8th-Graders Break Down Barriers in Cyberspace

Outside Franklin Middle School in Long Beach, scavengers carry garbage bags full of cans or fill shopping carts with anything that can be recycled. High-occupancy, low-cost apartments with peeling paint are packed along litter-filled streets.

This is where some of the city’s immigrant population lives in one of Long Beach’s most densely populated and lowest income neighborhoods.

But in one special eighth-grade classroom, where nearly all the students are first-generation Americans, children can gaze into computer monitors and for a time forget how long they have lived in the United States, how well they speak English, whether their parents work or even how old they are.

Computers attach little importance to such things.

What these eighth-graders have learned is that if you tap computer keys with a certain expertise, if you can make the images dance and put together graphics, text and editorial content just so, the world will come knocking at your door.

Jim Laub, 36, is the computer teacher at Franklin who opened up cyberspace for the eighth-graders.

And they pushed their way in.

Now the 13- and 14-year-olds are building Web pages on the Internet for local businesses and other schools in the Long Beach Unified School District.

That’s how Leng Trinh, 13, a bright girl with long black hair neatly tied into a ponytail, came to be sitting in a classroom with 34 other students Wednesday, each of them in front of their own desktop computer that was connected to the Internet.

Using a Macintosh computer, Trinh was working online, putting the finishing touches on a Web home page for King Financial Investments Co. of Gardena.

In September, Trinh and other students in the class mailed fliers to local businesses, offering to develop free Web pages for them as part of a class project. They got enough responses to make the program a success.

As a result of Laub’s unique program, eight businesses and 30 schools in the district now use Web sites fashioned by Franklin students.

For Laub, it was a way to bring the real world into his classroom, while giving the students hands-on experience putting together computer programs.

Many of the students in his class plan to go to college, but recent history indicates that others will drop out before finishing high school. In a survey last year, the state Department of Education said the Long Beach Unified School District had the highest dropout rate in Los Angeles County.

Laub said he wants to ensure that his students have a marketable skill.

“When they finish this class, they will have a skill that will let them go out and get a job that maybe pays $30,000 a year,” said Laub, who worked for IBM for nine years before beginning his teaching career at Franklin five years ago. “I’m teaching them to market their skills. It’s a mentality I learned at IBM.”

The expense of contracting with a local computer programmer was what motivated Godwin Ajih, president of King Financial, to contact Franklin and get Trinh working on his Web page.

“I needed to build a Web page, and as long as they can do it right, it doesn’t matter how old they are,” Ajih said.

Trinh, the daughter of immigrant parents of mixed Cambodian, Vietnamese and Chinese ancestry, said she plans to study computer science in college, in part because of the success that she has had in the computer class.

Franklin’s 1,124 students are about 59% Latino, 18% African American and 17% Asian. Other races and ethnic groups make up another 6%.

Flags from the Philippines, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Virgin Islands, Samoa, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guam, Laos, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Colombia, Jamaica and Thailand--all countries of origin for current or past students--are draped around Laub’s classroom.

Half the computers in Laub’s class were purchased with a $30,000 state grant. The rest were bought with money from the school district.

Along with classroom instruction, Laub has started an “adopt a computer program” for the students. He appeals to Long Beach businesses for old computers, and then sells the donated computers--about 130 so far--to families of his students for $25. That price is within most families’ price range but expensive enough to motivate the students to take care of them, Laub said.

In many cases, the students bring computer literacy into homes in which their parents can barely speak English.

Indira Chavez, 13, who did a patriotic Web site, complete with a waving American flag, for Patrick Henry Elementary School, said her parents, who emigrated from Mexico several years ago, are still learning to speak English.

As a result of the class, Indira said, she has developed a love for computers.

“I am an A student in this class, but I am average or above average in other classes,” she said. “I want to be a computer specialist when I grow up.”

Some of the students say it is easier for them to learn the language of a computer than it is to learn English.

Rina Heng, 14, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, the daughter of Cambodian parents. Rina spoke only her native Khmer language when the family arrived in the Long Beach area five years ago, and still struggles with English. But not with the computer.

Sitting in front of an Apple Macintosh during Laub’s class Wednesday morning, the fingers on Heng’s left hand rhythmically worked the keyboard while she effortlessly used the mouse with her right hand, showing off a Web site she had constructed for an elementary school.

The 13-year-old, whose parents don’t speak English, excels in the classroom. Heng said she has come to rely on the “adopt-a-computer” sent home by Laub to do homework and chat with friends via e-mail.