and drama therapy, a reading improvement course and a carpenter’s apprenticeship program.
For the youths--many of them so-called incorrigibles who have trouble trusting adults--the benefits of the occupational training program at Masada Placement are not always so apparent. Several youths discounted the relevance of the course, while others criticized the therapists for trying to guide them into unappealing careers.
Sixteen-year-old Shane R., a self-described anarchist who walked into class complaining of a “gnarly, righteous hangover,” says occupational therapy may be beneficial to “the minors who lack any skills,” but he doesn’t consider himself among them.
Classmate Marvin M., who spent six months in probation camp for selling drugs and stealing cars, was less defensive: “It’s helping me get my grades back up. It’s teaching me a lot of things--how to get a job, how to talk to people, how to communicate.”
Program Director Marilyn Noriega says she is not surprised by the boys’ mixed reviews.
“What we’re asking the students to do is make the transition from marginal families and backgrounds to a productive work model,” said Noriega, who also teaches a session. “They get upset and take (criticism) personally because they don’t have a solid foundation. . . . It takes sometimes a year afterward before it starts making sense to them.”
The challenges of trying to expand the youths’ world views are great. In one recent session, the boys wanted to use gangs, guns and female body parts as examples of categories for a word-game activity designed to teach them how to work with partners. When Noriega told them they had to come up with different categories, the youths became angry and unruly.
“You see how quickly they revert to old habits,” Noriega said later. “The first thing that comes to them is their own experience. But I’m trying to give them an option to look at other things.”
Students who have most benefitted from the technique have eventually found careers in hospital-related professions, machine tooling, banking and sales, she said.
Samuel R., 16, a former gang member who had his first brush with the law at 8, is among the program’s success stories.
He spent several years in and out of probation camp before a judge ordered him into a group home in Los Angeles. In January, he completed a 10-week session in occupational therapy at Masada Placement.
Today, Samuel is working toward his certificate in hotel management at the Southern California Regional Occupational Center. He plans to take an additional course this fall and has already been offered an entry-level job by a major hotel chain.
During a visit to Nakamoto’s class last week, Samuel seemed almost apologetic about a tattoo on his arm showing his former gang affiliation. He refused to describe the crimes that brought him to Masada Placement, preferring instead to discuss how a course in occupational therapy changed his life.
“I used to be a very negative kid,” Samuel said quietly. “I had an attitude in the way I approached people, the manners I used. But I’m not the way I used to be. Now I’m a lot more polite. I’m nicer to people.”