A Lesson for Everyone : Retired teacher enjoys guiding thousands of visitors to a higher understanding at the Museum of Tolerance. : HEARTS OF THE CITY: Exploring attitudes and issues behind the news.

Sally Schneider, lifelong educator, had big plans for retirement. There were book clubs to join, extension classes to be taught, grandchildren to be doted on. So it stood to reason that it would take a while for her to get around to universal peace, love and understanding. And it did. A year and a month, to be exact.

“I was at a benefit at the Museum of Tolerance,” the 61-year-old Schneider recalled, “and I was just so impressed by the planning, the designing, the message, the way it was presented, that I became very interested.”

Within months, the energetic ex-schoolteacher and counselor had become a docent. Today she is among the most experienced of the museum’s 150 volunteers, guiding thousands of visitors, from adolescents to ambassadors, on a path to a higher consciousness.

Conceived in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, the Museum of Tolerance has been widely hailed since its opening in early 1993.

Though its focus is the Holocaust, its broader theme covers the roots of intolerance throughout history and around the world, and its mission is to promote understanding and independent thought.

Although the exhibits are largely self-explanatory and encourage hands-on participation, the West Los Angeles museum relies heavily on volunteer guides.

The bulk of visitors come in groups--from schools, workplaces, religious institutions and so on--and it is up to the docents to shepherd them.

“We absolutely could not operate without our volunteers,” said Barbara Stolar, volunteer coordinator for the museum. Schneider, she said, is one of about 100 docents and one of the museum’s veterans.

“She’s been here a long time, and is someone I know I can always count on in any situation,” Stolar said. And Schneider’s teaching experience is a plus, she added: “When you’re working with junior and senior high school students, that background comes in handy.”

Initially, Schneider’s support for the museum had been in her capacity as a visitor. She supports a cancer fund that had a charity benefit at the museum; Schneider attended and was impressed.

But she soon found her interest piqued at a professional level: What was this museum, if not a kind of school? And what did a school need, if not . . . teachers?

“The opportunity to work at the museum gave me an opportunity to help people--not to love each other necessarily, but to accept each other,” she said. “Also, because I am a Jew, I wanted to show what happened to 6 million of my people and where anti-Semitism can lead.” But most of all, she said, being a docent gave her a chance to do what she knew best.

“The opportunity to work at the museum,” she said, “gave me another opportunity to teach.”

Education is something Schneider knows. For 23 years, it was her career. First, she taught English. Then, after her children started school, she switched to English as a second language. Then she moved into adult education and, after earning a master’s degree in counseling, became head counselor for adult education at Los Angeles Unified School District.

The fundamentals of imparting information, however, were only part of what she took away from her career.

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To this day, she says, she can recall the bigotry that plagued the city’s polyglot schools, not just among the students but among teachers as well.

“We had quite a few high-school-aged people,” she recalls, “kids who were sent by probation officers, or who, for one reason or another, couldn’t make it in a regular high school. A lot of them wore gang jackets and were pretty tough looking. But one on one in the office, they were just young people--nice or unhappy or confused young people--and they taught me that one on one, we are so much more like one another than we are different.” This is the message she sought to impart on a recent weekday as she led yet another group through the chambers of the museum. This gathering was from San Bernardino, a polite but weary gaggle of Latino, Anglo and African American high school students who had ridden for hours on a bus to get to the museum. “Good morning,” said Schneider in her best classroom voice. The kids stopped shuffling and listened up. “I think you’ll find today’s experience will be different from any museum experience you have had before.”

Hampered by a foot injury that forced her that day to head up her group with the aid of a crutch, Schneider moved with surprising briskness to the first exhibit and her first set of remarks. “Much as most people want to get along with others, very few people have no bias at all . . . “ she said.

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The teen-agers listened carefully as she directed them from insight to insight--through a tunnel echoing with racial slurs, past a wall map copiously studded with pins marking the location of various hate groups, into a gallery where they watched a film about civil rights, through two entire floors of exhibits telling the story of the Holocaust.

Volunteering at a place like the Museum of Tolerance can be a grueling job.

Although much of the museum is enlightening and even fun, some of its most important exhibits are graphic and painful.

There is, for example, a short film on genocide that is shown to every tour group. Visitors are warned that the images will be stark, but the presentation routinely reduces viewers to tears.

The slaughter of Armenians by the Turks in 1915 segues into the slaughter of Cambodians by Pol Pot, which in turn segues into the slaughter of indigenous Indians in Latin America--horror upon horror upon horror.

It is wrenching and relentless. Mercifully, it is also short. Still, Schneider says it is one of two points on the tour at which she occasionally has to leave the room. The other is a final section of the Holocaust exhibit.

“Yes, it’s difficult,” she says, “but how does anyone do anything that’s difficult? You think about your reasons. I look at it as a teaching experience. I constantly remind myself that I’m here for education.”

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The Beat

People interested in volunteering at the Museum of Tolerance must have already toured the museum. Then they can call Barbara Stolar, volunteer coordinator, at (310) 553-9036 Ext. 318.