Inspiring Teacher Leaves Mark on Barrio Students

I always looked forward to phone calls from Howard Shorr. They were thought-provoking conversations, designed by Shorr to see if I was paying attention to the city. I was constantly researching, boning up for his next call.

He could be surprising, like the time recently when he reached the painful conclusion that the Los Angeles school district should be dismantled. Although he was a dedicated teacher in the inner city, he contended there was “no direction” from those in charge.

Shorr also could tease by asking, “Is James Abram there?” Of course, he wasn’t. It was his way of poking fun at James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States and the namesake of that school in East L.A. that I swear allegiance to. Shorr, who taught at rival Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, figured no one who served four months as President could be as exalted as fearless Teddy Roosevelt.

But there was no playfulness in his voice when he said, “I’m leaving L.A. Moving to Oregon.”

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There have been few teachers in the last 20 years who have been credited with making a difference with barrio kids in the classroom. Jaime Escalante, the famed calculus teacher, was one of them. So was Sal Castro, the firebrand who supported the Eastside high school walkouts in the late 1960s.

Shorr, 48, was another.

I especially liked Shorr’s devotion to the Eastside because he isn’t Chicano or from the area. Reared in a working-class neighborhood in Venice, Shorr, who is Jewish, grew up believing people should know who they really are. Among the questions he constantly posed was: “Why do we matter?”

It was no surprise, then, that when he got his first teaching job in 1973 at San Gabriel Mission School, he asked if he could try his hand at Mexican-American studies and women’s studies. He thought it was the thing to do, considering the school’s location and the fact that no boys attended Mission.

By all accounts, Shorr and the courses were a success. When he arrived at Roosevelt High in 1978, he was ready to ask the Chicano kids in his government and American history classes if they knew who they were. He was convinced his students should know themselves by first learning about the Eastside.

So he began a new, unheard of course--the History of Boyle Heights.

The course told of the community’s transformation from a Jewish enclave at the turn of the century into a Mexican version of Ellis Island by the early 1950s. It was told by digging up books and magazine articles. Field trips to familiar Eastside landmarks were arranged.

Mostly, the history was told by people who lived it. Edward Roybal and Sal Castro came to Shorr’s second-floor classroom to speak. So did the Garfield High rebel who was a key figure in the high school walkouts of the ‘60s, Richard Alatorre.

It didn’t take long for the students to churn out their own research papers. One student, Liliana Urrutia, wrote “An Offspring of Discontent: the Asociacion Nacional Mexico-Americana, 1949-54.” Victoria Valdez wrote about the people who lived in Chavez Ravine. Still another, Maria Peraza, wrote about Hazard Park.

The course’s popularity, as well as Shorr’s stature as a teacher, grew. By the mid-1980s, those who wanted to learn about Chicanos and the Eastside, including presidential surrogates from Washington, made it a point to stop by Roosevelt to meet Shorr and his students.

As surely as Escalante helped aspiring engineers and mathematicians at Garfield High, Shorr shaped the aspirations of future Chicano historians, social scientists and others at Roosevelt.

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Eventually, though, Shorr began to feel overwhelmed by the decline of the educational system and left Roosevelt in the late 1980s. The history course ended shortly after he departed.

Later, whether consumed by classes at the downtown magnet school or his research work at the Huntington Library, his heart remained in Boyle Heights. Among his proudest moments were Roosevelt class reunions, where his students told him how he’d inspired them.

I didn’t want to believe Shorr when he said he and wife Louise were leaving next month. But I understood. Shorr had talked about moving away in the past, but Boyle Heights had an incredible hold on him. Daughter Manya’s graduation from high school signaled that the time to move on had arrived.

Also, the city had changed. “It’s like a bad movie,” he said. “It’ll never get better.”

The Eastside will miss Shorr. I’ll especially miss his Garfield-bashing. But I’ve already got something to tease him about the next time he calls. Manya, it turns out, wants to be a newspaper reporter.