Skill Center Graduates to a Diploma Program

Seventeen-year-old Michael Offill as lost track of the number of times he has dropped out of school. Asked to guess, he said five or six times, maybe more.

If all goes according to schedule, however, in two months he not only will have completed school, he also will walk away with the first high school diploma awarded a former dropout at the Venice Skills Center, a Los Angeles Unified School District center for occupational training and remedial education.

Offill said he is able to learn at the skills center because, unlike in traditional classrooms, where he often felt alienated and constricted, instruction takes place in a one-on-one setting with a teacher. Also, he said, the school allows him to structure his own schedule according to the time he is willing to invest. He said the school has taught him to be self-motivated and to take responsibility for his actions.

“I’ve learned a lot more besides education here,” he said. “I’ve learned things about life.”

The diploma will symbolize success for the school as well as for Offill.

20th Anniversary

After 20 years of training car mechanics, secretaries, appliance repairmen and other skilled workers, the school at 5th and Sunset avenues in Venice today offers more courses than it ever has and provides one-on-one instruction for high school dropouts seeking diplomas. The center, which officially celebrated its 20th anniversary April 8, has 350 students, contrasted with about 200 when it opened.

The high school dropout program, the newest at the center, began last July with state funds and is aimed at encouraging high school dropouts to return to school. The program prepares students to take the General Education Development (GED) test, which is the equivalent of 130 class credits, or approximately 26 courses. The remaining eight courses required for the diploma are taught at the skills center.

Many of the 100 students in the program are on court-ordered probation for committing crimes, while others have children and are unable to spend much time away from home, according to Michael Hill, coordinator of the program.

“The problem is, so many of these kids have been abused or have substance abuse problems,” Hill said. “I have a 16-year-old with a 4-year-old son. I have an 18-year-old with three kids. I get probably one kid shot a month.”

Students in the dropout program get a full dose of self-help instruction to encourage them to take responsibility for their education and emotional development. The classroom’s walls are plastered with posters and banners that proclaim, “The aim of education is to build character,” “Trust yourself” and “Do something well; recognize excellence.”

Hill, who is a licensed marriage, family and child counselor, mixes discipline with understanding to get his students to work. As he was giving instructions to a class on how to use a word processor, a student told him to “shut up.” But Hill was unfazed. Such interruptions are common in his classroom, he said.

“Essentially, what this turns out to be is a massive support center,” he said. “It’s not just educational remediation. The issues of meanings and values are addressed daily. The more responsibility we can have for our lives, the more success we can generate for ourselves.”

When 17-year-old Chris Nelson entered the program last year, Hill said, “every sentence had the same verb in it--’I hate.’ Then he discovered that the word processor has a thesaurus, and he began using words like ‘loathe,’ ‘abhor’ and ‘despise’ instead of ‘hate.’ ”

Nelson said he has developed a more positive outlook since he began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and quit drugs and alcohol about a year ago.

While Nelson’s favorite word was “hate,” Offill, the student who will be the program’s first graduate in June, was stuck on expressions that began with “I can’t,” Hill said. When presented with a task, Offill inevitably said “I can’t do this,” or “I can’t work this way,” Hill recalled.

Desire to Learn

Now, Offill enjoys his English composition and contemporary issues courses and has plans to study agriculture at Pierce College and then transfer to Humboldt State University. He said he is also interested in studying psychology, because “I’d like to help people and I’m fascinated by the mind.”

Although much attention this year has been focused on the fledgling program for high school dropouts, the center continues its traditional role of teaching practical skills to people seeking employment or changing careers.

For $20 per trimester, students learn a variety of skills, including how to fix air conditioners, automobile engines and videocassette recorders and how to work as a medical secretary. Students receiving welfare or unemployment insurance are charged $10 per trimester, and handicapped students attend for free, said Robert B. Ceja, a coordinator and a counselor at the center.

Most of the center’s students come from Venice, Culver City, Mar Vista, Santa Monica and other Westside communities, Ceja said.

The center is one of six within the school district’s Division of Adult and Occupational Education. The schools were started in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots to provide marketable skills to poor people who had lost jobs in declining industries, said Venice Skills Center Principal John Regan.

Open Enrollment

Until the 1980s, the centers relied heavily on federal job training funds but now receive most of their money from the state. Classes originally were limited to poor people and the unemployed, but they are now open to anyone who needs job training, Regan said.

Training programs range from 6 to 30 weeks, and students can enroll or leave at any time while courses are in session.

Several of the courses, such as videocassette recorder repair and auto mechanics, function like actual businesses by catering to customers and advertising their services. Customers who use the center for routine car repairs are required to pay only for the parts. The labor is provided free by students. Other courses offer inexpensive repairs for air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines and other appliances.

“Everything is done real-time in here as far as repairs,” Hill said. “It’s on-the-job.”

David Harris, 32, said he is taking courses in VCR repair and refrigerator and air-conditioning repair because he became tired of the clerical jobs he had in the past.

“Desk jobs I find to be boring,” he said. “I like to use my hands. I discovered that late in life. I found I enjoy fixing things.”

Edna Brock, 53, said she came to the skills center last September after deciding that she wanted to get out of the stock brokerage business, in which she had worked for 30 years, and pursue a career that provided greater job security and retirement benefits. She has completed 400 hours of course work in a variety of computer and word processing courses offered at the center.

“I wanted to make a career change, and I had never had any computer experience,” she said. “Now I find when I look in the newspaper I could approach almost any company, whereas before I had only one or two categories I could consider. It’s opened up a new world for me, and I love it.”