Dedication Comes First for ‘Family’ of Teachers

My old elementary school sits in the middle of a modest San Fernando Valley residential neighborhood several blocks west of the Cal State Northridge campus. I don’t believe I’d even driven past the place since I graduated from the sixth grade in 1967. But last week, inspired by talk of a teacher strike and a proposal to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District, I decided to pay a visit.

A cyclone fence encircles the entire block, nearly all of it blacktopped; the low-slung buildings are bunched on one side. It’s not an especially lovely vision of elementary education, but the school was built in the mid-’50s, not a heyday for public architecture.

In any case, what is beautiful about Calahan Street Elementary School takes place inside its walls, not outside.

The ‘60s were less complicated days for the district, before guns and gangs, busing and insolvency and year-round tracks. You hear so much about the decline of the school system, I had prepared myself for the worst.

But the goings-on at Calahan took me by surprise, especially those in Room 10.

Room 10 was my sixth-grade room. The one where my teacher humiliated me in front of the class for failing to loop the top of my f on a cursive spelling test. The one where she spent half the day powdering her face in the little mirror by the sink. The one where Richard Taggart finally threw a chair at her for belittling him once too often.

The place is different now.

“Room 10 Mrs. Brooker,” says the sign on the door. “And The Greatest Sixth-Graders in the World.”

*

A stylish woman with a thick gray bob, exceptionally long eyelashes and 23 years of teaching experience in the district, Marianne Brooker was explaining the location of Mindanao, discussing where you might spend rupees and correcting geography homework when I walked in. I nearly tripped over a box of walnuts left by the door for a squirrel that lives in a nearby tree.

Mrs. Brooker is the antithesis of my scary sixth-grade teacher. She was definitely in charge, but her affection for her students was unmistakable.

“I just really love sixth-graders,” she said. “They’re old enough to be interested in adult things, but they’re young enough to be eager to learn.”

As I sat with a group of teachers in the little staff dining room during recess, it was clear that proposals to break apart the 640,000-pupil district weren’t much on their minds.

They wanted to talk about how much they love their school, about what a pleasure it is to work in such a cooperative and supportive atmosphere.

“We’re like a family,” said one teacher. “People are not only dedicated themselves, but they are willing to be part of a team.”

Calahan’s 14 teachers often work until 6 p.m. and go in on weekends, too.

For the last two years, Calahan has participated in the district’s school-based management program, which is supposed to give parents, teachers and principals great latitude in developing curriculum and allocating resources. The teachers at Calahan love it. Even a substitute who sat with us said Calahan is her favorite school because the teachers are so organized and the children are always doing meaningful work.

Mrs. Brooker, a sixth-grade specialist, was so excited about going to work at Calahan that she agreed to teach second- and third-graders her first year.

“I sort of died and went to heaven when I came here 5 1/2 years ago,” she said.

But even Calahan can’t escape the hellish problems of the district.

“We’re concerned about a strike,” said Mrs. Brooker. “We’re worried about things like how we’re going to get our stuff out of the classrooms if we strike.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant.

“Well,” she replied, “practically everything in the classroom is mine.”

She has spent up to $5,000 of her own money in a single year on materials for her kids, including computers and the steel reinforcement for the cabinets in which the electronic equipment is stored. It’s not uncommon for Calahan teachers to spend $2,000 a year on their students.

Mrs. Brooker’s point: Why should she allow strikebreakers to use materials she has purchased with her ever-shrinking paycheck?

“You know, I never resented spending the money until they cut our salary,” said one teacher. “Now I do.”

Last fall, teachers’ pay was cut 3%. They were facing a cumulative pay cut of about 12% this year when they authorized their union to call a strike for Tuesday. The strike was put on hold after a new contract was negotiated, one that contains a slightly less brutal cut of about 10%. Teachers will vote this week on whether to accept it or walk. The results will be announced Friday.

Ironically, the money to be used to soften the pay cut, about $78 million, may come from a special reserve earmarked for classroom materials and field trips. This probably means that teachers will be digging even deeper into their own pockets in the coming year.

The language surrounding teacher strikes is often apocalyptic--tragic disruptions of students’ lives, educational opportunities lost forever, etc. But the real apocalypse is the one being imposed on the dedicated teachers at schools like Calahan, who struggle at a high personal cost to do the best job they can.

If Mrs. Brooker and her colleagues choose to strike, their dedication and sacrifices are worth keeping in mind.