Ex-Sitcom Writer Turned Teacher Brings Act to Class
It’s not easy to get eighth-graders excited about things like the Monroe Doctrine or protective tariffs.
But Warren Murray, a history teacher at Los Cerritos Middle School, gets his classes engaged by using the kind of humor reminiscent of a television sitcom.
“Entertaining is a part of teaching,” said Murray, who also teaches English. “Young people remember things better if they are enjoying it.”
Murray, 58, knows how to keep a class entertained. He’s a former television writer and producer who left the glamour of Hollywood to resume an interrupted teaching career. He uses comedy and many of the tricks he learned in show business to reinforce his daily lessons.
He cracks jokes, has students perform short plays in class that he’s written about historical figures, such as Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Columbus, and coaches the school’s successful debate team.
On a recent morning, Murray helped his history students review for a test by making the Industrial Revolution the subject of a makeshift “Jeopardy” quiz show. He divided the class into two teams and asked questions about the Erie Canal, textile mills and the Monroe Doctrine, adopted under President James Monroe in 1823 to keep European countries from colonizing in the Western Hemisphere.
“He’s entertaining,” said Andy Solinger, 13. “It makes us want to go to class.”
Classmate Nick Foley, 13, said, “If you can suck me into a good lesson with humor, then I’m fixed on the teacher instead of dozing off and drawing comics.”
Murray’s path to teaching is a story that has come full circle. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he began teaching American history in the mid-1960s. But a public school teacher’s salary of $6,000 a year wasn’t enough to support his family.
Murray’s father, retired stand-up comedian and actor Jan Murray, had encouraged him to pursue a more lucrative career as a writer in Hollywood. In 1967, Warren took his father’s advice and moved to Southern California.
Murray got his break in 1969, when a producer for the “Hollywood Squares” game show hired Murray to write “ad-lib” jokes for Paul Lynde and other celebrities.
Murray went on to work as a writer and executive story editor for various popular sitcoms, including “That Girl,” “Love American Style,” “Happy Days,” “All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son,” “Alice,” “Diff’rent Strokes” and “The Facts of Life.”
When Murray hit 50, an age that some Hollywood executives consider over the hill, his assignments started to dwindle. He considered returning to teaching but wasn’t sure if he still had the patience for rambunctious teenagers.
But he discovered he still loved the profession and in 1994 landed a full-time teaching job at Los Cerritos.
Although he makes about $50,000 as a teacher these days, he canceled his country club membership, traded in his Mercedes for a Toyota Corolla and sold his four-bedroom estate in Tarzana and moved into a three-bedroom townhouse in Oak Park with his third wife, Fran.
But he said the rewards far outweigh any of the sacrifices.
“Once I got in the classroom and saw the looks on the kids’ faces and was still able to communicate on a meaningful level with them, that got to be so exciting and so wonderful. The withdrawal [from show business] didn’t last long,” he said.
It’s not all fun and games Murray’s classes. His students are expected to push themselves. The walls in his classroom are plastered with book reports and drawings of make-believe countries the eighth-graders had to create, with unique customs, histories and their own constitutions.
During English class recently, Murray introduced them to Shakespeare and some of the best insults ever scribed by the famous playwright, including words like “spleeny,” which means bad tempered, and calling someone a “reeky weather-bitten maggot pie.”
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It wasn’t so much a lesson in rudeness as it was an effort to make students comfortable with Old English, so it won’t be intimidating when they study it in high school, he said.
And his supervisors think Murray has learned the secret of how to get all his students to respond.
“He bends over backward,” Principal Eleanor Love said. “He’s really good at taking a look at his classes and his kids and finding the ones who are struggling and kind of takes them under his wing. He’s very passionate about the things that he feels strongly about.”
Murray also coaches the Student Congress and Debate Team, which battles the district’s three other middle schools annually in a debate contest.
He shows students how to project their voices, stand properly and use theatrics to emphasize their arguments in front of the judges. Los Cerritos has won the districtwide competitions the last five years, including last month when the teams debated issues that included drug testing for high school athletes.
Katherine Barnett, who competed in student congress before her graduation from Los Cerritos two years ago, said Murray inspired her to join the debate team at Thousand Oaks High School.
“He was always there at the competitions. He stayed there and rooted us on,” said Barnett, 15. “It was nice knowing that when you’re finished speaking, you weren’t facing criticism. You were facing support, ideas and suggestions.”
