Out of the Mouths of Babes

The phone rings. It’s another agent, another producer, another mogul’s assistant calling: “Is Laura Angelica Simon interested in directing? Would she like to develop a TV pilot?”

For now, all of Hollywood is on hold. At least until second grade lets out this summer and Simon is done with her teaching duties.

Two years ago, Simon borrowed a used movie camera. With no filmmaking experience and very little money, she began documenting the emotional toll Proposition 187 was having on her students, most of whom are illegal immigrants and all of whom live in Pico-Union. The proposition would deny them public education.

That film, “Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary,” has reached far and touched many.

It won the Freedom of Expression prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, amid buzz that it is Oscar worthy. Hillary Rodham Clinton saw it and sent a congratulatory note. And on July 1, it will be shown on the Public Broadcasting Service.

Her students’ stories parallel her own.

At 6, Simon legally immigrated with her parents. They lived in San Francisco and, later, Los Angeles. She experienced alienation, discrimination and hatred as a Mexican, Spanish-speaking child. By the fourth grade, she was fluent in English. In high school, she was valedictorian. And at Claremont McKenna College, she majored in economics and philosophy and was class president and commencement speaker.

She got into teaching by accident. After college, she planned to work as a substitute teacher only to save money for travel. But she got hooked after she met the children and realized she couldn’t leave them.

She made her documentary--30 hours of film squeezed to 53 minutes--because she felt “a sense of desperation” over Proposition 187. She wanted to give her kids a voice. And she wanted to honor her mother, “the inspiration” for her success.

She discussed her life as an immigrant, teacher and filmmaker in a recent interview at her West Los Angeles apartment. Following is her story in her own words.

Why She Made the Documentary

A large number of undocumented children at Hoover were really damaged by Prop. 187--not the fact that it was ever enforced, because it really wasn’t, but by the environment it created. It divided our school. It divided friendships. It ended friendships between teachers.

Suddenly, the friendships, the warmth and the sense of family I had with my kids was just ripped apart. Gone.

I was somebody to be distrusted. One of my students literally said, “Are you a cop? Are you gonna kick me out of this room?”

And the idea that she would think that I was somebody who would hurt her that way, someone who would have her deported or kicked out of the classroom, was just devastating.

In my life, I would never want to be put in a situation as someone who would hurt children. Suddenly, society had told me, “Your job may be, potentially, to kick these kids out.” You don’t become a teacher for that reason.

When you work at a place like Pico-Union, which really has a tremendous number of children in need--clothes, food, medical attention--the role of the school no longer is just a place where you go to read and write. It becomes a safe haven.

As a Latina and as an immigrant, I hated that we were hurting these children this much. And nobody was giving them a voice. Nobody was putting a microphone in front of them, asking, “Hey, how do you guys feel about the fact that you may be denied health care and public education?”

You know, a 6- or a 7-year-old doesn’t understand what it means to be legal or illegal. They just know that when they turn on the TV, they see that children with brown faces aren’t wanted and that some of their teachers had voted for something that told them they weren’t wanted any longer at Hoover.

And that was very hard for them. Suddenly, Hoover became a hostile place and, potentially, the most dangerous place in the neighborhood.

On Teaching

I don’t know how great of a teacher I am. I’m damn bossy. I shouldn’t say “damn.” I’m really bossy. I’m really tough. Everybody has the image of the teacher being this nurturing, warm, loving character, and I think I am very nurturing. But I’m also tough as nails.

I have to give my kids the study habits that will get them into college. They have to win a scholarship. They just can’t be average. And I won’t take mediocrity. I will not tolerate it.

I don’t have a homework problem in my classroom. If you don’t do your homework, I will go to your home. I really will. I don’t care what I have to do, but you will do your homework. After a month in my class, everybody does their work.

I’ll look at my children, and I ask them, “If you could buy anything for your mom or your dad right now, what would you like to buy?” They go, “I’d like to buy my mom a house.”

And I always say, “How do you think you’re going to get that for them? If you want to buy your mother a house, you have to turn that page. You have read that book. I promise you that if you keep reading and reading and reading, and you read more than any other child in this room, and more than any child in this school, then one day you’re going to come back and say to me, “Guess what? I did it. I bought my mom a house.’ ”

On Her Immigrant Childhood

I was born in Mexico. When we came to the United States, I didn’t realize we had gone to another country until I went to school. Suddenly, everyone around me was dressing differently. Everyone around me was speaking a different language.

I didn’t fit into anything. The class would go left and I would go right. I went in the bathroom in my pants because I just simply didn’t know how to ask, “Where is the bathroom?”

The hardest thing was being called a wetback. On the way home from school, I remember, literally, how kids would yell at me and my mother: “Wetbacks, wetbacks!” And these little kids knew how to say it in Spanish: “Mojados, go back.” And it was very painful.

Not so much for me, but for my mother. Those words took away all her dignity, all her self-esteem, all her entire sense of meaning. And I didn’t have the language to defend her. I wanted to have a voice desperately in this country. When I was 6, it became very clear that I had to speak English. I made a contract with myself to not only learn it, but to become very devoted to school, to become very devoted to whatever it is that would allow me to get my mother’s dignity back.

On Education and the Children of Pico-Union

All my kids understand what it means to be a Latino and not wanted. Almost every child in my room has had an experience where somebody has told them something very ugly.

We actually had a substitute come into my room and tell my reading groups--children are in groups called Harvard, Yale, Smith and so on--”Oh my gosh, you’re never going to get into one of these colleges. You’re just going to end up selling stuff on a corner like your parents do.”

I’m someone who actually came from that. My family did sell things on the street corner. I sold popsicles in East L.A., right in front of El Mercado.

But I also did go to Claremont. That’s why I’m almost romantic about the idea of education. It changed my life. Education to me was the miracle of America. A miracle in that today I am a professional, fluent in three languages, and that I could make a movie and get the sort of national attention that I am now getting.

I know that if my kids learn to read and write and get the math skills that, without a doubt, they will grow up to be much more than what I have become. They will be the doctors, the professors, the teachers of tomorrow. We literally have undocumented kids who are tiny Einsteins sitting in classrooms.

My kids get very excited about education. But I’m also realistic. I know that the world outside of my classroom doesn’t believe in them as much as I do. And I have nine months to tell them they’re the best thing in the world and they’re going to change things and that they’re going to Harvard, Yale, Smith and Stanford.

I don’t know if my film will change anybody’s mind on the immigration debate, on public policy and Prop. 187. But I do know that the humanity of my community and my children will come through very loudly.

I just know, when people see this movie, they will never see their lives again the same way. And I know that’s a very arrogant thing to say, but I don’t think I’m saying it because I told such a great story. I’m saying it because these kids are so powerful, their lives are so meaningful and they speak for themselves.

On Life Since Sundance

When I came back to school, a lot of people thought I was going to quit. I thought that was very sad. And the funny thing is, never in this whole process did it ever occur to me to leave teaching. I’m the luckiest person in the world to have such a meaningful day to day, but I also now love filmmaking.

I feel a little bit like I’m acting like Sharon Stone because I’ll get a call from Warner Bros., and I will say, “I really can’t respond to you right now on the idea of developing a TV show until the kids go on vacation.”

My obligation is to finish the school year, which is now close to an end--and then I’ll sit down with anybody and everybody.

Final Thoughts

This may sound arrogant, but this experience--more than anything--reinforced in me how much I love being an immigrant. It’s a really hard time to be a Latino in America. Yet, never in my entire life have I felt so proud and so lucky to have that.

To come here and to have the point of view that I have from two worlds--to be able to easily go back and forth between languages, between cultures, to have that sort of hybrid. I just love being Mexican. I love being an immigrant. I love being an American.