Something to Cheer About

If you think teachers have it hard controlling a classroom of rowdy teen-agers, consider Alise Cayen. Several Sundays each fall, Cayen vies for the attention of 56,000 black-clad, frenzied football fans.

But Cayen, a Reseda High School teacher and Los Angeles Raiderette, would not have it any other way--even though she has to juggle schedules and battle twin stereotypes.

“Teachers aren’t looked at with high regard, but cheerleaders are,” said the 26-year-old Cayen. “It’s ironic.”

To balance her dual career, Cayen rises at the crack of dawn to make the trek from her South Bay home to Reseda High, where she teaches English, dance and career planning.

After school, she often stays late to work with students. Then, three afternoons a week, she dashes from school to Raider headquarters in El Segundo, where she spends three grueling hours making the grade in cheerleading practice with 42 other Raiderettes.

“Sometimes I come home from practice at 9:30 or 10 at night and I’ve got to finish grading their homework,” said Cayen, who often wears a sweat suit to school to make a quicker change to cheerleader.

For Raider home games, Cayen reports for duty by 10 a.m. Sundays at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. After a quick warm-up, she dashes into a makeshift dressing room in one of two trailers, emerging in the Raiderettes’ trademark silver-and-black uniform.

During the next three hours, Cayen will entertain thousands of fans with cheerleading routines she helps lead as co-captain of her 11-woman squad.

“We have over 30 routines,” said Cayen, whose $60-per-game wage is but a fraction of the six-figure salaries commanded by the Raiders themselves.

“We have a routine for everything: touchdown, first down, fumbles, you name it.”

Cayen endures this autumn regimen because of her love of cheerleading, a pastime she began in junior high school and continued at Cal State Northridge. It was at CSUN that she pursued her other passion, teaching, and earned her credentials.

She joined the Raiderettes in 1988, before graduating.

And even though all the other Raiderettes have second careers ranging from modeling to wine making, Cayen says her biggest challenge on the field and in the classroom is battling the “bimbo” stereotype.

“I want people to get rid of that superficial, shallow cheerleader image, so I do my best by letting people know what I do,” she said.

It is a lesson many of her students have already learned.

“At first, I thought like all the other guys, ‘Whoa, I’m going to have a cheerleader for a teacher,’ ” said Patrick Fitzgerald, 15, of Los Angeles.

A bit of a troublemaker for other teachers, Fitzgerald said a few days in Cayen’s career-planning class changed his mind and his behavior.

“The other teachers don’t care the way she does,” Fitzgerald said. “She acts cool to me and I’m cool to her.”

Cayen said she’s extremely careful about the way she conducts herself around students.

“Some of them think I’m untouchable because I’m a cheerleader. But teachers have to be there for them; that’s the hardest part of teaching.”

Cayen’s balancing act also teaches hope to students from troubled, poverty-stricken homes who worry about just making it through school.

“Knowing she’s a cheerleader and a teacher has inspired me,” said Cherice Wilson, 15, a sophomore from Canoga Park who is considering cheerleading.

“She says, ‘If you want it, go for it.’ ”