CANOGA PARK : Retiring Teacher Has Been a Hero to Latino Youth

They call him the Cesar Chavez of the classroom.

It’s a fitting name for veteran teacher Enrique Duran, who has spent about 30 years encouraging Latino students to believe in themselves.

“I felt I could inspire and push and shove and otherwise kick our students into thinking about higher education and careers rather than just jobs,” Duran said. “I want them to know that just because you are Latino doesn’t mean you are going to work as a laborer.”

Duran, 59, will retire in June from Canoga Park High School--the same campus where he graduated as student body president 41 years ago. The youngest of 10 children born to Mexican immigrants, Duran spent weekends and afternoons when he was growing up collecting eggs on a chicken ranch in the days when Canoga Park was still a rural patchwork of community farms.

“I tell my students about my beginnings,” Duran said. “Because I want them to go further, succeed more than I did.”

After graduating from high school, Duran spent two years in the Army and then attended UCLA. He worked briefly as an actor, but knew he wanted to teach in his neighborhood.

“I don’t believe Thomas Wolfe, who said you can’t come home again,” Duran said. “I think you can come a long way around and back.”

After 16 years as a drama teacher at Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, Duran seized the opportunity to return to his alma mater. At Canoga Park, Duran taught drama for 10 years before switching to Spanish language and literature. He also sponsors the Latinos Unidos group on campus.

In his Spanish literature class of mostly native Spanish speakers, Duran walks around the room slowly as he reads or listens to students read. With a mixture of humor and gentle prodding, Duran turns a reading of early 20th-Century Spanish literature into a discussion about love and the meaning of commitment. Students in the class pay close attention, laugh at his jokes and ponder his statements.

“He’s like a Cesar Chavez to all of us,” said Adan Dias, 17, president of Latinos Unidos. “He treats Latinos like we are people--the same as anyone else. When people put us down, he teaches us that’s baloney.

“It’s sad to see him go.”