At La Canada, violence is scarcely a concern. Elementary schools and the one middle school are excellent. Students are highly motivated, highly competitive. "I don't have dress code violators. I don't have fights," said Principal Damon Dragos. "The kids all come very well prepared. The question is not whether they're going to college; it's whether it's the college of their choice."
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Two students, two schools -- and a world of difference 20 miles apart
COLUMN ONE
Meet Kyle Gosselin and Henry Ramirez. Kyle attends La Cañada High; Henry was at South L.A.'s Jefferson High before moving to Texas. Their backgrounds may be worlds apart, but their dreams are similar.
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Another October morning. Kyle starts his day in Advanced Placement English, where the topic is the Chaucer poem "Troilus and Criseyde." Then, it's SSR -- basically, homeroom, where students are given 15 minutes for "sustained silent reading."
German 3 is next. It begins with the young teacher, Melanie Sos, saying: "So, guten morgan. Wie geht's?" ("Good morning. How's it going?") Like Henry's French class, much of this class involves the teacher speaking the foreign language and the students responding, sometimes in German, sometimes in English. But the level is markedly higher. Kyle and a classmate pore over a story, taking turns reading the German and translating. Kyle reads with some ease. The day's homework is to write 15 sentences summarizing what they've read.
By now, Sos said, maybe half the students have traveled to Germany.
The rest of Kyle's day consists of Pre-Calculus, Honors Physics, Advanced Placement U.S. History and baseball.
Like most kids his age in La Canada, Kyle has given a lot of thought to college. Asked at the beginning of the year if he'd thought about specific schools, he gave a detailed answer: "I've been thinking, like, Claremont-McKenna, USC, UCLA," he said. "Dartmouth is a great school. Then I've been looking at liberal arts schools: Amherst, Haverford, Georgetown, maybe Johns Hopkins. . . . Maybe I'd apply to UCSD because they have a good pre-med program."
By spring, he had taken an East Coast college tour with his parents, hitting eight schools in six days, and had met for 80 minutes with La Canada's college counselor.
In his perfect world, Kyle would be offered a baseball scholarship or at least be admitted to one of his "reach" schools on the strength of his playing. He was on La Canada's successful varsity team this year, but didn't start much. He knows that academics are his ticket. His grades are a mix of A's and Bs, but since AP classes are given extra weight, his grade point average is over 4.0.
