Teaching

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.

In the airy computer lab at Romero-Cruz Elementary School in Santa Ana, 11-year-old Davis Nguyen quickly completed math problems. Each correct answer let an animated penguin named JiJi take steps across a bridge. The computer game looked simple, but backers say it is part of an innovative and powerful new way to teach math, and standardized test results released Tuesday appear to back up their claims. Across the state, schools saw a 4.5% increase in the number of elementary students scoring "proficient" or "advanced" in math.

LaShawnda Henderson graduated from college last spring, and this winter she's right back where she started -- sleeping in her childhood home in Compton, eating her mother's cooking every night and returning every day to her elementary school, three blocks away. Henderson is a new teacher at her old school, Dickison Elementary, one of 13 Teach For America members in Compton, the first new contingent in the city since the district stopped hiring them five years ago.