The weather is nice. We go to the beach to run, and sit there some nights around fire pits.
But look, thats pretty much all this place has to offer in my eyes. The urban sprawl is out of control. You get all the congestion and traffic of a city with none of the convenience of having things close by. And the traffic is even worse because their public transportation outside of the ritzy central areas is a joke, so without a car (or van) you're pretty much out of luck. New Yorkers at elast TRY to not be racist, but segregation is still very much in play in this miserable place. The rich people living in the hills who think L.A. is the greatest are the most willfully and stubbornly blind people I've ever seen: they go about their glamorous lives completely unaware of the injustice happening just a few miles from them, and they don't WANT to know. Its disgusting. I'm not saying it doesn't happen in New York or any city in the world for that matter, but here it seems particularly ingrained in the culture.
It's also been an eye-opening experience. We were raised to believe that, while slavery and racism were bad, civil rights made everything better and as long as we don't judge people based on the color of their skin, everything will be alright. But in the ghettos of L.A., everything is not alright. The problem has not gone away just because we've convinced ourselves that it has.
Our team is split between the New Chapel Parish, who's basement we're living in, and Dorsey High School; one of the poorest performing schools in the country. I get to teach the kids algebra and geometry all day (ironic). Its really difficult because many of them have trouble with even basic arithmetic.
Most of the kids are actually really smart, but their attitudes get in the way. How do you convince a kid who has to worry about being stabbed on the way to his way home that geometry is important? They come from broken families and broken homes where they are forced to take on adult responsibilities far too early. They are never taught to respect people, to act civilly in society, to value education and prepare for their futures. As such, they have no problem talking back to teachers, walking out on class or simply refusing to do their schoolwork, and start down the path that will no pass on the same attitudes to their own children, just as they inherited them from their own parents without realizing it.
And because so many kids have no problems disrupting class, the teachers have to spend more time trying to maintain control than actually teaching. The lessons get lost, the kids don't learn and before you know it they're staring at a board of symbols and operations they don't even begin to understand. And then they shut down or act out even more. But thats where we come in: if we can sit down and talk with them one on one, and explain to them what is actually happening and why, then they see that its actually easy and become more interested. Nothing is quite so satisfying like watching that spark of understanding slowly spread over the face of a kid who thought it was astrophysics 10 minutes ago. And if they actually remember it enough to do it again the next day...what a great feeling!
Thats not to say that we're the answer to the schools problems. Most of the kids simply don't want to be helped and don't understand why furthering their education and learning how to act in the face of things they don't like or don't want to do, and a bunch of white kids from the government are not going to be the ones to change their minds. But we have to be there for the ones who do want help, and if we can reach just a few, then our time will not have been wasted.
Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie has a song dedicated to Los Angeles called 'Why You'd Want to Live Here' about how horrific he thought LA was. Granted, he's married to Zooey Deschanel who is a LA native - so maybe he had to get over it.
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