O.C. School Is One Big Class in Vietnam Studies

At this American high school, just south of Brandon, Dylan and Beverly Hills 90210, soybean milk is a big seller. Out in the quad, students play a card game called tien lan. And here, while parents revere the value of education, it is not unusual for them to miss their children’s graduation.

Welcome to Westminster’s La Quinta High School, where more than 50% of the students are Vietnamese-Americans. The campus on McFadden Avenue, just a few blocks from the heart of the Little Saigon district, has perhaps the nation’s largest percentage of Vietnamese-Americans.

The number of Asian-Americans in the school has more than quadrupled in the last decade, and they now make up 53% of the 1,400-plus student body. Of that, fewer than 1% are Asians other than Vietnamese. Whites make up about 30% of the student population, Latinos about 14%.

The demographic shift has redefined the traditional concept of the American high school. Some changes are barely noticeable. Others are bigger, such as the curriculum changing to accommodate the needs and demands of a changing student population. The English as a Second Language program has boomed, while electives such as auto shop have taken a back seat because of lack of demand by college-bound students.

“We are actually living something that’s going to be a major milestone in history,” La Quinta Principal Mitch Thomas said.

But the school is by no means unique. As California becomes more diverse, schools reflect the change. Garden Grove’s Bolsa Grande High School, for example, is about 54% Asian-American, while Santa Ana High School’s student body is 93% Latino.

The demographic change has forced schools to retrain teachers to deal with students who speak little English. In many cases, teachers just need to relearn teaching strategies, said Andrew McTaggart, Garden Grove assistant superintendent.

District and school officials said the change doesn’t strain resources. It’s more a matter of shifting resources, they said.

Four teachers used to teach 18 periods of auto shop at La Quinta five years ago. Today, there are only four periods, not enough for even one instructor.

Industrial arts classes are the hardest hit among the electives, Thomas said. Today’s students are more interested in taking college-prep courses.

“Instead of taking arts for electives, they’d elect to take calculus, advanced algebra, advanced chemistry,” Thomas said.

The cafeteria now serves Cup O’ Noodles at lunchtime. On Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, the campus is virtually empty. Even some of the Anglo students join their Vietnamese buddies and take the day off to visit Buddhist temples.

One teacher worries about the prospective demise of a uniquely American cornerstone of high school athletics.

“In a couple of years, we won’t have a football team if (the Vietnamese-Americans) don’t come out for football,” said teacher Barbara Henry.

But Coach Steve Castle predicts that the Vietnamese students will participate in football once they become more assimilated. There are few who have played, “but the mass numbers aren’t there,” he said.

The baseball coach is puzzled that the American pastime lacks appeal to his Vietnamese students, while the game gains popularity in other Asian countries. “I’d love to coach the Vietnamese kids because of their work ethic,” Coach Dave Demarest said. “I think baseball would be perfect for the Vietnamese. Size is not important. Hard work and intelligence are.”

La Quinta makes up for it with teams strong in badminton and tennis, sports long popular in Asia.

The high school yearbook lacks appeal, too. Some Vietnamese students, especially those who are newcomers, don’t know what it is, said Henry, adviser to the yearbook staff. And at $60 a book, they apparently are not eager to find out.

The students do observe some time-honored high school traditions, however.

For the first time this year, all four homecoming princesses were Vietnamese-Americans. “We have gone from blond, blue-eyed kids to Vietnamese girls almost overnight,” Henry said.

The last two student body presidents have been Vietnamese-Americans.

Racial incidents are infrequent here, students and school officials said. Things have improved, said Tan Vu, student body president. He credits the mixing of different races, which has created better understanding among groups.

Joe Vu, co-president of the Vietnamese Club, agrees. He used to be called racial names his freshman year, but no more, he said.

The high school social-caste system takes on a different twist. Here, a gap exists between the “Americanized” Vietnamese and the Vietnamese newcomers.

The majority of the Vietnamese-American students have been in the United States five years or longer, Thomas said. For the most part they come from middle-class families.

The newly arrived make up a small portion of the student body. There are about 350 students enrolled in La Quinta’s English as a Second Language classes. Most come from households of meager means. Some are children of former concentration camp prisoners. Some have had very little education in Vietnam. And some have come to the United States without parents.

The “Americanized” students sport the latest in the Gap-influenced teen-age couture, while the newly arrived sometimes wear donated clothing.

While the Vietnamese students fluent in English help out their newly arrived counterparts with homework and translation, the two groups don’t socialize together.

The separation is apparent at lunchtime. The “Americanized” youths hang out in the quad, while the newly arrived hang out in the grassy part of the schoolyard. The former group converses in English, the latter in Vietnamese.

The newcomers are at the bottom of the high school pecking order. They get called names. Others make fun of them.

“It’s like making fun of geeks and nerds,” said junior Lani Nguyen, an American-born Vietnamese. “We make fun of FOBs (fresh off the boat). It’s no big deal. But we do respect the fact that they are smart and that they’re here to learn.”

The changes go beyond the social aspects of high school.

The influx of Vietnamese-Americans has forced school administrators to refocus the curriculum as well.

When Suzanne Roth started in 1981, there were only three ESL classes, all held in the same room. Today, Roth is the chair of the ESL Department, with 23 classes.

It takes about six years for a student to be fluent in English, she said.

One difficulty for Vietnamese beginners is the pronunciation, Roth said. Vietnamese is monosyllabic, and the polysyllables of English give the students problems. The students also have trouble with verbs for plurals and the past tense, since Vietnamese doesn’t require changes for plurals and past tenses.

Teachers also needed to adapt to their new students. They went back to school or took workshops to learn how to teach ESL. Though some didn’t like the change, others said it helped make them better teachers.

Some teachers have fallen on the “read the chapter and answer the questions” approach to teaching, Roth said, whereas they should have helped students learn “how to read a chapter, how to read a question and form an answer.”

“What it’s done is it’s brought teachers back to teaching the basics that they should have been doing in the first place,” Roth said. “It’s techniques that work with all kids.”

The biggest hurdle for Dang Nhat Quang is the ability to understand English, the 10th grader said.

He attended the 11th grade in Vietnam, and when he considers his schedule there, the class load at La Quinta poses little problems, he said during lunch recently. He came to the United States about four months ago and now lives in Westminster.

In Vietnam, he went to school six days a week, from 7 to 11:25 a.m. and then from noon to 4:25 p.m. His schedule, pretty typical of a Vietnamese student, includes biology, history, geometry, algebra, chemistry, physics and English.

Because of the heavier class load in Vietnamese schooling, it’s not uncommon to see a student who speaks no English in a calculus class, Roth said.

Quang said he can understand English pretty well when he reads it, but listening is the hardest part. He practices by watching television.

Vu Phuong has the same problem. It was her third day in school and she was still learning the ropes. She has made some new friends and they showed her things like how to borrow books from the library, how to get free lunch from the cafeteria.

Thomas, the principal, is not worried about students like Phuong and Quang. They got a solid educational foundation in Vietnam and it’s just a matter of time before they pick up English. He’s worried about those who had little schooling and those from broken families.

“They get snapped up by the gangs and end up in the criminal justice system,” Thomas said. “It’s hard as hell to prevent that.”

Loi Truong, a Vietnamese outreach counselor agrees.

“Those with an educational background, they progress real fast,” Loi said. “Those without a background, they face difficulty.”

The Garden Grove Unified School District has hired a Vietnamese outreach counselor to help these kids. The school has just received federal money to start a program for at-risk youths.

Though La Quinta is primarily Vietnamese, there are no Vietnamese teachers. The school employs four Vietnamese teacher’s aides.

It’s not that the district doesn’t try. Officials say there are very few Vietnamese teachers. In May, more than 200 teachers turned out for a job fair in the district. Not one Vietnamese candidate showed up.

Teachers are respected in Vietnam, where during imperial days children were taught to revere, in order, the king, the teacher and then the father. That influence carries on to this day.

Still, very few Vietnamese-American students want to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Chips.

“Most of our kids, even those who are very Americanized, not a single one has said to me they wanted to be a teacher,” Thomas said.

The large Vietnamese-American student population has created a melting pot atmosphere on campus.

“I don’t think you can go here and not have a friend that’s not Vietnamese,” said sophomore Jeff Leckie.

Some, like teacher Larry James or student Brad Huss, are learning Vietnamese.

“It’s funny,” James said. “Just a few years ago, many people could not locate Vietnam on the map.”

To Thomas, the Vietnamese influx is just part of America. Southern California schools used to be flooded with Iranians in the late 1970s, then the Vietnamese, he said.

“You know where the next wave is going to be? Bosnia,” Thomas predicted.

FIRST PERSON: A refugee’s story of assimilation, in perfect English. A30

La Quinta High: New Mix, New Emphasis

At Westminster’s La Quinta High School, more than 53% of the school’s students are now Asian-American. And less than 1% are Asians other than Vietnamese. Increase in Asians (As a percentage of total La Quinta student body:) 1985: 17% 1992: 53% Ethnic Change (How ethnic composition has changed since the early 1980s):

1981 1992 White 75% 31% Asian 12% 53% Latino 9% 14% Black 2% 1% Other 2% 1%

Source: Orange County Department of Education;

Researched by DE TRAN / Los Angeles Times