Teachers

Filipino exchange teacher Ferdinand Nakila landed in Los Angeles expecting "Pretty Woman" scenes of swank Beverly Hills boulevards and glittering celebrities. What he got was Inglewood, where he stayed for two weeks in temporary housing and encountered drunkards, beggars, trash-filled streets and nightly police sirens. It got worse.

The teacher whom the Los Angeles school district has spent seven years and nearly $2 million trying to fire spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday, saying he did not sexually harass students and is the target of discrimination. Matthew Kim, a former special education teacher at Grant High School in Van Nuys, had declined to speak to The Times numerous times over the last several months.

When Douglas Lee started searching for a job as an English instructor in Chengdu, he seemed just like any other American to his potential employers. He was raised in Oklahoma, enjoyed listening to jazz and was a big fan of Woody Allen movies like "Crimes and Misdemeanors." But when he submitted a photo of himself, the 26-year-old graduate of San Diego State University discovered that he had one blemish on his application: He looked too Chinese.

Diana Nguyen has dreamed of teaching high school since she was inspired by her ninth-grade world history instructor, who made the subject jump off the page. But when the UC Irvine student receives her teaching credential this summer, she plans to move to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to teach English. Why the change in plans? Simple, Nguyen, 23, said in her characteristic upbeat way. There are no jobs for a social studies teacher.

California's top education official sought Tuesday to counter federal criticism of the state's reluctance to use student test scores to evaluate teachers, paying a visit to Long Beach to highlight one of the few California school districts to make extensive use of such data. The Long Beach Unified School District's use of student scores to assess the effectiveness of programs, instructional strategies and teachers is a rarity in California, and state Supt.

On the day of his father's execution in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, 14-year-old Botso Korisheli was granted 20 minutes to say goodbye. "I was able to see Dad in prison; he was in a small cell, and he was holding my mom's hand," recalls Korisheli, 78, of that day in 1936 when his outspoken father, celebrated Georgian actor Platon Korisheli, was put to death as an enemy of the people. "That's where he told me everything he wanted to tell me for the rest of my life," continues Korisheli.

Walking past Room 607, Merritt Hemenway slowed his gait and narrowed his brows. Something about this seemingly mundane spot had diverted his attention. He paused. It was morning at Bishop Amat Memorial High School near La Puente, where Hemenway is the principal. For just a moment, he was a high school senior again. It was Nov. 22, 1963, and he was in third-period physics. Msgr.

Thousands of teachers and other union members rallied Thursday at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles to oppose state and local cuts to education that are widely expected to result in larger classes for students as well as layoffs and more expensive healthcare. Most of the rhetoric blistered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his proposed budget, but speakers also took aim at the Los Angeles Unified School District and schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. "Mr.

In the 40 years since Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" was first published, it has evolved into a key classroom tool for teachers trying to engage students in such issues as racism, intolerance and the personal cost of taking a moral stand. Yet some educators have been taking a more critical view of the novel, which explores attempts by fictional white lawyer Atticus Finch to defend a black man wrongly accused of rape, and of the lessons it contains for the classroom.

Richard Rivera joined the Algebra Project at exactly the wrong time. After three years at charter schools, Rivera returned to the Los Angeles Unified School District last year as a math coach -- a kind of roving instructor and supervisor -- at Luther Burbank Middle School in Highland Park. He also agreed to work on the Algebra Project, a new program designed to keep low-achieving students involved in math.