California: Manual Arts

Written by Stephen Baines

Thursday, 17 June 1999

Today's entry will be pretty short and mainly concentrates on the school that I visited. The main entertainment today is to be Disneyland, but more on that later... Last night I went to the Epicentre Restaurant (earthquake in Mexico - too close for comfort - tried not to think about it) for an evening meal. I chose the chicken tenders, as it was described as a small dish. The waiter told me it was a very, very small dish indeed, and wouldn't even fill a corner. He told me that I should have something like a salad with it - no way, thinks I, I've fallen for the salad thing in the past. So I decided to have a small bowl (their words) of soup for starters. A large bowl arrives, closely followed by a very large plate of chicken tenders. Next time I'll be more decisive and stick with my guts (no pun intended). Woke up to distressing news on CNN. The US Postal Service held a competition for the best "I Love Lucy" impersonator, they did this to celebrate the launch of their new Lucille Ball stamps. Maybe I'm missing something? Maybe their is something about her that I just don't see? I went around the corner to a coffee shop to have breakfast - a cafe latte with a filled (read stuffed) croissant. Ordering the cafe latte was slightly more stressful than I thought it would be - did I want it full caf, half caf half decaf, ful decaf, half caf half esp... Er... Too many choices. Blurted out full caf and hoped that I wasn't going to be laughed at. I must stop having coffee in coffee shops, they are bad for me! I'm sitting quietly eating my croissant when I overhear the waitress talking to one of her regulars... "We're due in court today" says the regular "Why? What you done this time?" asked the waitress "I don't understand it! We're in court just because Walt had his stereo on too loud" "Listen, honey, they can't take you to court just for that. You aint telling me something" "Well, the cop asked us to turn it down, and Walt got angry and punched him". One snarfed Cafe Latte. Hurriedly finished, and made my way to pick up the car. I got on the I-110, and made my way to Vermont Avenue to see the Manual Arts High School. The make up of the district is 80% Hispanic, 20% African-American. I pulled into the car park, and found my way to the principals office. Wendel Greer greated me, and handed me over to one of his colleagues - Mike Lovelady - to give me the grand tour for the day. I was to shadow him and see what went on with the school. I saw a very impressive facility - the school has some 4000+ students on the roll, and a budget of well over $16m a year. The teaching, likewise, was excellent; IT is so well integrated into the curriculum, that staff and students alike had trouble trying to work out when they didn't use IT. A bit later, I had a brief meeting with Wendel, who explained how the IT provision had built up over only the last 4 years, and was having a massive impact on their standard test scores and has reduced massively the amount of gang related crime within the school. I then continued my tour and met Nate and Jo who were teaching science and English respectively.     1706-mahs.jpg - 20137 Bytes For lunch, Mike and Michael took me out to a local Latino van to pick up some of the fabled California-Latino cross cuisine. It was absolutely fantastic - for $4 a dinner of sea food burritos. Well worth the trip! Once back, I had chance to see a presentation that Jo and Mike were doing for some teachers at local schools. They were showing them what could be achieved using ICT in their everyday teaching. California, for all the flannel spouted, is in many parts just as badly provided for as UK schools. The tour continued, and I met more staff and students. I then had to return to the office for details of Disneyland tonight - we'd be leaving the school at about 9pm tonight(!) and returning about 4 or 5 in the morning. Lovely. So, now I'm back at my hotel, getting a little rest before going back to MAHS for the evening ahead. Don't expect a report till later tomorrow... I doubt I'll be too awake