Lights! Camera! Books! Teachers Play Role on Sets : * Education: Instructors give lessons to child actors between scenes. They also keep an eye on working conditions for the state Labor Commission.
W ANTED: Open-minded teachers with elementary and secondary teaching credentials to instruct creative, talented children for three hours a day in intimate setting on a studio lot. Minimal paperwork. Starting salary: $1,425 a week or $245 a day plus overtime. Unlimited opportunity for breaks, refreshments and schmoozing with Hollywood VIPs. Paid vacations every three weeks during school year.
But first, the small print and Lesson No. 1, which says remember Hollywood’s Golden Axiom: Things are never as they seem.
Carol Gans, a studio teacher on the set of NBC’s “The Torkelsons,” learned that lesson on her first assignment to teach what she thought would be a 10-year-old.
“I got to the job and I saw all these cribs lined up,” says the former Los Angeles Unified School District teacher. “I said, ‘Why are all these baby cribs here?’ And they said, ‘Well, there’s going to be 10 1-year-olds.’ ”
Which brings us to Lesson No. 2: Studio teachers do more than teach. Under state law, they also are responsible “for caring and attending to the health, safety and morals of minors under 16 years of age.” So in addition to passing or failing a student, they can shut down a set.
“Yes, we have a lot of power,” says Lynn Raines Levy, who taught in Los Angeles schools for 21 years before moving to the studio in 1986. “Sometimes you wish you had more. Sometimes you wish you had less.”
And Lesson No. 3: Although studio teachers are mandated by the state, they are paid by the producer. As such, they have about as much job security as the actors they teach.
“Here every job is from week to week,” says Levy, who teaches on the set of “Roseanne.”
“Any time, they could turn to me, if somebody disagreed with what I said, and say, ‘Goodby, see you’ and have a new teacher in here Monday morning.”
Welcome to the world of the studio teacher.
In the Los Angeles area, there are about 200 studio teachers. Under state law, they provide instruction to children who work in the entertainment industry--in print, television and the big screen.
But they also act as “eyes and ears” of the state Labor Commission and make sure child actors are protected, says Candy Jennings, a management service technician for the state’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.
“I get calls from teachers every day trying to clarify what constitutes moral conduct on the set,” says Jennings. And sometimes, teachers learn, it’s a gray area--something that is personally offensive is not necessarily morally wrong under state law.
Levy recalls working on a set with 3-month-old blond twins whose hair was periodically dyed black for their roles.
“I felt it was appalling,” Levy recalls, still angry. “I mean to take 3-month-old (babies) and dye their hair, not once but maybe once a week for two months.”
However, there was nothing illegal because the “health, safety and morals” of the children were not in jeopardy.
Michael Jacobs, executive producer of “The Torkelsons,” which features five children under 16, says he tries to hire teachers who are flexible. Very often in the creative process, he notes, a director might have to petition a teacher for a few extra minutes to wrap a scene. If the director loses the setup, the production company could miss its delivery date.
“Depending on the age and disposition of the child . . . sometimes we get it and sometimes we don’t,” says Jacobs, a father of two who stresses the importance of studio teachers.
“These kids are going to be taught not only how to act and how to do their jobs, but how to live their lives,” Jacobs says, “and the studio teacher is going to play the critical part in that process.”
Jacobs’ emphasis on education has impressed Pam Burnett, mother and manager of Olivia Burnett, who plays 14-year-old Dorothy Lee on “The Torkelsons.”
“The crew will sometimes wait two hours until the kids finish school because the kids’ education is that important to them,” she says.
Except in rare instances where low-budget production companies try to cut corners by providing one teacher for 10 students--the maximum allowed by law--teachers and producers usually work well together. Surprisingly, studio teachers more often complain about the parents of the child stars.
“I mean, it’s heartbreaking, some of things you see,” Levy says. “A family picks up, you know, from Podunk, Iowa, leaves the father and sisters and brothers at home, and mom will take this child to California to be a star and do almost anything. Parents want their kids to work. They don’t ask questions. They don’t even know enough to ask questions.
“So part of my job as a teacher/welfare worker is to make parents aware that their child doesn’t have to do this or that.”
Each month, Jennings says, she receives one or two complaints of child labor code violations in the entertainment field, half of which are anonymous. She speculates that many are from parents who don’t want their children to lose their jobs or from teachers afraid to openly make waves on the set.
Of course, the true test of being a studio teacher takes place under the fluorescent glare of classroom lights inside a portable trailer or a converted office.
To survive, studio teachers have to be more organized than Cub Scout den leaders. They have to master many subjects and often be able to teach them simultaneously.
“I can go from reading Dr. Seuss aloud one minute to Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ the next,” Gans says. The transition becomes more difficult for teachers of upper division classes, discussing, for example, Algebra II with one student and calculus with another.
If that were not enough, studio teachers also have to coordinate their teaching with the curriculum of their students’ home schools. To keep up with assignments for Lecy Goranson and Sara Gilbert, who play Becky and Darlene, respectively, on “Roseanne,” studio teacher Sharon Takase visits the girls’ high schools three times a week.
“By now, the whole faculty knows me,” Takase says.
When the home school is on another coast, studio teaching can resemble a correspondence course. Lee Norris, who plays Chuckie Lee on “The Torkelsons,” literally lost his education in the mail for a few weeks when the air express package of his lesson plans was mishandled. Cindy Watson, Lee’s teacher at Wahl Coates Elementary in Greenville, N.C., later tried to fax the material, but the copies were illegible.
“It got interesting there for a while,” says Watson, adding that she and Gans have since worked out their early communication problems.
Gans is grateful for Watson’s involvement. “You’d be surprised at how many teachers don’t want to send work because it is a little extra on their part,” says Gans.
Despite the intentions of labor laws, producers and teachers, the report card on the quality of a studio education is still being debated.
Because he is not in his North Carolina classroom, Cindy Watson says, Lee Norris is missing a lot of “science and hands-on activities.”
And taking exams during finals week adds a touch of Hollywood hysteria to already chaotic schedules. It sometimes takes students all day to complete a three-hour test because they might be in class for only 20 minutes before they are called back on the set.
But studio teaching gets praise from older students.
“We might learn more than we do in a regular school,” says Olivia Burnett, a straight-A student who broke into the business eight years ago. “I can do more here because I get more attention from my teacher.”
All that personal attention also makes it hard to skate through class. “You can’t sit in the back of the class and blend in with everybody else, because there isn’t anybody else,” Lecy Goranson says.
Classmate Sara Gilbert agrees: “It’s hard because you’re one on one with the teacher, just sitting here pounding out the math and science. So going back to work on the set is like a little creative break, and that’s nice.”
Perhaps the teachers themselves--many of them refugees from overcrowded public schools--offer the best critique.
“Certainly, there are things that do suffer,” Gans says. “One is the normal routine of school and home. We just can’t do it all, although we certainly try to give them our best.”
Adds Levy: “You’re everything to those kids. You’re a mother and a father and a mentor and a confidante and a friend. They depend on you.”
Why anyone would want all that responsibility?
She responds: “Because we’re teachers.”
