Tender Mercies

You think it’s easy going to school?

Not when you’re 15 and live in a crowded apartment with seven siblings, all younger than 6. Not when your mom has no job, is coming off drugs and belongs to the same gang that you, your drug-addicted dad and all your relatives belong to.

Not when you have to dress so carefully for the trip to class each day, because one mistake could kill you. Does Calvin Klein know his logo means “Crips Killer” in Southeast L.A.? Green means you deal drugs. The wrong belt buckle or shoelace knot is big trouble if you meet rival gangs on your way.

Maybe you’ll take the long route, avoid enemy territory. It takes an extra hour, but you’ll get there.

For Aldo, 15, it’s automatic: He’s going to school no matter what. For the first time in his life, he says, he likes his teachers, wants success, feels needed and, yes, smart.

The other morning he boasted that he’d learned to say no to his gang.

“After school I stay inside. I just tell my homies I gotta help out with my little sisters and brothers, and they don’t bother me,” he said with pride. That night, he was beaten so badly by his homies for ignoring the gang that he couldn’t go to school the next day.

But the day after that, he was back.

*

“Don’t worry about Aldo. He’s gonna make it,” say Cedric Anderson and Sandy Osborn in unison. They’re the total staff of the Rosewood Community Education Center, the only teachers Aldo has ever liked.

And they like him, despite his arrest at 14 for grand theft auto and possession of methamphetamines-- probably not his most serious crimes, simply the ones for which he was caught.

Aldo is one of 34 students at Rosewood, a one-room, storefront public school in a pseudo-Spanish strip mall in Bellflower.

Some would call it a school of last resort, because almost every kid there has committed major crimes, is on probation, belongs to a gang and has been rejected by all the regular public high schools in his or her district.

There are those who believe that all kids like these, who’ve committed adult crimes, should be locked up just like adults.

But to Anderson and Osborn, who started teaching together at Rosewood when it opened eight years ago, these kids are society’s buried treasure, the damaged raw material from which outstanding citizens can be made.

Rosewood is unique. It is the first public high school to connect kids like Aldo, never considered trustworthy or humane, with helpless and hopelessly disabled children who require constant care, gentleness and love.

Each day at 9:30 a.m., the Rosewood students pile into a bus and ride a few blocks to Lynn Pace Elementary School, where the area’s most severely disabled youths, ages 6 to 22, are enrolled in special education classes.

And for the next two hours, Rosewood youths help to exercise, teach and play with their disabled peers, all of whom suffer major mental and / or physical damage.

Retardation, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and other conditions have left many of them unable to control their muscles. Many spend their days strapped into wheelchairs; some cannot move their limbs, their heads, or even swallow food.

The special ed students are weak and vulnerable, sitting targets for any act of cruelty or malice. But what they receive from their Rosewood helpers is nothing but aid, friendship and fun.

To watch an at-risk youth interact with one of his helpless charges is to see the tenderness of a parent toward a child, the competence of a physical therapist with a patient.

“Mikey moves his arms and legs much better in water, so he loves it in here,” says Kenneth, 15, as he helps a boy with cerebral palsy in the Pace school pool. “But I’ve gotta watch him every second, cause he tips over and could drown.”

At that moment, Mike, who is wearing a flotation vest, tilts upside down while trying to swim. Kenneth is there instantly, joking with Mike as he sets him right. Then he scours the pool to see if any other kids need his help. Invariably they do, and invariably he’s there.

None of the disabled youths have any idea that the kids they trust and depend on are considered menaces to society.

And therein lies what many experts call the magic of the Rosewood school.

Tough guys and girls, who have buried their own humanity beneath hardened shells, who have camouflaged their hurts with aggression and crime, spend every morning helping and soothing kids who have even a more painful past, and less possibility of a future, than they do.

*

Sharon Roberts, an education director for the L.A. County Office of Education, conceived the idea of introducing at-risk youth to disabled children. After decades of dealing with both groups of students, she says, “I really know at-risk youth; I’ve worked with thousands of them. They need to be loved, to feel good about what they do in life. Sure, they have gotten in trouble and must pay the consequences. But that does not mean they are all throwaway kids. Most can be turned around.”

Her office was at the Pace school at the time it occurred to her that there was a “natural partnership” between kids on probation and those with disabilities, who desperately needed to find motivation to learn and to socialize.

“Research shows that kids learn well from other kids.”

At first, no one liked Roberts’ idea. It was way too risky, her superiors said. And the Pace teachers were more than a little reluctant.

“But I kept talking, showing how and why it would work. Eventually they said I could try it.”

Roberts’ idea was “a success from Day One. We started with four kids on probation and saw immediately that the handicapped children took to them and vice versa.”

She then set about looking for teachers for a full-fledged school--”people excellent with kids, knowledgeable, and who philosophically believed we could do something with youths at risk. Cedric Anderson and Sandy Osborn both had spent their careers dealing with such kids.”

Anderson has a master’s degree from Wayne State University in Detroit and was named a California Teacher of the Year for 1996. The secret of Rosewood, he says, is allowing students to “discover their humility and humanity. On the streets, they must cloak their smartness and caring in a tough-guy facade. We give them a chance to reveal exactly who they really are, that they have goodness within them.

“And from their work they come to realize just how precious life is--the opposite of what they experience on the street.”

Students are not forced to attend Rosewood. It is an option they may get after going on probation and before their futures are decided by the court. Kids who choose to try it are interviewed by both teachers and by members of the class.

“We ask, ‘How do you feel about working with a handicapped child in a wheelchair? Are you willing to lift a child, help feed that child, help him walk or swim? If the child hits you, or pulls on your hair or clothes, will you be patient and understanding enough to say that’s OK?’ ” Anderson says. “Some shake their heads and wonder if they can do it. Others absolutely rule themselves out. Those are usually the ones determined to stick with the gang and violent activity.”

Osborn followed in her father’s footsteps and became a probation officer after college. After five years, she switched to teaching. There are no “bad seeds,” she believes.

“We’ve never had a kid in this school who couldn’t be helped by helping others. You look at those tender little faces at Pace, and you know that helping them will be an enriching experience.

“At a certain age, almost all kids do nutty stuff,” she says. “But nowadays the nutty stuff turns into horrible crimes because of all the drugs and gangs and guns out there. But you need to look at what the potential is and give each kid an opportunity to reach it.

“I’m no Pollyanna. The truth is that our program doesn’t cost money and it does a lot of good. Whereas there is a horrendous cost if we put these young people in jail at younger and younger ages, which is what some in society want to do. Incarceration doesn’t seem to help. They commit even worse crimes while inside and then again when they come out.”

Those who get into Rosewood have a two-week indoctrination period before they are assigned to a classroom at Pace. Once there (typically for one semester), they are under constant supervision of the teachers there, as well as their own teacher’s eagle eye. To make it into Rosewood they must grow hair; no shaved heads. They must not wear gang attire, although they may wear it while traveling to school to ensure safe passage.

They must not bring their street prejudices into the classroom, and must be willing to work with others who come from rival neighborhoods and gangs. No gang writing is allowed in notebooks or elsewhere in the schoolroom. They must arrive on time, and maintain good grades and attendance. If they break any of these rules they are booted out without exception. Absolutely no hard-luck stories or excuses allowed. Anderson and Osborn write reports on each child’s progress to the probation officers, who then decide how to handle each case.

*

The Rosewood program works. About 60% of the approximately 800 youngsters who’ve passed through it remain crime-free and in regular school six months after leaving Rosewood. There is no money for longer-range studies. But numerous experts in the L.A. County probation department, the district attorney’s office and the Board of Education say they see lasting beneficial results in students who have attended Rosewood, results not duplicated anywhere else.

Hideto Kim Ujita, pupil services and attendance counselor attached to the juvenile courts, says, “The only problem with Rosewood is that it’s too small. If we had 10 of those, there still wouldn’t be enough. And even if you cloned Rosewood, there’s only one Cedric and one Sandy. They make it work.”

James Hickey, deputy district attorney in charge of Los Padrinos juvenile court in Downey, says Anderson and Osborn are heroes.

“They should be teaching teachers how to handle kids. They take youths who were total truants and suddenly those kids show up at Rosewood 95% of the time. It’s magic.”

Hickey says his first priority is to protect the public and not the delinquents. Nonetheless, he lavishes praise on Rosewood because it “goes beyond the academic process, attempts to create in these young people who’ve committed crimes a sense of empathy and compassion for others. Once they can feel others’ pain, they can start to express their own and can allow themselves to become caring people with self-respect. It is at that point that they start to take the law, their schoolwork, and their futures more seriously.”

Kenneth Starks, a rehabilitation counselor for the city of Long Beach, regularly works with the Rosewood students.

“This is the best program I’ve ever seen. By helping kids less fortunate, the Rosewood students learn to give of themselves. They do not have to wear the mask that is so necessary when they’re out on the streets. They feel respected by these handicapped kids. That has never happened to them before. Another factor enters in: This is the first time they’ve seen kids whose lives are more bleak and hopeless than their own. Once they see that, it’s magic. They start to value what they have.”

Larry Davis, a teacher at Pace for 20 years, admits he was reluctant to let Rosewood students into his class. “Why would I want hardened criminals who are on probation with my kids, who are so vulnerable? I worried they’d create more problems, that I’d have to watch my back every minute.”

Instead, Davis found that the Rosewood students changed his classes for the better.

“They have a sensitivity to the needs of my kids. They want to help, to build relationships and give them a little bit of joy. Only another kid can give them that.”

The program has improved the lives of many disabled students, Pace teachers say.

One teenager, severely disabled and depressed because of it, refused to respond to anyone or anything in class. She would not even learn to press the buttons on her new electric wheelchair.

Then a young man from Rosewood befriended her and started to show he cared. Every day he told jokes, played games, took her for walks outside in her chair, and discussed life as he knew it. The girl started perking up, joining in and looking good. She asked her new friend to help her learn to use the buttons on her chair. They remained friends even after the boy got off probation, left Rosewood and went back to his regular high school to graduate.

Osborn and Anderson say their students frequently become such good friends with individuals at Pace that they travel to visit them even on days when Rosewood is not in session.

Says Debbie Webb, coordinator at a facility that treats some Rosewood students for drug and alcohol dependency, “These kids are wonderful, warm, gentle human beings. Adolescents look for attention, and if they don’t get it positively, they seek it in a negative way. These kids don’t know how to have good clean fun, never experienced normal play, like flying kites or board games.

“I am not making excuses for them. But the truth is, most are salvageable.”