Inspired by Life, Sustained by Teaching

When John Lopez discusses the importance of tolerance with his eighth-grade history class, he speaks from personal and at times painful experience.

Lopez’s parents started out as migrant farm workers. His mother was born in Mexico; his father was Mexican-American. Like generations before them, they worked hard and sacrificed so their children would have a better life.

It came to pass. Lopez, an energetic, articulate man of 45, did doctoral work in education at the University of Massachusetts. In addition to teaching history at Oak Avenue School in Temple City, he is also a mentor teacher, which means he shows other teachers how to teach.

Lopez got to hone his own teaching skills this past year. It was the kickoff of a new social studies curriculum based on literature and the role of minorities in U.S. history.

Students have delved into the diaries of frontier women and empathized with the back-breaking work of Chinese railroad laborers. They marveled at the moral vision of Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who returned to the South to lead hundreds of other slaves to freedom.

These stories strike a personal chord with the students--Anglos, Latinos, Asians, African-Americans. The stories also resonate with Lopez, who struggled to come to terms with his own cultural roots and individual identity.

He recalls that in 1952 his parents tried to buy a house in Arcadia, then a predominantly Anglo suburb. Everything went well until the realtor asked politely: “Are you Spaniards or Mexicans?”

Lopez’s father answered that they were Mexican. The realtor shrugged and explained that he couldn’t sell them the house. Perhaps they might look in another neighborhood?

The Lopezes eventually settled in Temple City, about five miles from a Latino barrio in San Gabriel. Their son, John, had fair skin and curly hair. His friends were the neighboring Anglo kids and he identified with them, he said, rather than with the darker-skinned barrio kids who looked “indio.”

Lopez didn’t realized that skin color made a difference to others until he was 10 or 11 and the father of a friend played a phonograph record he thought Lopez would find funny. The father whooped with laughter, but Lopez only heard lyrics that ridiculed Mexicans. The boy listened solemnly, then went home and fell apart.

“I was in serious turmoil,” Lopez said. “My friends used to make derogatory comments about Mexicans, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I’m Mexican, but I’m not like those kids from the barrio.’ It was then I realized that what you look like is still pretty significant in this culture.”

Distraught, Lopez went to his father. The elder Lopez answered sagely: “Kiddo, you’re going to have to face it. You are who you are, so you might as well be proud of it.”

Now, Lopez is a self-assured adult sitting in a Temple City coffee shop recalling this long-submerged memory. The demographics have shifted again in the mid-San Gabriel Valley, this time with an influx of Asians. Racism is more subtle, but equally devastating.

Lopez said the wounds he suffered from racism have healed; he attributes this to nurturing parents who instilled self-confidence and encouraged him. Not all students are so lucky.

Aware of this, Lopez tries to be a role model, reaching out to Latino students by peppering his chats with Spanish words. Sometimes, they look up in surprise when he speaks their native tongue; others wink at him--it’s a secret they share.

Lopez keeps the classroom energy high. He recalls it was difficult for him, as a kid, to sit at a desk for an hour. In graduate school, he studied the physiological development of young teen-agers and learned that they are more active at adolescence.

So he schemes ways to keep his students physically and mentally engaged, sometimes throwing one a rubber ball during discussions. In Lopezland, that means it’s your turn to have the floor.

“He treats us with respect,” said Michael Palfrey, 14. “I don’t feel bored, like in some of my other classes. He makes it fun.”

Lopez disputes the notion that kids are “passive receptacles to be filled with learning.” Instead, he encourages critical thinking and discussion. He gives students provocative sentences and asks them to fill in the blanks. He listens. He relates history to their personal experience.

Lopez might have students imagine that they are escaped slave Harriet Tubman, or a Northern abolitionist, or a bone-weary frontierswoman. Sometimes, the debates continue after the bell rings, as students crowd around him, clamoring to make one more point. They compete for his attention--some macho, others flirty.

“I’ve had colleagues tell me, if kids are smiling and laughing something’s wrong,” Lopez said. “But just because I have a quiet classroom doesn’t mean I have a productive one.”

Because he introduced the new history framework, Lopez said this year was the most hectic in his 20 years as a teacher. Unlike some larger school districts, Temple City Unified did not set aside time for teachers to learn about the new materials, draw up lesson plans or talk to other professionals.

And with only two eighth-grade history teachers, Oak Avenue School was even more strapped. Lopez said wistfully that he spent a week preparing during the summer and flew “by the seat of my pants” as the year went along. Although he was apprehensive at first, he is pleased with the results of the first year.

For him, the new framework isn’t all that new; he has always stressed multicultural issues, assigned outside reading and encouraged critical thinking. But the new curriculum “reinforced the importance of personalizing stuff,” Lopez said.

He is especially grateful for supplementary materials such as “Eyewitness to History,” a two-volume book of primary source readings that include American Indian chiefs, black civil rights leaders and Mexican-American feminists.

“Before, I had to organize it all myself, make Xerox copies, go hunting around in different books each time I wanted an example. Now it’s all gathered in one book,” Lopez said happily.

The shortfalls? Lopez said he ran out of time. In a perfect world, he would have progressed from the New World of the 1500s up through World War I instead of ending with post-Civil War Reconstruction. On the other hand, the class tied many of its historical lessons into current events, such as learning about civil rights alongside slavery, so Lopez isn’t too worried.

He’s sorry he didn’t have more time to use the audio-visual materials provided by the publisher, Holt Rinehart & Winston, including a series of famous American paintings that evoke specific historical periods. “Next year,” he says, sighing.

A talkative man who likes to analyze, Lopez would like to swap stories with other teachers. Sometimes, he said he is frustrated by the isolation of his profession.

“Most teachers teach in a box; they don’t talk to each other about how the lessons went, how the materials were received by the kids,” he said. “We need to share more.”

Mentoring other teachers gives Lopez some opportunity to do that, but he’s also interested in learning and sharing other successful teaching strategies. In the best of all possible worlds, he’d like to spend half his time in the classroom and the rest working with teachers to improve lessons.

That would require an administrative credential in education, which would require additional college classes. Lopez is toying with the idea of pursuing one. But he doesn’t want to leave teaching, even though juggling 160 kids in five classes each day sometimes makes his head spin.

He gets sustenance from it, and marvels at the energy of young adolescents who aren’t yet too jaded to express their eagerness and sincerity.

“They’re hyperactive, their hormones are going wild, and that’s exactly what I want, to channel that enthusiasm toward learning,” Lopez said. “It keeps me going. It’s challenging; it keeps my fires fed.”