Teachers Focus Lesson Plans on Peaceful Solutions

While others in Pasadena loaded their cars with loot stolen from downtown merchants, John Muir High School senior Daryle Davis clutched a flyer he had drawn Friday.

“My brothers and sisters,” it said, “we are in a state of emergency. Let’s stick together and love each other and let’s work together for a positive change.”

At the Pasadena school that Rodney G. King attended from 1980 to 1984, Davis and other students launched a peaceful protest last week that culminated with a march to City Hall.

“If we as a black race are going to get the justice that is needed for this man, we need to do it in a positive way,” said Davis, 18. “We live in Pasadena, why should we go burn it?”

Only a third of the student body showed up for classes at the end of last week, and a few vented their anger by throwing bottles and light bulbs into an occupied bungalow classroom. By noon Friday, Pasadena Schools Supt. Philip Linscomb ordered Muir closed.

It wasn’t until this week that teachers such as Carol Brown were able to implement a plan they had hastily drawn up. On Monday, Brown turned the five days of rioting, the worst in modern U.S. history, into a teaching lesson for government and civics.

Her classes wrote letters asking Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner to refile charges against Officer Laurence Powell, who was seen administering most of the blows in the videotaped beating of King. The Simi Valley jury, which had no black members, deadlocked on one charge against Powell; the other three officers were found not guilty.

“The first thing I did was sit my kids down and tell them, ‘It’s not over, they can try him again,’ ” Brown said Tuesday. “I think a lot of people thought that was that and so they reacted.”

At nearby Cleveland Elementary School, where some students come from single-parent homes in gang-infested neighborhoods, counselors and special programs were already in place.

When the riots broke out, the school swung into high gear with art therapy, counseling, class discussions and essay writing. “We did a lot of listening, talking and nurturing,” Cleveland Principal Pam Powell said.

In many classes, students were assigned roles of shop owners, police and looters to act out scenarios aimed at instilling values.

“We said, ‘How would you feel if someone came into your house and took something that belonged to you.’ We asked, ‘Is this right?’ ” the principal said.

Ilene Reinfeld, who teaches a mixed class of second- and third-graders, stressed that destructive behavior is no solution. “We talked about nonviolent ways of getting your point across, like marches and praying,” Reinfeld said.

Pam Powell said that when only a third of the Cleveland pupils showed up Friday, educators took the opportunity to hold staff meetings to plan for next year.

At Ganesha High School in Pomona, social sciences teacher Charlotte Brown said she also assigned some role-playing, with students taking the parts of business owners attempting to decide whether to reinvest in South Los Angeles. Most students decided they would not go back, she said.

At Pasadena High School, teacher Alice Leader said the mood in her 10th-grade English and history classes was tense. Only about 150 of 2,100 students showed up Friday and classes were dismissed by 11 a.m., after a “town meeting” assembly in the campus quad.

By Monday, however, Leader’s students were eager to get on with the academic routine, so she taught a regular lesson and assigned a two-page essay on the riots.

“The kids have been very good,” Leader said. “They’ve distanced themselves from any knee-jerk reaction.

“Anger may make some of them rude or cross with teachers, but they acknowledge that’s not fair, they acknowledge that when they’re cross with the teachers they’re really being cross with the jury for its verdict.”