Program Urges Students to ‘Aspire to Be More’

Some immediately raised their hands to protest. Others just shifted in their chairs. But everybody in the Westchester High School classroom groaned as guest speaker Arthur Richardson announced the next assignment.

Students were to come to class dressed up in preparation for a four-minute mock job interview. That meant no sneakers, baggies or halter tops.

“You can be anything you want to be,” said Richardson, who works for the Boston Co., a mortgage lender. “If you sell yourself short and allow someone to dictate to you what you can do, you will never reach your true goals. It’s not enough to say you are working at McDonald’s. What’s wrong with owning McDonald’s? Aspire to be more than what your job calls for.

“I want you to know you can go out there and get a job. This is not going to be easy. You can’t just go through the motions. You have to be a part of it. But I promise that at the end of 10 weeks, all of us are going to feel a lot better about ourselves.”

The class is Education and Career Planning, a graduation requirement for high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Richardson was brought in as a guest lecturer for 10 weeks as part of the district’s First Break program, designed to bring professionals into the classroom to teach and ease students’ transition from school to work.

The program reflects a trend nationwide as schools offer classes with a psychological bent to counter violence, drug abuse and other growing problems.

In Los Angeles, there are few new programs offered on a districtwide basis beyond those that deal with drug awareness, said LAUSD administrator Phil Nassief. Rather, teachers at individual high schools have sponsored extracurricular support groups dealing with grief, gangs and other problems.

In his classes, Richardson hopes to arm students with the skills necessary to get a job. He addresses dress, applications and such interviewing basics as eye contact and shaking hands. Dressed in a suit and tie himself, Richardson does not soft-pedal his message.

“Thirty (percent) to 40% of getting a job is how you look,” he told his class. “Nobody is going to hire you if they are afraid of you. Nobody is going to give you a job if you look like you are going to hang out with the fellows. The fellows aren’t hiring.”

Ula Pendleton, the teacher who invited Richardson to class, said she supports his confrontational style.

“He is able to tell the students a lot of things that I would like to,” she said. “But it works better when he says it. He gets under their skin because he tells them things they need to be told.

“Some students came to me and said he had an attitude. But I told them he is like a parent. He cares too much, and I do too.”

Some students were taken aback. “It’s a little insulting,” said Hakim Allen, a senior. “He generalizes about all of us. . . . I know I’m not unmotivated.”

But others, such as freshman Trisha Jenkins, said the practical information Richardson gives out is useful. “I had no idea I had to put together a resume at all, so it’s helping me,” she said.