Program Helps Kids Appreciate Diversity and Get Involved

KID ACTIVISTS: The 26 students talked about what it means to belong to someone else as a slave. Later, they learned about the Japanese Relocation Act during World War II. Finally, the elementary school students, most of them from Torrance, listened as a counselor explained that homeless people usually aren’t lazy “winos,” but hard-working people hit by hard economic times.

Then the students made lunches for the homeless.

During the past four weeks, Harvard student Yea-Lan Chiang and 17 other college-age counselors have run a summer program called Social Action within a Multicultural Program in Language Enrichment (SAMPLE). Based in the Lomita Kiwanis Club, the program is intended to help kids learn how to appreciate diversity. Meanwhile, the students tackle such assignments as writing letters to Gov. Pete Wilson, demanding swift action to save threatened libraries in Los Angeles County.

Tuesday, the students made sandwiches and decorated 100 lunch bags full of carrots and celery sticks, which were later distributed to the homeless by the Torrance Youth Council.

“Addressing cultural differences is not taught in the schools,” said Chiang, explaining why she started the program on her summer break from college. She says she encountered cynicism when seeking support from school districts. “I saw how difficult it is to do something nice for the community,” she said.

Chiang did get help from the Lomita Kiwanis Club, which let the group use its hall for class meetings three times a week. She and the counselors also held fund-raisers. Most of the students in the group are Korean, and Chiang said they are being exposed to aspects of Los Angeles life they might have otherwise missed.

“I learned about black people, and I learned about slavery,” said 9-year-old Raphael Kang of Torrance. “I learned that there are good and bad people, and it doesn’t matter what color they are.”

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SPACE CAMP: Cathie Rummans, a science teacher at El Segundo Middle School, joins 24 other educators from around the country this week to study the space program at the U.S. Space Academy in Huntsville, Ala.

This is the second year Rockwell International’s North American Aircraft Division has supported a South Bay teachers’ trip to the space camp. Rummans will participate in an astronaut training program, and a simulated space shuttle mission.

Rockwell Vice President Les Lackman said the company hopes teachers share their space camp experiences with students and use the camp to explore new ways to make math and science classes exciting.

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OUTREACH SCHOOL: Elvia Vargas came to Wilmington from Mexico in 1979, when she was 13. She never finished high school, so she empathizes with many of the young dropouts in her neighborhood.

A volunteer at Holy Family Church in Wilmington, she recently became an outreach worker for Soledad Enrichment Action, a countywide outreach/continuation program for high school students that uses Holy Family as its Harbor-area base.

“I liked the idea,” Vargas said. “There are a lot of dropouts in Wilmington, and they need somebody who is really interested in them.”

The program was founded in 1972 by Brother Modesto Leon, a Catholic priest. Leon said Soledad was organized with the support of parents, and they initially targeted a group of students who had been kicked out of Garfield High in East Los Angeles. Now, the group has branches operating out of churches in Wilmington, Compton, the Pico-Union Area, and 11 other communities countywide.

When a teen-ager is expelled from school, Leon said, they are immediately at risk of getting into trouble.

“There are so few alternatives,” he said. “If they bring a gun to school, the school expels them. But why are they bringing guns in the first place? Just putting them back out on the street doesn’t make a safer world. We need to help them, and hold the youth and parents accountable.”

At Holy Family Church, dropouts attend class to accumulate the credits they need to go back to school, or they can continue with Soledad and earn a high school diploma. Parents are urged to get involved by undergoing counseling with their children. Accredited teachers staff the classrooms. School counselors and probation officers offer support.

SEA is funded by the County Board of Education, the city of Los Angeles and the United Way. IBM has donated computers, and Leon said he hopes to deliver a few computers to Holy Family next year.

“I think some of the schools don’t care about these kinds of people--gang members, people with problems, pregnant girls,” Vargas said. “Sometimes, they just need to have someone to talk to about their problems.”

BOOK DONATION: Northrop Corporation is sponsoring a book donation program with the Hawthorne School District. Under the program, organized jointly with the American Human Education Society/Operation Outreach, each child in four Hawthorne schools will receive two books and each teacher will get four books.

Most of the books will be about nature. School district officials say the idea is to teach children how to respect animal life and the environment through literature.

Hawthorne schools are the first to be involved in the program.

Items for the weekly Class Notes column can be mailed to The Times South Bay Office, 23133 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite 200, Torrance 90505, or faxed to (310) 373-5753 to the attention of staff reporter Carol Chastang.