Thursday, January 29, 1998
Home Edition
Section: Metro
Page: B-1
8th-Graders Break Down Barriers in Cyberspace;
Long Beach students who struggle with language find a niche online
By: DOUGLAS P. SHUIT
LOS ANGELES TIMES STAFF WRITER
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.
Copyright (c) 1998 Times Mirror Company
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