Counseling

How does a 19th Century Maori war chant figure into the college aspirations of a bunch of student athletes in El Segundo? At their South Bay school, it is all part of a cross cultural morale-boosting exercise, combining lessons in global awareness and the psychological underpinnings of victory -- with the added benefit of terrifying the opponent.

Nervously practicing her pitch for hours in her home office, the co-founder of educational toy maker Budding Brilliance Corp. tried not to think about the dollars at stake in her presentation to a group of Tech Coast Angels, an influential Southland organization of wealthy investors. Eight months of intense preparation from equity experts, courtesy of TriTech Small Business Development Center in Irvine, had polished Tina Davis' spiel.

IndyMac Federal Bank, which has had trouble getting distressed borrowers to contact it about reworking the terms of their mortgages, is hoping they'll be more willing to talk over their options in person with loan counselors from nonprofit agencies. The lender and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which is now running the thrift, on Wednesday announced walk-in counseling sessions for borrowers the next two Saturdays in the Los Angeles area and the Inland Empire.

Some sought a cart of groceries the week before Thanksgiving, others sought a way to keep from losing their homes in the new year. By the thousands, a diverse group of Southern Californians converged on two events Saturday aimed at helping families in hard economic times. The problems, and the aid offered, were vastly different. But both reflected the worries and needs of many.

Lt. Col. Dirk Levy, commander of a California National Guard battalion that took heavy casualties in Iraq, said he can't get used to civilians slogging through training exercises alongside his uniformed troops. "I keep thinking, 'Who are these people?' " Levy said.

In the spring of 1968, thousands of Mexican American students walked out of East Los Angeles high schools in protest. They called for equal treatment in education, bilingual instruction, courses that acknowledged their cultural heritage and smaller classes in their overcrowded schools. Almost 40 years later, observed participants at a recent UCLA conference on Latinos in education, little has changed.

A deepening shortage of guidance counselors in California's public high schools has emerged as a gubernatorial campaign issue after years of complaints from educators who say the problem leads to students dropping out or failing to pursue college. With one guidance counselor for every 966 students, California ranks last among the states, a ratio that means many advisors are so harried they never meet all the students assigned to them -- and spend little time with those they do.

The lie of TV psychotherapy is that impasses are about to be broken before our very eyes; the tele-breakthrough has supplanted televangelism. The truth in therapy is harder to dramatize, for it so often involves stasis, both emotional and physical; you come into the shrink's office week after week after week and listen to yourself think and feel aloud. Sometimes too you make the shrink laugh. It happened Sunday on "The Sopranos," when Tony (James Gandolfini) tells Dr.

The Rev. Ted Haggard this week formally begins his long journey toward recovery from a drugs-and-gay-sex scandal that forced him to step down as one of the most influential evangelical leaders in the nation. Haggard, 50, has turned himself over to a team of counselors who are "assessing his spiritual, emotional and mental condition," said the Rev. H.B. London, who is helping to guide Haggard through the process.