Here, Her Teaching ‘Just Hits the Spot’

There are 43 students enrolled in Laurie Fidler’s ceramics class at Jefferson High School in South-Central Los Angeles. Many of those enrolled just turn up every now and then. Look at it this way: There wouldn’t be enough chairs if they all showed.

Let me mention, too, that it is hot, sticky tropical hot, so hot in this dingy, un-air conditioned inner-city classroom that drinks are allowed. Fidler decreed this after one student passed out.

That’s right. Cokes, Sprites, whatever you want. No beer. Just don’t go blabbing about it. And you can put things in the refrigerator if you like. Fidler bought it with her own money and hauled it in.

Oh, and about that enrollment business. It’s sort of a wash. Lots of students not enrolled show up every day, if not this period then another one, to study in a corner or just hang-in. “Fidler!” they call out to the teacher. For the more demure, “Miss Fidler” seems to suffice.

“She’s exciting,” says one drop-in.

“She just hits the spot,” says his friend, smiling wide.

Yes, Laurie Fidler’s got the calling. At 37, she is a confirmed teacher for life. And let this be a warning:

If Fidler loses it, finally deciding that long hours for little pay in a deteriorating, heavily guarded school where you try not to think about how your students spend their spare time is just not all that it’s cracked up to be, well . . . I can think of several people who would personally carry out Fidler’s own joking threats to students who displease her.

“Te mato,” she tells them. I’ll kill you. It’s about all that Fidler knows in Spanish, but her students tend to cut her some slack.

Twelve years ago, Fidler wrote her mother a letter, one of those spur-of-the-moment, off-the-top-of-her-head things, even though the two only live across town from each other.

Her mother saved the letter because it said a lot about who her daughter is, about teaching, and about dedication and enthusiasm at the relatively tender age of 25. Her mother showed the letter to me.

“It’s so beautiful,” says Mom.

Fidler, white and middle class, had been an art teacher at Jefferson High for three years when she wrote the letter. The school then was nearly 100% black. Today, most of the students are Latino. The income level has stayed about the same: poor.

“I enjoy seeing how skilled many of my students have become,” Fidler wrote to her mother. “Their confidence grows as their projects become better and better--it’s really satisfying to teach sometimes. I wish you knew how much I believe in what I’m doing. Learning and helping others to learn is so important to me.”

Then she went on about the lesson plans she’ll be working on for her new classes in the fall.

“As I thought about how much work it will take, and how so many students don’t care and might not even want anything to do with the class, I also thought it’s important that I do my best to reach even one person to teach them something they never knew before.”

Today, Fidler winces a little about that. She calls the sentiment naive.

“You have to reach all of them,” she says, practically pounding me on the head with her tone, “every single one of them. The kid sitting in the back looking at his shoes and the obnoxious, desperately-seeking-attention child and the kid who doesn’t speak your language. All of them.”

Yes, Laurie Fidler still believes. She is involved in education up to her ears.

She team-teaches interdisciplinary programs. She helps develop school curricula. She’s an elected school representative to the teacher’s union and to the committee that decides how Jefferson High School should be run. She has her students over for dinner at the house.

They need her, and she needs them.

“I think it is so important in this business that there are people who are committed to the neighborhood and that they stay. I’m teaching brothers and sisters, cousins, entire families. They come back to see me with their kids. You become a community and you are answerable to the community.”

This is how Fidler put it in that letter 12 years before:

“I am committed to teaching, it’s what I love best. I feel I’m lucky to be able to work with people who need me. They need to learn creativity and pride in their achievements.

“Some of my students may end up in jail, but many more will take their place as decent people in a better than decent society. . . .

“The ideology of the ‘60s was more than dogmas and fads to me. Maybe it’s the child in me that refuses to be less optimistic. Of course, now the adult in me knows that lots of work and time will accomplish the ideals that can be reached.”

Fidler could go somewhere else to teach, some place where students don’t come to her with ugly problems that make them grow up at warp speed. But she says those other kids wouldn’t need her as much as those at Jefferson High.

“They adore you,” she says. “There is tremendous affection from these kids.”

The other day Fidler accompanied a former student, an immigrant from El Salvador, to enroll at Los Angeles City College. The woman wants to be an art teacher herself. Fidler had told her, and others, to take the plunge.

“I say, ‘You know what? Do it.’ It is immensely satisfying, as a human being. I have friends who work at the post office, another at a factory, some who push paper. I just don’t know how that feeds your soul. When you do your job here--and you do it well--you are very nurtured.”

Twelve years ago, Fidler closed her letter to her mother by apologizing for going on so long about her job.

“I wasn’t sure you knew how I felt,” she wrote. “Two years ago, I wanted out. The work load exceeded the optimism, but now all is easier and survival level has been passed. I really like it here.

“I belong here,” she said.